Anthropology & Aging Quarterly  2013: 34 (2) 156

Guest Editors’ introduction to the group submission:
“Silver Linings” Lindsay DuBois, PhD and Liesl Gambold, PhD

Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology 
Dalhousie University

 Jean-Marie Guyau (1854-88), once a lecturer 
in philosophy at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, 
spent the better part of his short career writing 
a book on the theory of time. In it he notes the 
impatience of youth, their lives lived bulging at 
the seams, while old age “by contrast, is more like 
the unchanging scenery of the classical theatre, 
a simple place, sometimes a true unity of time, 
place and action that concentrates everything 
round one dominant activity and expunges 
the rest” (cf Draaisma 2004: 207). Guyau was 
illustrating the narrowing of life in the autumn 
years; the dispensing with, perhaps, things one 
has come to realize are unnecessary, but also the 
resignation that ones brightest, beautiful and 
bold years have long since passed.

 One comes, then, to expect very little in old age, 
or from the elderly. The collection of papers here 
highlights an alternative stage in which people 
are not only exhibiting powerful and colorful 
agency in their later years, but also are doing so 
with little regard for the diminutive expectations 
the world holds for them. What is it that inspires 
seniors to challenge the standard tropes of senior 
citizenship?

 These papers aspire to focus our attention 
on the ways in which older people depart from 
the socially defined roles of later life. We expect 
youth to cross boundaries, take risks, challenge 
themselves and the cultural institutions around 
them, not the aged. Certainly the public eye is 
drawn more to youth movements and actions. 
However, with the world poised, in the next 
two decades, to experience its largest increase in 
the elderly population, how we treat aging and 
the decisions and actions of the elderly will be 
critical. Aging is framed by a common terrain of 
shifting physical health (itself a very individual 
experience) while marked by class, gender, race 

and place. Still, many seniors creatively navigate 
the ‘third age.’ Some find that their time, no longer 
tied so strictly to work and family, becomes 
truly their own and they turn to rejuvenating old 
interests or forging new ones. Others resist being 
moved, literally and figuratively, to the margins 
of society and strive to make their voices and 
opinions heard. As seniors see their social and 
political influence diminish in youth-obsessed 
cultures some find new strength and meaning 
in lives that include activism, migration, a new 
physicality, renegotiating their identity and 
carving out a new cultural and physical presence 
in their communities. Such analyses demand 
attention to the gendered dimensions of later life 
and we consider them here.

 This group of articles looks at these issues in 
a variety of contemporary contexts. Robbins-
Ruszkowski examines Universities of the Third 
Age as sites which offer alternatives to dominant 
discourses about aging in contemporary Poland. 
The Argentine elders DuBois describes engage 
in political activism in attempts to alter policies 
with respect to retirees, but also as an end in 
itself.  Gambold´s study of older women who 
retire abroad to Mexico and France shows how 
these women use international retirement as 
a way to live old age differently.  The articles 
thus describe older people actively engaged in 
redefining what it means to be old.

References

Draaisma, Douwe   2004.   Why Life Speeds Up 
As You Get Older: How memory shapes our past. 
Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.