The New Sociology of Ageing explores the challenges and opportunities
of ageing as a global force. Alongside globalisation, urbanisation, new
technology, climate change, and global pandemics, ageing is transforming
life in the twenty-first century.
Through the eyes of a young sociology student and her multigenerational
family, this book sets out a new sociological framework to interpret
ageing societies. It explores how the 'New Old' - the baby boomer
generation - might be mobilised as an agency of social change in
transforming later life. It proposes this generation as the
co-architects of a new intergenerational social contract for the era
ahead, rather than as the recipients of a post-war twentieth-century
social contract that society can no longer support. Taking Britain as a
case study and societies across the world as examples, Slattery explores
emerging revolutions in work and retirement, potential crises in
pensions, healthcare and housing, as well as transformations in family
life and in our attitudes to sex and death in later life.
This book provides a clear overview of the sociology of ageing. It
introduces students to demography as a sociological force of the future,
and to the perils and the promises of longevity as societies across the
world approach the Hundred-Year Life. This book will be of interest to
undergraduate students and early scholars in the social sciences,
particularly in sociology, gerontology, social policy, and public
health.
