Hans-Werner Wahl, Clemens Tesch-Romer and Andreas Hoff (eds.) (2007). New Dynamics in Old Age: Individual, Environmental and Societal Perspectives. New York: Baywood Publishing Co., 400 pp. ISBN 0-89503-322-4 (hpk)

Abstract

New Dynamics in Old Age represents an outstanding edited collection of scholarship on aging for the twenty-first century. The key aim is to critically examine changes that have affected aging since the Second World War while looking ahead to the changes on the horizon in terms of older people’s everyday lives and policies pertaining to older people. A key thesis is that the post-war consensus of welfare policies supporting older people has been broken down by profound societal changes, which through globalisation have affected all western societies to different degrees. The focus is on continuity and change related to aging both at an individual level and as a social process. This theoretically sophisticated set of essays provides evidence that the very concept of aging has taken on a completely new form over recent decades. A key thread is to examine the dynamics of societal discourses about aging, for example relating to older people as a “burden” and “successful aging”, “new aging” and “new agers”. The editors have assembled 20 chapters by a galaxy of leading scholars and researchers within the field of aging from the US and northwest Europe. The focus is primarily western research on aging, drawing on disciplines from across social gerontology, including from sociology, social psychology, and social policy. The introductory section includes a notable chapter by Kenneth Manton and XiLuang Gu on changes in physical and mental functioning in old age, illustrating the major reduc