This book draws together key publications from the latter part of the 20th century to the present, exploring the political economy of ageing and later life. An introduction highlights the significance of these past papers for the development of the political economy approach.
It is logically organised into four core topic areas: ‘Breaking New Ground’, ‘Policy, Practice and Critical Gerontology’, ‘Feminist Perspectives' and ‘International Perspectives'. As the title suggests, ‘Breaking New Ground’ provides background reading to how the political economy approach came about, indicating how it diverged from theories that focused on inequality caused by chronological ageing, to highlighting the implications of social and economic structures for inequality in older age. Townsend's classic paper, ‘The Structured Dependency of the Elderly: A Creation of Social Policy in the Twentieth Century’ (Chapter 1), is one example of this.
A key strength of the book is highlighting the diversity present amongst the ageing population, which has been taken into greater consideration by social gerontologists over time. Part II, ‘Policy, Practice and Critical Gerontology’, tracks important developments in the application of political economy to ageing. The book successfully achieves its central purpose, of highlighting how the political economy approach has transformed over time, moving from considering social class towards highlighting older age in relation to gender and ethnicity. Part III, ‘Feminist Perspectives', reveals how older women have been excluded from ageing research; Cherry Russell's paper (Chapter 22), ‘Ageing as a Feminist Issue’, explores the reasons behind this exclusion.
The book then moves on to a brief examination of ‘International Perspectives', including work by Walker, Walker and Deacon, and Estes and Phillipson from the early 1990s to 2000s, highlighting the importance of having a social policy response to globalisation rather than focusing purely on economic policy. Moreover, Estes and Phillipson promote the inclusion of older people's voices in social policy decisions (Chapter 30).
In this book, the editors address the core aim of understanding ‘what has the political economy approach brought to age and ageing’. Alongside this, they want to encourage the use and development of this approach in order to understand new challenges related to ageing (p. xv). One of the key successes of the book is that it reveals the importance of the political economy perspective at a time when key policy decisions are being made about the ageing population which may see greater challenge to equal access in later life. For instance, it highlights how the political economy approach tackles intergenerational equity debates. Street and Quadango's paper on ‘The State, the Elderly, and the Intergenerational Contract: Towards a New Political Economy of Aging’ (Chapter 14) and Walker's paper on ‘The Economic “Burden” of Ageing and the Prospect of Intergenerational Conflict’ (Chapter 28) date from the early 1990s, and highlight the way in which the contract between generations has been challenged based on arguments of intergenerational inequality. Such intergenerational debates have resurfaced in the United Kingdom in recent years. The political economy approach draws us to the importance of considering intragenerational inequalities and the necessity of having sufficient support to prevent intergenerational conflict (Chapter 28).
The cost of the hardback book is quite significant; however, the content is valuable in its contribution to new developments in ageing research as well as tracking the development of social gerontology. There might have been a more detailed discussion of developments for ethnic minority groups. Many of the included publications were written by Walker: however, Tony Matby decided on whether the lead editors' papers would be included ‘as to avoid, but surely not escape entirely, the accusation that this is partly a vanity project’ (p. xxx).
This text would be very useful to researchers and students of the social sciences. Researchers in the field will likely be familiar with many of the well-known papers included in the publication: however, the authors take a refreshing historical perspective on them. Moreover, the book can usefully be used as a way to refer to individual papers or can be appreciated as a collection. It would also provide a good introduction for those unfamiliar with the political economy approach.
