Aging Men, Masculinities and Modern Medicine (Routledge Studies in the Sociology of Health and Illness)

Aging Men, Masculinities and Modern Medicine explores the multiple socio-historical contexts surrounding men’s aging bodies in modern medicine from a global perspective. The first of its kind, it investigates the interrelated aspects of aging, masculinities and biomedicine, allowing for a timely reconsideration of the conceptualisation of aging men within the recent explosion of social science studies on men’s health and biotechnologies including anti-aging perspectives.

This book discusses both healthy and diseased states of aging men in medical practices, bringing together theoretical and empirical conceptualisations. Divided into four parts it covers:

• Historical epistemology of aging, bodies and masculinity and the way in which the social sciences have theorised the aging body and gender.
• Material practices and processes by which biotechnology, medical assemblages and men’s aging bodies relate to concepts of health and illness.
• Aging experience and its impact upon male sexuality and identity.
• The importance of men’s roles and identities in care-giving situations and medical practices.

Highlighting how aging men’s bodies serve as trajectories for understanding wider issues of masculinity, and the way in which men’s social status and men’s roles are made in medical cultures, this innovative volume offers a multidisciplinary dialogue between sociology of health and illness, anthropology of the body and gender studies.