Determining aspects for the social construction of the older adult based on public policies in Brazil

Abstract

Despite aging being a global reality, old age has a restriction of individual experiences with their subjectivation, in which improvement becomes a moral requirement. We aim to understand the determinant aspects for the social construction of the older adults based on public policies in Brazil. We performed a document analysis based on the content analysis technique proposed by Laurence Bardin, operationalized by the IRAMUTEQ software. The textual corpus comprised 13 documents that guide policies aimed at the social protection of older adults, posterior to the Federal Constitution of 1988. We observe that the power mechanisms implicit in policies are subordinated to capitalist imperatives and to prescriptive biomedical rationality, focused on strictly biological aspects that denaturalize and homogenize aging in the light of an ideal of uninterrupted youth. It is anchored in the “reprivatization” of old age, which blames the older adults for their living conditions. This productivist ideology establishes the moralization of physical attributes that define and shape the subjectivities of a society refractory to old age itself. We highlight the importance of rethinking aging based on social issues, highlighting singular aspects of the life trajectory of the older person. unfamiliar with the ideology of aging without old age.