The Aging?Disability Nexus (Disability Culture and Politics)

As the global population ages, disability demographics are shifting. Societal change and global health inequities have changed who is likely to live to old age and who is likely to live with disability in a variety of sociocultural and geopolitical contexts. One thing is clear: aging is a pressing issue across the Western world and will become more so in the years ahead. The Aging–Disability Nexus breaks new ground by bringing gerontology and disability studies into dialogue with each other. This thoughtful examination of competing narratives about aging and disability employs a variety of empirical, conceptual, and pedagogical approaches. Contributors explore the tensions that shape how disability and aging are understood, experienced, and responded to at both individual and systemic levels, while avoiding the common tendency to conflate these overlapping elements and map them onto a normative, faulty notion of the human life.

Katie Aubrecht is Canada Research Chair in health equity and social justice, director of the Spatializing Care: Intersectional Disability Studies Lab, and assistant professor of sociology at St. Francis Xavier University.