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Ageism, Disability and Healthy Ageing as Stereotypizing Paradigms

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Opening up the Debate on the Aging Society

Part of the book series: International Perspectives on Aging ((Int. Perspect. Aging,volume 34))

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Abstract

This chapter raises and analyses the millenary tradition of ageism that still persisted in Western society. Fed by prejudices, myths and the plot of the social imaginary, the scientific approach of ageing is permanently delayed and postponed. The pandemic time coronavirus continues this path and is uses as a legitimiser of stigmatisation and confinement, perspectives that also respond to a perverse logic of scarcity, of what is left over, of what must be discarded, within an increasingly precarious and weak social fabric. So, as social imaginery, coronavirus poses challenges and problems to ageism through the re-emergence of the paradigm of decrepit ageing, vulnerable and inevitably facing death.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “Your minds that once did stand erect and strong, what madness swerves them from their wonted course?”–(Cicero)

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    Alejandro Klein

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Klein, A. (2022). Ageism, Disability and Healthy Ageing as Stereotypizing Paradigms. In: Opening up the Debate on the Aging Society. International Perspectives on Aging, vol 34. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11450-2_6

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