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
This chapter aims specifically to describe what characterises the portion of the scholarship on the intersection of ethnicity/ race and ageing/ old age that focuses on health inequalities. This chapter brings attention to the fact that this literature regards ethnicity and race as crude proxies and fails therefore to acknowledge the complexity embedded in these social positions. The chapter brings attention to the main trends observed when reviewing the literature (i.e. that most studies come from North America and focus on a small number of ethnic minorities, most fail to address how ethnicity and race is made sense of in the studies, most are informed by the essentialist and/ or structuralist perspectives, and that most studies rely on studies that have not been designed to specifically explore the nexus in question). In doing so, this chapter shows what the perspectives that inform this literature mean not only for the themes that have received attention (i.e. general health/ physical functioning, disability and mobility/ disease-specific/ mental health/ cognitive functioning), but also for the ones that remain unexplored (such as, for example, the study of how perceived racism impacts the health of older ethnic minorities).
This chapter is the third and last chapter in the book that is based on the scoping review of scholarship on the intersection of ethnicity/ race and ageing/ old age. This chapter brings attention to social relations, social support/ help and caregiving (receiving), which is the third theme that has received the most attention when it comes to the scholarship in question. Just as it is the case with the two previous chapters, this chapter exposes the trends observed, and the ways in which ethnicity and race are made sense of in this literature. By bringing attention on the angles of investigation that this literature most often relies on (e.g. relying on others’ identification instead of own identification and the meanings attach to that), this chapter shows not only which topics have received attention, but also which ones remain unexplored.
This chapter discusses the array of obstacles to the advancement of scholarship on ethnicity/ race and ageing/ old age that the book has exposed through the scoping review performed. The chapter argues that in the imagination of the scholarship of ethnicity and old age as it stands today, ethnic and racial older minorities come from a limited number of socio-cultural contexts and backgrounds. The groups that have received attention are being studied because they are assumed to be not only different from but also disadvantaged when compared to their ethnic majority counterparts, whose ‘privileged race’ need not be interrogated. The imagination in question does not presume that ethnic and racial minorities can experience privilege and neither does it acknowledge that ethnic and racial majorities can oppress. In light of this (as well as other aspects), this chapter argues that the imagination of the scholarship in focus is content with shedding light on the inequalities that ethnic and racial minorities experience but lacks a commitment to combating the injustices that these groups are believed to face. Against this backdrop, this chapter urges scholars to re-think what it is we want to accomplish when we bring attention to the nexus of ethnicity, race and old age.
This chapter aims to introduce ethnicity scholars to the societal challenge that is population aging, and social gerontologists to the challenges posed by the globalisation of international migration, and bytransnationalism. As such, this chapter aims to give the audiences that this book addresses a common ground from which future dialogues can be set in motion. It is, after all, these societal challenges that are at the core of the growing interest on the intersection of ethnicity/ race and ageing/ old age. This chapter argues also that one of the reasons why we should engage in the imaginative phase of discovery that theorising entails is that greater diversity can now be found in the older segments of our population and the scholarship in focus in this book needs to become more ethnicity/ race-astute.
This book’s starting point is the notion of theorising and the fact that, because scholarship at the intersection of ethnicity, race and old age has stagnated, we are in dire need of inquiries that focus on the context of discovery. The author argues that our scholarly imagination about this intersection needs to be developed now that the globalisation of international migration and transnationalism have increased the ethno-cultural diversity of our ageing populations. Through a scoping review of the last twenty years of research and theunderstandings of ethnicity and race that informs it, the author shows that scholarship on ageing and old age do not resonate well with the latest advancements in ethnicity and race scholarship. The book introduces gerontologists to social scientific discussions about ethnicity and race, introduces international migration scholars to the implications that population ageing has for the life-course, gives both of these scholarly fields insight into what characterizes scholarship at the intersection of ethnicity/ race and old age, andproposes a new research agenda. By bringing attention to the topics that have received the most attention (i.e. health inequalities, health and social care, intergenerational relationships and caregiving), and the manner in which ethnicity/ race have been made sense of so far, the author identifies the obstacles that scholarship on ethnicity, race and old age faces, and proposes how we can address them in an ethnicity-astute and diversity-informed manner.
This book’s starting point is the notion of theorising and the fact that, because scholarship at the intersection of ethnicity, race and old age has stagnated, we are in dire need of inquiries that focus on the context of discovery. The author argues that our scholarly imagination about this intersection needs to be developed now that the globalisation of international migration and transnationalism have increased the ethno-cultural diversity of our ageing populations. Through a scoping review of the last twenty years of research and theunderstandings of ethnicity and race that informs it, the author shows that scholarship on ageing and old age do not resonate well with the latest advancements in ethnicity and race scholarship. The book introduces gerontologists to social scientific discussions about ethnicity and race, introduces international migration scholars to the implications that population ageing has for the life-course, gives both of these scholarly fields insight into what characterizes scholarship at the intersection of ethnicity/ race and old age, andproposes a new research agenda. By bringing attention to the topics that have received the most attention (i.e. health inequalities, health and social care, intergenerational relationships and caregiving), and the manner in which ethnicity/ race have been made sense of so far, the author identifies the obstacles that scholarship on ethnicity, race and old age faces, and proposes how we can address them in an ethnicity-astute and diversity-informed manner.
This chapter examines the intersection of ageing, gender, class and sexual identity, and highlights the significance of same-sexuality social groups for older lesbians and bisexual women. Interviews with 35 women aged between 57 and 73, discussed ‘coming out’ in the 1950s and 1960s, loneliness and isolation and the experience of attending affinity groups. Many participants were rendered ‘out of place’ by aspects of their social mobility, generation, gender and sexuality. The chapter draws on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘cleft habitus’ to consider the contradictions of these mobilities, suggesting that these women faced unprecedented and unique disjuncture between their original habitus and the new classed, sexual and gendered locations in which they finally ‘arrived’. The chapter looks at the potential of social groups to alleviate loneliness and isolation; for many, they are sites of resilience, helping to promote positive ageing for those who have faced marginalisation across their life course.
This chapter addresses the changing conception of menopause in philosophy and culture—a particularly fraught example of the intersection of ageing, gender and sexuality. It takes as its starting point the oblique but revealing representation of the 'turn of life' in the work of Virginia Woolf, looking at how the cultural history of the menopause offers a context for today's attitudes and practices. It also considers Germaine Greer’s heated critique of Simone de Beauvoir’s conception of menopause, in particular the gap between the political stance in The Second Sex and the capitulation in Beauvoir’s memoirs to society’s construction of a disempowered menopausal woman. The chapter goes on to reflect on the way that both Beauvoir and Greer, however, unwittingly echo discredited scientific theories about menopause as ‘deficiency’, and to think about how Woolf’s fiction might offer a more nuanced account of the gains as well as losses of female midlife.
