University of Reading

feature of the Annual Conference of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) are the sessions dedicated to the presentation of prizes to members for a variety of achievements that include distinguished contributions either to the Society or to specific fields of study.

In 2007 the GSA established a Social Gerontology Award competition sponsored by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, to encourage and promote theoretical contributions to the study of ageing. Entrants are asked to submit unpublished papers to this competition that demonstrate the significance of theory in their work.

There was a wide response to the call with papers being submitted from North America, Europe and Japan. Two UK based researchers Paul Higgs (Reader at University College London) and Chris Gilleard (Hon Fellow at University College London) were nominated as finalists for their paper entitled ‘Ageing without agency: theorizing the fourth age’ . This is a great privilege, and whilst Paul and Chris did not receive the first prize, they were invited to present their paper alongside the other finalists and received a leather award for their achievement. The editorial team from Generations Review would also like to offer their congratulations to Paul and Chris and recognize their achievement.

All of us who attended the award seminar at the 2007 GSA conference were impressed by the paper written by Paul and Chris, a copy of the abstract is reproduced below, and we look forward to reading the full written paper in The Gerontologist in 2008.

Abstract:

‘Ageing without agency: theorizing the fourth age’

Chris Gilleard and Paul Higgs

This paper examines the conceptual value of positing a ‘fourth age’ within the terminology of social gerontology. It does so as a way of understanding the fragmentation of the category of ‘old age’ in contemporary society and of the concomitant difficulties in studying it.

The authors outline a brief history of the marginalization of old age from the beginnings of modern society to the more recent intensification of mental and physical disability seen among those placed in long term care institutions. The ‘fourth age’ is better understood as referring to this transformation. Defined against the transformations of later life seen in North America and Europe, the nursing home and its discourses seem to threaten the exercise of choice and agency that has characterized the ‘third age'. In so doing ‘old age’ is fragmented and distorted by the forces playing on it. This effect is likened to the impact of a ‘black hole’ distorting the gravitational field of the space surrounding it and only being observable though its traces. This paper concludes that the study of the fourth age might therefore best be undertaken by examining not the experience itself but by indirectly observing its impact upon the practices and discourses that surround it and which orientate themselves to it.