Ed. Ulla Kriebernegg, Roberta Maierhofer, and Heidrun Mörtl

Since antiquity the concept of the ages of life has been related to changing iconographies and representations. These range from Ptolemy's cosmology of the seven ages of life and Galenic medicine's four elements to the ladder of years, which has identified the ages of life with social roles during the eighteenth century. In contemporary Western societies the ages of life have, on the one hand, been redefined as the biography of the individual subject. On the other hand, the category of “youth” has continually been displaced toward the end of the life course, turning living and aging into apparently conflicting processes.

The binary construction of “young” and “old”, which is based on a biogerontological model of aging as decline, can be redefined as the ambiguity of aging from a cultural studies perspective. This cultural ambiguity of aging enables an analysis of the social functions of images of aging in order to provide a basis for interdisciplinary exchange on gerontological knowledge. Such forms of analysis make visible the contradictions between images of positive or “successful aging” in marketing, which target the affluent and healthy 'young old' and may serve as meaningful and empowering for those addressed, while they can also exclude and stigmatize those of the 'oldest old' who face the realities of illness in old age. By contrast, it is also possible to deconstruct apparently negative images of old age as physical decrepitude and disease by focusing on the possibilities of appreciating life even in the oldest age as a form of “successful frailty”.

The chapters in this yearbook conceive the relationship between living and aging as a productive antagonism, which focuses on the interplay between continuity and change as a marker of life course identity. Aging and growing older are processes which cannot be reduced to the chronology of years but which are shaped by the individual's interaction with the changing circumstances of life. To the degree that it enables agency, living and aging make possible the subversive deconstruction of normative age concepts.

Please submit your abstract (English or German) of max. 500 words and your CV by April 30, 2011.