Deadline for submissions: June 1, 2013
This issue will focus on the aging body not only in terms of biophysical processes of maturation, but also in terms of the aging body’s cultural elaboration, its articulations with other “bodies,” such as Lock and Scheper-Hughes’ formulation of the social and political “body,” and the representation and manipulation of the “old body” through images, technologies, rituals, policies, movements and health practices. We are interested not only in articles that challenge notions of the older body as merely frail or decrepit, but also articles that push conceptual and methodological boundaries of “the body” in its social and cultural contexts. As with many accepted theories in anthropology, theories of the body and embodiment are often framed with an implicit body in mind, and while this implicit body has been usefully critiqued from the perspective of gender, queer,and disability studies, anthropologists studying old age and aging are still developing their own distinct voice in this conversation. This issue of AAQ will draw out the diversity of approaches to the aging body,the challenges they bring to anthropological theories of the body, and the unique contributions of the anthropology of aging to this field.
Topics might include:
- The ways the aging body is (mis)recognized through demographic and statistical discourse
- The use of the aging body as a form of resistance to the hegemony of youth
- Aging bodies as erotic bodies
- Aging bodies as a challenge to notions of biopolitics
- Depictions of the aging body vs. other bodies in popular media and/or artistic works
- Cosmetics and pharmaceutical re-shaping of the aging body
- Caring for the body as caring for the self
- Bodily adornment and beautification
- Painand the body in old age
- Discourses and institutions that deindividuate or depersonalize the body
- Body, memory, and aging in place
- Gender and the aging body
Please contact Jason Danely if you are interested in submitting an article for this issue: jdanely@ric.edu
