Challenging Gerontology’s Empirical Molehills

Abstract

Gerontology and theory have long been intellectually separate, with empirical studies dominant. Marrying Foucauldian theory, as Powell proposes, with gerontology is clever, timely and potentially fruitful for policy, practice and research. Although Foucault had little to say about age, his insights on power and on bodies are profoundly relevant to the process of ageing. Powell’s proposed application of a Foucauldian toolkit to caring for older people, enables the opening of insights into both the cared for and the carers, the latter of whom are differentially disadvantaged as well by gender, ethnicity, class and often immigration status. Viewed through Foucault’s concept of power, ageing population is observed as a fiction, justifying all manner of policy panics and woes that may not exist as actual challenges. Foucault’s concepts of power, identity, regulation, resistance and the bodily as socially shaped, have transformed sociology. A similar transformation of gerontology would be welcome.