Abstract
This paper is concerned with the issue of ageism and its salience in current debates about the COVID-19 pandemic. In it, we address the question of how best to interpret the impact that the pandemic has had on the older population. While many feel angry at what they see as discriminatory lock-down practices confining older people to their homes, others are equally concerned by the failure of state responses to protect and preserve the health of older people, especially those receiving long-term care. This contrast in framing ageist responses to the pandemic, we suggest, arises from differing social representations of later life, reflecting the selective foregrounding of third versus fourth age imaginaries. Recognising the tension between social and biological parameters of ageing and its social categorisations, we suggest, may offer a more measured, as well as a less discriminatory, approach to addressing the selective use of chronological age as a line of demarcation within society.
Highlights
In a paper on ageism published in 2020, we argued that the term ageism has become a concept that has been extended too far, and used so broadly that it fails to specify exactly what it is that is being discussed [1]
Whether presented as the articulation of a set of beliefs serving the interests of a particular group, or as representing a particular logic underlying an external structural process within society, this all-encompassing, essentialisation of ageism covers up too many theoretical gaps
To mark off that growing segment of the older population aged over 85 whose health is deemed a key factor in their experience of ageing [14]. While these conceptualisations of a ‘real’ old age—whether framed as a fourth age or the oldest old—diverge on what are its most salient features, they share a common position in seeking some line of distinction in the diversity of later life
Summary
Whether presented as the articulation of a set of beliefs serving the interests of a particular group, or as representing a particular logic underlying an external structural process within society, this all-encompassing, essentialisation of ageism covers up too many theoretical gaps We argued, it fails to provide a useful analytical framework for understanding the diverse social space that older people occupy in society. To mark off that growing segment of the older population aged over 85 whose health is deemed a key factor in their experience of ageing [14] While these conceptualisations of a ‘real’ old age—whether framed as a fourth age or the oldest old—diverge on what are its most salient features, they share a common position in seeking some line of distinction in the diversity of later life.
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