Challenging ‘New Ageisms’ in the Social Care Debate

Dr. Gemma M. Carney (QUB)Lecturer in Social Policy, ARK Ageing programme,

School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Queen’s University Belfast.

• Focus of Today’s Talk: – The demographic time bomb hypothesis & its critics– Context of austerity politics and neo-liberal ideology.– Linking ‘ageing as a problem’ to the presence of

endemic ageism (the elderly mystique)– Examples of how ageism operates from media

representations of health and social care in UK.

• Human life expectancy has increased by over 30 years in the last century.

• Proportion of the global population aged over 65 will reach 22% by 2050.

• Scientists have scrambled to understand the implications of ageing.

• The hypothesis under-pinning the paper is simple: The challenge for ageing societies is not the average age of a given population but, rather, how age is used to structure economic, social and political life.

• Search of web of science June 23, 2015 for ageing population *impact: – 36,813 results, primarily focused on documenting

decline and demise across four broad areas: • the pathology of ageing (biomedical); • the cost of pensions and healthcare (economics); • the danger of a gerontocracy (politics); • the inevitability of loneliness and social isolation

(sociology).

• Ageism was first coined by geriatric physician Robert Butler: – ‘a process of systematic stereotyping of and

discrimination against people because they are old, just as racism and sexism accomplish this with skin colour and gender. Old people are categorized as senile, rigid in thought and manner, old-fashioned in morality and skills’ (Butler, 1975: 12).

• Thomas Cole (1992: xx):

‘Our culture is not much interested in why we grow old, how we ought to grow old, or what it means to grow old. Like other aspects of our biological and social existence, aging has been brought under the dominion of scientific management, which is primarily interested in how we age in order to explain and control the aging process.’

• What fuels fears of a ‘demographic time bomb’?– Pace of population ageing– Intensification of causative factors

• Life expectancy• Fertility

• Impact of austerity politics following the financial crisis of 2008 (TINA):

‘Suddenly, ‘population ageing’ – often viewed as a mixed blessing by western governments has assumed every more negative connotations.’

(Phillipson, 2013, p. 1)

• Phillipson identifies how ageing is conflated with issues arising as a result of 2008 crisis:

– ‘Rising tide’ of elderly linked to difficulties in reaching fiscal stability;

– Ageing linked to broader crisis for the welfare state and ‘increased emphasis on private (individual) rather than public (collective) provision (Judt, 2010)’ (Phillipson, 2015: 81).

Walker identifies that trend as The New Ageism:

‘Older people are being transferred from the safe political haven of the deserving to the radically more exposed position of being one of the major threats to

Britain’s economic future.’

(Walker, 2012, p. 812)

Contributions of people aged 60+, 2012-2062

Source: COPNI (2014) Appreciating Age: Valuing the positive contributions made by older people in Northern Ireland

• Implications of the current dominant approaches to understanding ageing:

1. Failure to notice or assess the potential of an ageing population (Phillipson, 2015)

2. Failure to consider possible influence of social norms about ageing on scientific and societal perceptions of what ageing means.

• What is the role of ageism in dictating how social policies distribute resources?

• How is biological ageing socially constructed, in a manner which makes low standards in care homes the norm?

• How might macro interpretations of ageing as an epidemic, a time bomb or a ‘care crisis’ be linked to ageism at individual and societal levels?

Critical Gerontology approach: •Begins with the premise that biological ageing, particularly the visible signs of biological ageing, are used to socially construct certain statuses on people as they age (Butler, 1975; Phillipson, 2013).

•Ageism can be internalised, eventually impacting on the capacity of older people to speak for themselves (Spicker, 2000; Brannelly, 2011).

Ageing as Decline is Socially Constructed•Townsend (1957; 1981; 2006) used empirical evidence to demonstrate that much of the dependency of older people is the result of ill designed social policy rather than biological decline.

•Gullette (1997) exposed ageing is the United States as a ‘culturally constructed disease.’

•Cohen (1987) The elderly mystique, operates like Friedan’s ‘Feminine Mystique’

The ‘Elderly’ Mystique•Cohen’s (1987) identified the concept of ‘The Elderly Mystique’ as an emerging ‘awareness of obsolescence’ felt most keenly by older people with disabling conditions.

•Argues that ageism, like sexism is politically and culturally embedded.

• Cohen cites Rosenfelt’s (1965 cited in Cohen, 1988: 24) articulation of the impact of such gerontophobia on one’s self-perception and social status with advancing years: – ‘the participant in the elderly mystique knows society

finds it hard to accept, let alone forgive, his existence. An unsubtle attitude of punishment and retaliation is endemic in modern life. The old person expects derogation in explicit terms.’

• Ageism in the social care debate in Britain (macro-level)?– ‘crisis of care in England’– ‘teetering on the brink of collapse’ – Discussion is almost exclusively concerned with cost

of care and impact on adult children of older care recipients

– Even today’s Alzheimer’s Society report states that older people with dementia are in need.

Evidence of the elderly mystique at play (individual level): •Clarke (2006: 271): ‘no profiles of individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease from their own perspective.’•Only the latter stages of a slow, degenerative disease are described, and always in sensationalist, fear inducing language of demise and decline.’ •Clark (2006: 274) notes the absence of a social context for the disease located in ‘language, gender, culture, ethnicity and other components of the social structure and culture.’