Canadian Journal of Sociology Online January-February 2006
This collection brings together eleven of Stephen Katz's essays written during the period 1994 - 2004. Readers familiar with his now classic study of the social construction of gerontological knowledge, Disciplining Old Age, have an opportunity to renew their acquaintance with his skilful and fluent integration of historical knowledge, sociological theory (especially the insights of Foucault into the role of interest groups in the construction of discourses of aging) and contemporary empirical analyses of aging. Those unfamiliar with his previous work have the opportunity to read the work of a scholar of aging who avoids the pitfall of facile moralisation about the plight of older people in contemporary late modern societies and draws with confidence on the less consolatory insights of critical sociology. The essays in this lively and engaging work are grounded in scrupulous historical scholarship engaging with contemporary conceptions of 'positive' or 'successful' aging and less socially acceptable forms of growing older. The key theme is that gerontology is a cultural product of modernity, currently reflecting the modes and fashions of postmodernity: a 'science' therefore, of its time and the role of sociology is to help us to maintain a critical distance when attempting to work toward an understanding of what it means to grow older.
The work gathered here is particularly refreshing precisely because Katz is prepared to accept that aging is an integral feature of our existence as biological creatures and as a social construct or discourse gerontology should work around this necessity rather than leaning towards the politically correct concept of 'ageless aging'. As he asks in the Introduction "Would we really wish the biological, geological, or cosmological orders of existence neither to age, nor change in time, not regenerate themselves through cycles of birth and death?" (17). In this context the "primary professional goal" of gerontology is "to determine the conditions and contexts in which an individual's adaptation to aging is either facilitated or limited" (204).
Following an introduction, the collection is divided into two parts. Part one contains historical and theoretical work including a critical study (co-authored with Erin Campbell) of "Creativity Across The Life Course" drawing on contrasting analyses of the work of Titian and Michaelangelo and the effects of aging on their late-life works. This makes an effective argument for the importance of understanding creativity in later life from a nuanced understanding of the historical context within which works of art are created and the concepts of artistic skill in operation at the time. In short, it is not enough to highlight the consoling fact that artistic creativity continues into later life, and to cite the work of older artists like Renoir to prove the point; a thoroughly scholarly appreciation requires an understanding the way a work is judged by contemporaries during the historical period it is produced in order to make an informed assessment of the influence of aging on the creative process.
Part Two is devoted to contemporary issues in positive aging and exemplifies the core argument integrating the whole collection. Chapters focus on the tension between consumer culture which has spawned individualised lifestyles of aging congruent with the decay of collectivised welfare services and the expansion of individualism at the centre of which can be located the icon of 'choice', mantra of late capitalistic postmodernity. The problematics of choice are conspicuously evident in the lives of older people: a good example is increasing evidence of social divisions between those older people in receipt of generous pensions who can exercise their choice in an expanding mark of goods and services and those who survive on much lower incomes which offer little scope for indulgence in the luxurious experiments with identity and selfhood in the consumer world where everything, including health and security, has its price. The chameleon self-representations of the wealthy who flow along the postmodern lines of communication which have allegedly replaced 'society' are not for the many at the lower ends of the socio-economic scale.
'Positive aging' is a moral imperative highly congruent with individualising late modernity. Chapter seven on activity in later life shows how active aging is not only a prescription for healthy aging but a moral concept or "ethical domain" (124) and Katz wants to know why this is the case and why the concept is so deeply entrenched in contemporary gerontology. Activity is one of the key concepts used to foreground virtuous aging to the neglect of those who age non-virtuously and whose lives are not featured in aging studies (one exception is literary gerontology where fictionalised accounts of characters who age "disgracefully" are certainly evident).
What then is the future of aging? Can we construct new concepts of aging which are genuinely liberatory? Katz is too canny a sociologist to offer any glib solutions. He knows the strength of the oppositional lure of competitive individualistic consumption at the heart of the postmodern dream of a radically free-flowing freedom to shape new identities in later life. As evidence from his study of the vicissitudes of the University of The Third Age in Britain shows (Chapter Eight, co-authored with Debbie Laliberte-Rudman), efforts to open up new cultural spaces for older people are only too vulnerable to commercial pressures and power struggles. Growing older is distinctively contested territory at this point in global social history which, as this collection shows, makes it particularly fertile ground for culturally informed sociological enquiry.
Mike Hepworth
Department of Sociology
University of Aberdeen
http://www.cjsonline.ca/reviews/culturalaging.html
February 2006
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