Older Men, Ageing and Power: Masculinities Theory and Alternative Spatialised Theoretical Perspectives

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the implications of changing social situations for the interrelations of men, aging, and power, with special reference to older men. We evaluate such current and prospective changes and theorisations in their historical context. Having outlined the nature and impact of these historical changes, we consider the contribution of recent masculinities theory. This is followed by outlining some weaknesses of said framework, and two alternative ways forward that deserve more theoretical and empirical attention, respectively: the contradictions of men’s aging, and older men seen through geographical and transnational approaches; as well as the focus on embodiment, seen through phenomenology, sexual difference theory, and queer theory. Thus, we interrogate here both (different theoretical interpretations of) socio-historical change and different theoretical traditions (that reconstruct the aforementioned social change), both in relation to older men: each of these foci, the social and the theoretical, necessarily reconstructing the other.

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