The aging-disability nexus

Aubrecht, K., Kelly, C., & Rice, C. (Eds.). (2020). The aging-disability nexus. UBC Press. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/A/bo70117160.html

Abstract

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, who is likely to live with disability, and the relationship between aging and disability in different 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. Yet scholarship that focuses on the disciplinary nexus of disability studies and aging studies has not been considered comprehensively. 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 trajectory.

This perceptive work analyzes the distinction between aging with a disability and aging into disability, and reveals how multiple identities, socio-economic forces, culture, and community give form to our experiences.