Aging has emerged as a major and urgent issue for individuals, organisations and governments of our time.

In this well-timed and comprehensive handbook, key international contributors to the field of study come together to create a definitive map of the subject. Framed by an authoritative introductory chapter, the SAGE Handbook of Aging, Work and Society offers a critical overview of the most significant themes and topics, with discussions of current research, theoretical controversies and emerging issues, divided into sections covering: Key Issues and Challenges The Aging Workforce Managing an Aging Workforce Living in an Aging Society Developing Public Policy

This is a reflection on the amusements and anxieties of growing older.""Small Comforts"" is a work of creative nonfiction that quietly probes the mysteries of an ordinary life when reviewed at middle age. Essayist Jeff Hammond, a midcareer academic who examines a variety of lifelong obsessions, frustrates any expectation that life's fogs dissipate as we age. At stake here is the need for those of us who have reached a ""certain age"" to examine who we have become with courage, honesty, and humor.Beneath the discoveries of a sometimes bewildered narrator lurks that strange sense of liberation that can brighten the process of getting older. Hammond's diverse musings on time and its effects will prompt an oddly calming discovery that many problems usually identified as ""midlife"" issues have actually been with us since childhood.In the narrator's seriocomic self-effacement, ""Small Comforts"" embodies midlife retrospection with humor and tender nostalgia, certain to appeal to the ever-growing middle-aged population.

Margaret Lock explicitly compares Japanese and North American medical and political accounts of female middle age to challenge Western assumptions about menopause. She uses ethnography, interviews, statistics, historical and popular culture materials, and medical publications to produce a richly detailed account of Japanese women's lives. The result offers irrefutable evidence that the experience and meanings--even the endocrinological changes--associated with female midlife are far from universal. Rather, Lock argues, they are the product of an ongoing dialectic between culture and local biologies.
Japanese focus on middle-aged women as family members, and particularly as caretakers of elderly relatives. They attach relatively little importance to the end of menstruation, seeing it as a natural part of the aging process and not a diseaselike state heralding physical decline and emotional instability. Even the symptoms of midlife are different: Japanese women report few hot flashes, for example, but complain frequently of stiff shoulders.
Articulate, passionate, and carefully documented, Lock's study systematically undoes the many preconceptions about aging women in two distinct cultural settings. Because it is rooted in the everyday lives of Japanese women, it also provides an excellent entree to Japanese society as a whole.
Aging and menopause are subjects that have been closeted behind our myths, fears, and misconceptions. Margaret Lock's cross-cultural perspective gives us a critical new lens through which to examine our assumptions.

The manual is written in an accessible format with ample exercises and handouts, all designed for easy photocopying. Its great advantage is the material's transferability across all disciplines making it applicable to all professionals working with vulnerable adults. Each chapter offers an introductory discussion of a particular topic or question, such as how to identify different types of adult abuse and how to discuss and respond to a disclosure, highlighting the difficulties that may be associated with such a sensitive discussion. Her Classification of what constitutes different types of abuse in relation to differing ages, genders, ethnicities and cultures is sophisticated yet accessible, offering depth while avoiding stereotyping. In my view, this is an ideal resource for training of support workers, nurses, social workers, care managers, training officers, police officers and students of these subjects. If such training can be interagency and interprofessional, then this is likely to provide even greater benefits. - The Author, Journal compilation `...comprehensively engages with all aspects of adult protection work, from suspecting or making an allegation that abuse is happening, through to the investigation and case conference stages. It achieves comprehensiveness by including consideration of risk assessment, but manages to do this by providing materials for both basic awareness training through to more advanced and in-depth training. The resource covers specific sections of society, such as older people, younger people, black and minority ethnic people, and specialised chapters including additional training materials and case studies. The material achieves clarity in the theoretical framework and helps the participant to work through what the theory means for practice. Exercises, handouts, key learning points, case examples and suggested reading are all part of this approach.' - Leveson Centre Newsletter Working with Adult Abuse is a comprehensive training resource, which can be used by anyone who works with vulnerable adults across the sectors (statutory, voluntary and independent). It can be used by people who have a responsibility for training within any organisation, but also by any individual worker or student. The resource covers all aspects of adult protection work, from suspecting or making an allegation that abuse is happening in the community or in a communal setting through to the investigation and case conference stages, including consideration of risk assessment and the development of protection plans. In doing so, it provides materials for basic awareness training courses through to more advanced and in-depth training. Practical advice is presented within the historical context of adult abuse guidance and policy development. This is complemented by specialised chapters on the abuse of specific sections of society, such as older people, younger adults and black and minority ethnic people, which provide additional training materials and case studies. Each chapter offers an introductory discussion of a particular topic or question, such as exactly what constitutes adult abuse, how to respond to a disclosure of abuse, when to report abuse and to whom. Exercises, handouts, key learning points, case examples and suggested reading are also included. The resource, which is presented in a large A4 format, includes a wealth of photocopiable materials. This is an ideal resource for the training of social workers, care managers and workers, training officers, police officers, students of social work and those undergoing NVQ or post-qualification training.. It will also be helpful to unqualified staff such as home carers, residential staff and support workers.

In Animals as Legal Beings, Maneesha Deckha critically examines how Canadian law and, by extension, other legal orders around the world, participate in the social construction of the human-animal divide and the abject rendering of animals as property. Through a rigorous but cogent analysis, Deckha calls for replacing the exploitative property classification for animals with a new transformative legal status or subjectivity called "beingness." In developing a new legal subjectivity for animals, one oriented toward respecting animals for who they are rather than their proximity to idealized versions of humanness, Animals as Legal Beings seeks to bring critical animal theorizations and animal law closer together. Throughout, Deckha draws upon the feminist animal care tradition, as well as feminist theories of embodiment and relationality, postcolonial theory, and critical animal studies. Her argument is critical of the liberal legal view of animals and directed at a legal subjectivity for animals attentive to their embodied vulnerability, and desirous of an animal-friendly cultural shift in the core foundations of anthropocentric legal systems. Theoretically informed yet accessibly presented, Animals as Legal Beings makes a significant contribution to an array of interdisciplinary debates and is an innovative and astute argument for a meaningful more-than-human turn in law and policy.