Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
The binary old age and sexuality is still taboo in contemporary society, despite the exponential ageing of the population. Age Critics such as Lynne Segal and Kathleen Woodward have argued that the negative cultural conceptions attached to the ageing body are the ones that relate old age to a lack of desire. In this sense, fiction is a powerful media that allows the reader to go into the deeper recesses of protagonists in their old age and witness the culturally-based contradictions which seem to limit desire and sexuality to youth and youthful appearance. By analysing two novels and a short story of well-known contemporary British writers, this chapter aims to discern the vicissitudes of sexuality and ageing as portrayed in these fictional texts..
While South Africa is a world leader in terms of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) rights, the disjuncture between policy and practice—especially for more invisible cohorts within LGBTI communities—means that the formal rights that exist are often not translated into practice. There is no research to date in South Africa on sexual and gender minority ageing and LGBTI elders remain almost entirely invisible in terms of policy and public service provision. The chapter focuses on African perspectives on ageing and presents the narrative account of an older lesbian couple. Findings are that the experiences of ageing for African LGBTI elders are necessarily inflected through community norms and through power, privilege and oppression. Recommendations include the capacitation of home based support services to engage the needs of LGBTI elders and the inclusion of sexual and gender diversity in policy and approaches to the care of older people
The chapter analyses barriers that older people living in long term care institutions face to express their sexual interest. It highlights how their health profile (diseases, medications) and generational experiences of such populations hinder sexual expression in institutions and discusses the key role of attitudes (staff, residents and family attitudes) and models of care. The chapter also reviews how different forms of sexual behaviour have particular challenges, and the special difficulties that certain populations (e.g. people with dementia or non-heterosexual older people) may have to continue being sexually active when living in a long-term care institution. Finally, the chapter considers the practical implications of research in this area for favouring sexual expression and guaranteeing the sexual rights of older people living in residential settings
This chapter explores the intersections of gender, sexuality and age through transgender aging. Using empirical work from both Swedish and U.S. contexts, it examines how heteronormative expectations for human lives are challenged by the identities, lived experiences and life choices of older transgender adults. Further, the chapter draws upon life course and queer perspectives to analyse the role of community-level organizing and resistance as pathways to wellness in later life for transgender people
This chapter reviews the contributions of the book’s research to critical ageing studies, along with identifying key questions for further research.
The integration of mechanical and digital technology (e.g., back-up cameras) into the automobile is changing the experience of driving. This chapter examines the “fit” between the ageing body with ‘low-tech’ auto-biographies and the technological vehicle. The chapter begins with an outline of how the dominant ‘human factors’ approach examines older-driver car interaction and identify the shortcomings of this approach. To address these limitations, the chapter adopts a critical, phenomenological, and embodied approach and ethnographic methods that reveal everyday descriptions of driving. This demonstrates a focus on corporeality provides the means to reveal how technology can change ‘inner’ driving experience at sensory, affective, and habitual levels, and inspire particular bodily and cognitive responses as part of the process of adaptability. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how attention to the ageing body can improve human factors research on older driver-car interaction and add to the current sociological discussions on everyday life.
Applying interdisciplinary perspectives about everyday life to vital issues in the lives of older people, this book maps together the often taken-for-granted aspects of what it means to age in an ageist society.
Part of the Ageing in a Global Context series, the two parts address the materialities and the embodiments of everyday life respectively. Topics covered include household possessions, public and private spaces, older drivers, media representations, dementia care, health-tracking, dress and sexuality. This focus on micro-sociological conditions allows us to rethink key questions which have shaped debates in the social aspects of ageing.
International contributions, including from the UK, USA, Sweden and Canada, provide a critical guide to inform thinking and planning our ageing futures.
This chapter examines how Canadian print media portrays online dating in later life, based on data from 144 articles published between 2009 and 2011. Results indicate that online dating extends romantic lives and catalyzes successful aging, while revealing that older persons are no longer competitive in the conventional romantic ‘market.’ Goffman’s concepts around the management of ‘spoiled identity’ and ‘stigma’ are particularly useful in this chapter’s portrayal of online dating as evidence that older adults’ success and failure at later life romance reflect wider debates about the nature of ‘normal’ aging versus idealized ‘successful’ aging on an everyday level. Thus, examples are provided of individuals whose behavior and attitudes successfully refuted and subverted the stereotypes about later life both as a de-sexualized zone and a negotiated one whereby aging-related stigma are brought to the ‘front-stage’ of public discourse while exposing the ‘back-stage’ processes and practices of growing older.
This chapter explores touch as an essential aspect of ageing embodiment, which also has a significant impact on experiences of gendered and sexual embodiment in later life. Drawing on an empirical study with older Swedish men who were both interviewed and asked to write ‘body diaries’ about their everyday embodiment, the research argues that their narratives of touch constitute alternative representations of both male sexuality and ageing embodiment as phallic discourses inevitably signifying decline and decay. In recent years, the increasing emphases of sexuality as vital to the accomplishment of successful ageing often overlook the more complex nuances of older people’s experiences of sexuality and intimacy, which may involve loss, pain and illness as well as unbounded joys. In contrast, this chapter concludes that a turn to touch directs us to the simultaneous vulnerability and potential for pleasure and excitation in ageing embodiment.
