The Social Context Of Ageing

This comprehensive text focuses on the social contexts of ageing, looking at the diversity of ageing and older people, and at different factors that are important to experiences of old age and ageing. It includes key chapters on: theoretical and methodological bases for the study of ageing demographic context of the 'ageing' population health and illness family and social networks formal and informal care and other services for older people. Providing an invaluable introduction to the major issues involved in the study of ageing, this book is essential reading for students of sociology, gerontology, social policy, health and social care, and professionals working with older people.

NEW edition! More than any other social gerontology texts available, addresses issues of diversity in aging by race, ethnicity, social class, and gender throughout.

Drawing on a wide range of sources, this text analyses the social nature of later life in the context of the history of welfare states, the emergence of consumer society and across the lifecourse.

Although all recorded societies have contained a few people of extreme old age, they have been the exception rather than the rule. The possibility of one fifth of the total population in retirement from active employment would have been unthinkable at the beginning of the twentieth century and even social planning in the 1970s had made no adequate provision for a society in which one in every twenty-five people would be over seventy-five and one in every hundred over eighty-five within less than a decade. In Great Britain in the 1970s, however, and in many industrialised societies, this was now a reality and vast resources would need to be directed towards the support, care and treatment of the aged. Whilst a growing body of knowledge, based upon biological and clinical studies of the ageing process, had been accumulated in recent years, only a modest investment had been made in social gerontology. Originally published in 1978, this book provided a multi-disciplinary study of the process of ageing for those in the caring professions as well as for planners and architects, whose decisions and designs affected the lives of the elderly. It is divided into three parts: the first provides a sociological, demographic and cultural background to the place of old people in eastern and western societies. The second explores the relationship which exists (or should exist) between a number of professional disciplines and part three considers an interdisciplinary model in practice. Today it can be read in its historical context.

Aims to provide the student with a grounding in all issues related to a better understanding of older people in their social environment. The text includes chapters on methodological aspects of the study of ageing; historical and cultural perspectives on ageing; and the demography of ageing.

Long considered a classic in its field, this thoroughly updated sixth edition presents new material on gerontology. Atchley examines ageing from both an individual and societal perspective and emphasizes ageing as a social process.

This introductory text on social gerontology, written from a sociological perspective, presents a very broad range of material. Biological, health and psychological viewpoints are considered in order to provide a truly multidisciplinary approach.