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Challenging Gerontology's Empirical Molehills: A Response to Powell
Susan A. McDaniel*
University of Utah, Salt Lake City
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: susan.mcdaniel{at}ipia.utah.edu.
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Abstract |
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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. Powells 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 Foucaults 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. Foucaults concepts of power, identity, regulation, resistance and the bodily as socially shaped, have transformed sociology. A similar transformation of gerontology would be welcome.
First published on April 6, 2009, doi:10.1177/0733464809333550
Journal of Applied Gerontology 2009;28:685.
A more recent version of this article appeared on December 1, 2009

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J. L. Powell
A Response to Castle, McDaniel, and Svihula
Journal of Applied Gerontology,
December 1, 2009;
28(6):
697 - 701.
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