Ageing and the Limiting Conditions of the Body

The twentieth century has seen a remarkable shift in thinking about old age. Forincreasing numbers of people reaching retirement there are numerous competingand contradictory messages about how age and ageing are viewed in contemporarysociety. The lack of any simple linear relationship between chronological ageand physiological fitness and the evident variability with which physical ageingexpresses itself challenges a determining biological foundation for old age.Structured dependency theory suggests that much of what we accept as ‘ageing’arises from social practices rather than physiological ageing. More recentlythere has been a growing reaction to this position, particularly to some of itsresource implications. Several writers have begun to seek once more to place alimit around ageing whilst claiming to restore a social meaning to the finalstage of life. Others have challenged the emphasis upon a biomedical view of oldage and sought a return to a greater acceptance of ‘finitude’. At the very sametime there is a renewed vigour in modernist claims to ‘put ageing into reverse’as popular medical and self-help literature offer to make the promise ofrejuvenation a reality. Biologists themselves have begun to question thedeterminacy of a genetically fixed lifespan. The appearance, disappearance andre-appearance of the body in gerontology parallel evolving post- War socialpolicies toward health and disability. Debates around the limits of the ageingbody illustrate the powerful links between gerontology, culture and contemporarysocial theory.