Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology

The second edition of this landmark handbook provides an authoritative overview of the emergence and development of cultural gerontology. It reveals the vibrancy and diversity of research and research methods, reflects on changes in the field since the first edition and examines future directions.

With contributions from new and established authors in the field, the Handbook offers a lively, interdisciplinary survey of five key, interconnected areas: the politics and theorising of ageing; materiality and embodiment; cultures of care; identities, relationships and consumption; and arts and technologies. Chapters traverse intellectual and empirical boundaries, examining perceptions and experiences of growing older, the deconstruction of definitions and understandings of age, and the way culture is constitutive of social relations and identities. This second revised edition considers the changing technological and digital landscape of older people, new contexts and new forms of ageism, discrimination and marginalisation, diverse ways to research age and ageing, and new and enhanced methodologies around the digital, creative and material. Contributions from across the arts and humanities extend into new areas of life – clothing, hair, travel, consumption, gardening – and draw on indigenous, postcolonial, new materialism and post-humanism perspectives.

The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology captures the field’s past, present and future in widening the social gerontological imaginary, and bringing new and creative methodologies to bear on the understanding of all dimensions of the lives of people in mid to later life. It is essential reading for students and scholars concerned with ageing and gerontology.

Author Biography

Julia Twigg is Professor of Social Policy and Sociology at the University of Kent, UK. She has written widely on the body and age. She is on the editorial boards of Ageing & Society, Journal of Aging Studies and International Journal of Ageing and Later Life.

Wendy Martin is Senior Lecturer in the College of Health and Life Sciences, Brunel University London, UK. She is co-convenor of the British Sociological Association Ageing, Body and Society study group.