Abstract
Margaret Morganroth Gullette has written a compelling manifesto that can enable social workers and others to recognize and challenge pervasive individual and institutional ageism. As a cultural critic in age studies, the author has immersed herself in knowledge within a wide range of academic disciplines and the arts with the goal of addressing neglected life course intersections. In her resounding indictment of ageism, Morganroth Gullette describes “old age” as a great demotion and considers age studies to be visionary and essential. As an age critic, the author attempts to right the wrongs of ageism. Morganroth Gullette considers opposition to ageism to be a cause in which individuals and groups opposed to ageism explain the ways that people are aged by culture, identify the persons who are most vulnerable, and develop approaches for eliminating ageism. Advocating for responses to ageism that go beyond arguing for individuality, she disaggregates the age class by focusing on diverse real and fictional older individuals with varied experiences.
Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People provides knowledge that is consistent with the social work profession’s commitment to social justice. The information and insights are useful for social workers in direct practice, education, research, administration, and policy practice who must become sensitized to the pervasiveness of ageism and its effects on people of all ages. Consistent with Morganroth Gullette’s commitment to anti-ageism education, social work educators must commit to self-awareness and knowledge regarding ageism and model best practices. Morganroth Gullette has found that students who want to reject ageist hate speech may be too misinformed and unclear about their beliefs to do this. Social workers have power and authority to work to change this lack of insight.
In this book, Morganroth Gullette merges the micro and macro in “Five Special Sessions” that provide detailed analyses of socially influential practices in portrait photography, educational institutions, agricultural work, uses of common perceptions of dementia, and issues related to caregiving and suicide and euthanasia. The author emphasizes that distresses and threats from ageism imposed in “Wars against the Old” emanate from broad sources, including Silicon Valley, television, films, magazines, and the internet. As a cultural critic practicing intersectionality, when she reads or hears anything, she asks whether age has anything to do with this. Morganroth Gullette has concluded that the real question is “What does ageism have to do with it?” just as she would ask whether sexism, racism, or ableism has anything to do with this. Readers are implored to ask this question and become activists.
Consistent with the strength perspective in social work, Morganroth Gullette writes that while she has learned about hardships experienced by older adults and their families, she has learned to respect their human gifts and the moral beauty of justified anger. The author writes that most of the people about whom she has written deserve allies and champions and that anti-ageism can be both a conviction and a feeling. Morganroth Gullette credits emotional intelligence with the potential to help people of all ages who learn about ageism “to reject the charges of inferiority accepted by the Oppressor Within. Moral imagination can replace the blinkered creed of the street, item by item” (p. 19). Consistent with social work’s support for social justice, the author passionately advocates for implementation of counter-ageism actions by individuals and institutions and offers steps out of subordination. Current realities require “masses of radical anti-ageists who dismantle the collusive habits of thinking of aging as a disease or solely a natural process or a fault” (p. 19). Morganroth Gullette emphasizes that ageism may be “the great underestimated evil of our time” and decrees “Blame ageism, not aging. That is a slogan that marchers might wear proudly into the street. It asserts that our troubles and traumas matter and that their causes can be addressed” (p. 19).
Morganroth Gullette’s delineation of causes, affects, and effects of traumas related to ageist attitudes and behaviors reverberates resoundingly throughout the book. The author offers searing images of ageism across the globe historically and is a powerful advocate for self-awareness and education about the realities of ageism. The facts and images presented are powerful and disturbing. Emphasizing the power of pervasive stereotypes about aging and dementia that affect the lives of so many individuals, she documents the crimes of perpetrators of genocide and the processes through which their attorneys delay their trials indefinitely through the defense of inability to stand trial due to dementia.
Relevant theoretical perspectives are identified in Morganroth Gullette’s consideration of the traumatic effects of ageism. The author writes that trauma theory needs to take the leap to incorporate consciousness of ageism, incorporating images of damages of ageism. This can result in observation of damages that are often kept invisible. Consistent with social work’s emphasis on client-centered practice, Morganroth Gullette writes that it is important to be informed by feminist theory’s focus on broadening the experiences considered traumatic, that what is “deemed traumatic” should be determined “by the target rather than an observer” (p. 174).
Morganroth Gullette emphasizes the traumatic effects of ageism to an extent that this reviewer had not read previously in published works in social work and other fields. The author writes that ageism and age-related shaming may not usually be understood as trauma-inducing because its “darkest effects and affects” have not been considered by scholars (p. 174). In this practice field, social workers have opportunities to glean self-awareness, knowledge, understanding, and empathy directly from their work with older adults. Through these opportunities, social workers can learn directly from older adults about the traumatic effects of ageism and are in ideal positions to learn from clients to develop best practices for anti-ageism interventions on multiple levels. As educators, social workers need to follow Morganroth Gullette’s recommendation to integrate critical analysis of age into courses, and this must include fieldwork education.
