This unique volume brings together 20 critical essays on aging within the context of the broad social political and economic factors that help shape and determine the realities of growing old. Rather than viewing aging in isolation it explores the social creation of old age dependency and the profound influence of race gender and social class on what it means to grow old. It looks too at such topics as the biomedicalization of aging; the role of business and the media in changing societal images of the old; the fact and fiction behind senior power; the multibillion dollar nursing home industry; and the role of advanced capitalist nations in creating economic dependency among elders in the Third World. Language: English