As the 'grey market' perpetuates the quest for eternal youth, the biological realities of deep old age are increasingly denied. Ageing and Popular Culture traces the historical emergence of stereotypes of retirement and documents their recent demise, arguing that although modernisation, marginalisation, and medicalisation created rigid age classifications, the rise of consumer culture has coincided with a postmodern broadening of options for those in the Third Age. With an adroit use of photographs and other visual sources, Andrew Blaikie demonstrates that an expanded leisure phase is breaking down barriers between mid and later life. At the same time, 'positive ageing' also creates new imperatives and new norms with attendant forms of deviance. While babyboomers may anticipate a fulfilling retirement, none relish decline. Has deep old age replaced death as the taboo subject of the late twentieth century? If so, what might be the consequences?
Andrew Blaikie explores how different, but connected, ways of seeing infuse relationships between place and belonging. He argues that all memories, whether fleeting glimpses or elaborate narratives, i
`A tour de force by Andrew Blaikie, who tells us that the Scots didn't invent the modern world; we only imagined it. And in so doing, we have become creatures of those images.' David McCrone, Universi
