Successful aging’s global moment: Visions and dilemmas of aging well

Abstract

The proportion of older persons in the population is increasing at an accelerated rate in almost every country around the globe. No wonder that in many societies, aging is a growing political and personal preoccupation. Emanating from North America, successful aging envisions postponing or even eliminating the negatives of old age by medical intervention and individual effort. Like much of American culture, successful aging discourses are taking root globally, shaped and inflected by local cultural and political contexts. Drawing on the voices and perspectives of older people across diverse contexts in India and the United States, Lamb illuminates successful aging’s often unquestioned assumptions. On the face of it, successful aging is a highly appealing notion. At the same time, the successful aging movement exports a North American cultural discomfort with oldness and human conditions of frailty and (inter)dependence in ways that both undermine other paradigms of aging and obscure social inequalities.