Biopolíticas de la vejez – Cómo el conocimiento sobre el envejecimiento forma políticas de envejecimiento activo

El envejecimiento de la población proporciona nuevos desafíos sociales que no han sido percibidos hasta el momento. Con frecuencia, el discurso sobre el envejecimiento sitúa a la abundante población que se encuentra en el periodo de vejez como potencialmente catastrófica para la cohesión y la economía de las sociedades. Este hecho requiere de técnicas biopolíticas que cambian la forma en la que se vive la vejez y la percepción que se tiene del ciclo vital. En la primera parte del artículo, se expone cómo el ámbito del envejecimiento y de la vejez se ha ido desarrollando a lo largo del siglo XX y se explora cómo, a partir de la segunda mitad de siglo, distintas disciplinas que investigan el envejecimiento empezaron a entenderlo de una forma más maleable y evitable de cómo se había pensado hasta la fecha. Este periodo coincidió con multitud de cambios demográficos, en los que ocurre que la gente empieza a vivir más tiempo durante este periodo de vejez y lo hace de una forma más activa y sana. La segunda parte, se refiere a las políticas de envejecimiento activo formadas en torno al cambio de milenio, que se fundamentan en investigaciones sobre el envejecimiento que principalmente sitúan la actividad como rejuvenecedora. Se muestra también cómo las políticas de la Unión Europea (UE) y de la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) difieren en materia de envejecimiento activo, en su composición y en cuanto a las teorías sobre envejecimiento en las que se apoyan, y se ilustra acerca de cómo potencialmente estas políticas deshacen la vejez y cuestionan de forma radical lo que significa ser mayor

Insulin som trickster: Grænsearbejde i hverdagen med type 2 diabetes

The article focuses on the role of insulin in the everyday life of the type 2 diabetic. The diagnosis of type 2 diabetes is not merely the establishment of a chronic disease, it also alters the patient’s conception of his own body and his everyday life. For many patients, the diagnosis is their first encounter with the interiors of their bodies. It is attempted to regulate the diabetes by a number of practices; in the article, this is viewed as a bio-medical disciplinization, which deals with the body and life as objects. The biomedicine conquers the diabetic body and becomes part of the diabetic’s everyday life. Thereby, the body is problematized as a natural and delimited category. The limits of the body are broken down by the recurring penetration of the skin, when the blood sugar is measured or the insulin injected. Insulin is analysed as a trickster figure which exerts a boundary work on the body, plays with its categories and inverts the relations between poison and medicine, freedom and constraint, artificiality and naturalness, security and risk. Everyday life is changed and future put into perspective by the trickster, which at the same time makes both everyday life and the future possible by its blood sugar reducing properties

Retirement trajectories in the 21st century: A scoping review of the changing nature of retirement in Europe

There are important transformations taking place regarding the ways to transition from work-life to retirement. The timing and pathways are changing and many individuals undergo long periods of being in-between working and retirement life. Yet, our cultural understandings of retirement tend to maintain a clear distinction between pre- and post-retirement life. While the changes in retirement trajectories is not new, the trend seems to have accelerated in recent decades. We focus on what is known from the literature about the tendencies in alternative retirement trajectories of healthy seniors in Europe since 2000. We review some conceptual and political transitions in the societal understandings of retirement, followed by a scoping review in three sections: 1) Employment after retirement, 2) Self-employment, and 3) Unretirement. We conclude that while 21st century retirement trajectories are complex and understudied, there are some clear tendencies regarding who engages in such practices and why

From quantified to qualculated age: the health pragmatics of biological age measurement

There is growing interest, within the social sciences, in understanding self‐quantification and how it affects health practices in contemporary society. There is, however, less research on how ageing and health measurement relate, even though this relationship has become more pertinent with the growing availability of services and devices offering biological, personalised age measurements, from simple online questionnaires to telomere length quantification. Little is known about who uses these devices, why they use them and the socio‐technical implications of such uses. To explore these issues, we conducted semi‐structured interviews and focus groups with users of measurements of biological age (BA) in Denmark. We found that participants engage with the measurements with a degree of scepticism regarding their technical validity, reliability and sensitivity. Rather than seeking an exact biological quantification, participants use measurements as a pragmatic, rough indication of individual health. We develop a conceptual model to understand participants’ engagement with BA measurements, which suggests that, instead of a substitution of chronological age for BA, users gauge the difference between the two to qualify their present and future individual trajectory in a lay model of the relationship between functional capacity and age

Ældres hverdagspraksisser og aldringspolitik. Om synkroniseringsarbejdet imellem hverdag og politik

Ældres hverdagspraksisser fremtræder ofte som problemer, som aldringspolitik- ken søger at løse. Forfatterne diskuterer forskellige etnologiske tilgange til hver- dagen, og præsenterer forholdet imellem hverdagspraksisser og politiske praksis- ser som et kontinuerligt synkroniseringsarbejde. Dette bruges til at vise, hvordan problemer som afhængighed, forfald, ensomhed og passivitet bliver problemati- seret på bestemte måder i diskursen om aktiv aldring, og hvordan problemerne tager sig ud for de ældre, set fra et hverdagslivsperspektiv. Artiklen er baseret på et etnografisk feltarbejde på to aktivitetscentre