Gerontological Research As Anti-Ageist Cultural Practice: A Proposal for Gerontological Studies In The Ageing Era

Abstract

Introducing the notion of contextualization and of attentive listening, this article proposes that anti-ageist gerontological research in the ageing era needs to endorse old people as the subjects of action and narrative. The dominant ageist culture and media of Korean society regard old people as culturally alien and negative other, and the mainstream gerontological research is not free from this tendency. The current trend of gerontological research to focus on the problems, adjustment, and life-satisfaction of old people risks the danger of reinforcing the already negative image of old people. Gerontological research as anti-ageist cultural practice is required in these circumstances. In order to achieve that goal, what needs to be examined is how multiple ideologies and structural forces forge old people"s positionality in concrete contexts of everyday life, and how old people respond to the given situation as the subjects of action and narrative. Ironically, the ultimate task of gerontological studies is to loosen the culturally otherized boundary of old age and the gerontology"s academic boundary itself by exposing the barrenness of old age by itself as a variable. Research on old age as anti-ageist cultural practice needs to examine constantly if the perspective of research itself is unconsciously reproducing the ageist discourse of Korean society.