This provocative, intellectually charged treatise serves as a concise introduction to emancipatory gerontology, examining multiple dimensions of persistent and hotly debated topics around aging, the life course, the roles of power, politics and partisanship, culture, economics, and communications. Critical perspectives are presented as definitions for reader understanding, with links to concepts of identity, knowledge construction, social networks, social movements, and inequalities. With today’s intensifying concentration of wealth and corporatization, precarity is the fate for growing numbers of the world’s population. Intersectionality as an analytic concept offers a new appreciation of how social advantage and disadvantage accumulate, and how constructions of race, ethnicity, class, ability, and gender influence aging. The book’s entries offer a bibliographic compendium, crediting the salience of early pioneering theorists and locating these within the cutting-edge of research (social, behavioral, policy, and gene–environment sciences) that currently advances our understandings of human development, trauma, and resilience. Accompanying these foundations are theories of resistance for advancing human rights and the dignity of marginalized populations.

The challenge of population aging requires innovative approaches to meet the needs of increasing numbers of older people. Emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as pervasive computing and ambient assistive technology, have considerable potential for enhancing the quality of life of many older people by providing additional safety and security while also supporting mobility, independent living, and social participation. The proposed book will be a landmark publication in the area of technology and aging that will serve as a statement of the current state-of-the-art and as a pointer to directions for future research and emerging technologies, products, and services.

This refreshing book uses broad political and moral economy perspectives to explore the intersections of race, class, gender and aging and how these help determine the experience of aging and growing old. The twenty chapter volume includes new contributions by many of the top names in critical gerontology. Both political and economic factors, and those shared norms about fairness and obligation that help shape our aging policies, are examined in relation to a wide range of contemporary issues in gerontology.

This book weaves all of these factors together to engage in and promote medical, biomedical and psychosocial interventions, including lifestyle changes, for healthier aging outcomes. The text begins with an introduction to age-related changes that increase in disease and disability commonly associated with old age. Written by experts in healthy aging, the text approaches the principles of disease and disability prevention via specific health issues. Each chapter highlights the challenge of not just increasing life expectancy but also deceasing disease burden and disability in old age. The text then shifts into the whole-person implications for clinicians working with older patients, including the social and cultural considerations that are necessary for improved outcomes as Baby Boomers age and healthcare systems worldwide adjust. Healthy Aging is an important resource for those working with older patients, including geriatricians, family medicine physicians, nurses, gerontologists, students, public health administrators, and all other medical professionals.