CRITICAL AND CULTURAL GERONTOLOGY

摘要

My presentation is based on my new book, Old Age, New Science: Gerontologists and Their Biosocial Visions, 1900–1960 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016). This book offers a novel interpretation of gerontology’s origins, after W. Andrew Achenbaum’s pioneering monograph, Crossing Frontiers (1995). I argue that what I call the “biosocial visions” profoundly shaped the structure of American and British gerontology in their early years as well as early gerontologists’ effort for public engagement, which left persistent problems regarding gender, race, and class. While Achenbaum concentrated on the history of social gerontology, I focus on biological and medical scientists in the first half of the twentieth century, because they and their visions constructed gerontology as a multidisciplinary science. I show how their biomedical research fostered their individualistic discourse of seniors’ self-help based on scientific experts’ advice as well as their rhetorical resources for cooperating with social gerontologists. I also analyze the notion of “scientific rigor,” which Achenbaum took for granted in his historical study of biogerontologists, such as Nathan Shock. In my presentation, I deal with scientific rigor as a contentious discursive strategy subject to constant negotiations. While these negotiations were instrumental in gerontology’s emergence as a respected science in America, the situation was different in Britain, where institutionalized public welfare and national health insurance was considered prior to scientific studies of aging, especially during the post-Second World War efforts for promoting a welfare state. This resulted in the underdevelopment of gerontology in Britain, while seniors there enjoyed a better provision of national insurance and pension, which American gerontologists deeply suspected with their individualist ideal of self-help.