Healthy ageing' policies and anti-ageing ideologies and practices : on the exercise of responsibility

This paper explores how the exercise of the ethics of ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“responsibilityââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ for health care advanced through ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“healthy ageingââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ and ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“successful ageingââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ narratives in Western countries animates an array of ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“authoritiesââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢, including the ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“anti-ageing medicineââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ movement as a strategy to address the anxieties of growing old in Western societies and as a tool to exercise the ethos of ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“responsibilityââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢. The choice of this type of authority as a source of guidance for self-constitution and the exercise of the ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“responsible selfââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢, this paper will argue, enables the enactment of a type of late modernity notion of citizenship for ageing individuals based on principles of agelessness, health, independence and consumption power. Through interviews with anti-ageing consumers, however, it is also possible to argue the existence of tensions and contradictions that such a rigid model of self-constitution in later life produces, and the potential forms of resistance and contestations that may emerge as a result. In this way the current ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“war on anti-ageing medicineââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ (Vincent 2003) becomes also symptomatic of bigger ââ"šÂ¬Ã‹Å“warsââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ taking place not only between institutions competing for control over knowledge and management of ageing, but between those in favour and against the homogenisation of life under the language of universal science, reason and market rationality.