Aging & Social Policy: A Foucauldian Excursion

This book focuses on five themes that link to a compelling argument in the study of ageing and social policy. Firstly, there is a policy context of neo-liberal social policy and implications for older people which is presented, as well as the idea that social construction of ageing focuses on ‘ageing body’ and its discursive construction by medical and cultural representations. Additional topics discussed include the history of the present develops ideas and discourses of social welfare and ageing; surveillance, power/knowledge and policing of subjects focused on care management and dystopian features of ‘care’ with related issues of ‘elder abuse’ and ‘institutional abuse’. Reconstructing ageing looks at rethinking power relations and technologies of self in how subjects of knowledge can ‘resist’ medical discourses and professional power.