Ageing populations have gradually become a major concern in many industrialised countries over the past fifty years, drawing the attention of both politics and science. The target of a raft of health and social policies, older people are often identified as a specific, and vulnerable, population. At the same time, ageing has become a specialisation in many disciplines - medicine, sociology, psychology, to name but three - and a discipline of its own: gerontology. This book questions the framing of old age by focusing on the relationships between policy making and the production of knowledge. The first part explores how the meeting of scientific expertise and the politics of old age anchors the construction of both individual and collective relationships to the future. Part II brings to light the many ways in which issues relating to ageing can be instrumentalised and ideologised in several public debate arenas. Part III argues that scientific knowledge itself composes with objectivity, bringing ideologies of its own to the table, and looks at how this impacts discourse about ageing. In the final part, the contributors discuss how the frames can themselves be experienced at different levels of the division of labour, whether it is by people who work on them (legislators or scientists), by people working with them (professional carers) or by older people themselves. Unpacking the political and moral dimensions of scientific research on ageing, this cutting-edge volume brings together a range of multidisciplinary, European perspectives, and will be of use to all those interested in old age and the social sciences.

Medical histories of Belgium reshapes Belgian history of medicine by bringing together a new generation of scholars. Going beyond a chronological narrative, the book offers new insights by questioning classic themes of the history of medicine: physicians, institutions and the nation state. While retracing specific Belgian characteristics, it also engages with broader European developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Medical histories of Belgium will appeal to Historians of Belgium in various subfields, especially cultural history and political history and medical historians and medical practitioners seeking the historical context of their activities. -- .

Ageing populations have gradually become a major concern in many industrialised countries over the past fifty years, drawing the attention of both politics and science. The target of a raft of health and social policies, older people are often identified as a specific, and vulnerable, population. At the same time, ageing has become a specialisation in many disciplines - medicine, sociology, psychology, to name but three - and a discipline of its own: gerontology. This book questions the framing of old age by focusing on the relationships between policy making and the production of knowledge. The first part explores how the meeting of scientific expertise and the politics of old age anchors the construction of both individual and collective relationships to the future. Part II brings to light the many ways in which issues relating to ageing can be instrumentalised and ideologised in several public debate arenas. Part III argues that scientific knowledge itself composes with objectivity, bringing ideologies of its own to the table, and looks at how this impacts discourse about ageing. In the final part, the contributors discuss how the frames can themselves be experienced at different levels of the division of labour, whether it is by people who work on them (legislators or scientists), by people working with them (professional carers) or by older people themselves. Unpacking the political and moral dimensions of scientific research on ageing, this cutting-edge volume brings together a range of multidisciplinary, European perspectives, and will be of use to all those interested in old age and the social sciences.

In the past, our ideas of psychiatric hospitals and their history have been shaped by objects like straitjackets, cribs, and binding belts. These powerful objects were often used as a synonym for psychiatry and the way psychiatric patients were treated, yet very little is known about the agency of these objects and their appropriation by staff and patients. By focusing on material cultures, this book offers a new perspective on the history of psychiatry: it enables a narrative in which practicing psychiatry is part of a complex entanglement in which power is constantly negotiated. Scholars from different academic disciplines show how this material-based approach opens up new perspectives on the agency and imagination of men and women inside psychiatry.