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Success is Not All: When ‘Failure’ Becomes Meaningful in Late Life 

Review by Cristina Douglas 
 

Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession: Global Perspectives  

Edited by Sarah Lamb 

Rutgers University Press 2017 

 
Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession, edited by Sarah Lamb, is a timely, thought-provoking 

collection of sociological and anthropological studies that critically tackles the neoliberal, Global North 

paradigm of healthy-active-successful aging. The authors are reputable scholars in the field of aging 

studies and/or medical anthropology, who have spent their careers investigating the various cultural 

understandings and practices of aging meaningfully.  

 
‘Successful aging’ is understood here, as elsewhere in Lamb’s (2014) writings, to refer to a cultural-

historical model of growing old, deeply ingrained in philosophical principles of individualistic 

personhood, bio-political ideologies of aging as a controllable process rather than a normal life stage, 

and neoliberal values of productivity in later life. Although intending to create a positive view of old 

age, the paradigm of successful aging ironically ends up, as some of the contributors argue, reinforcing 

ageist attitudes by “pursuing the goals of agelessness and avoiding oldness” (p. 7). 

 
The book does not set out to target directly the tensions and contradictions inherent in the very model 

and practices of the successful aging ideology; rather, the contributors take a reverse approach. The 

failures implied by ‘successful aging’ (i.e. being interdependent, relying on families and communities, 

frailty and decline, both physical and cognitive) are presented as alternative and, more often than not, 

desirable ways of aging. In this respect, the book does not demonize the ‘successful aging’ movement 

as altogether wrong – “Who wouldn’t want to be healthy, active, fulfilled, and successful?” (p. 3). 

Instead, it aims “to ask such questions [about frailty and vulnerabilities that are independent of 



 

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individual action], not to offer easy answers but to invite critical dialogue on a wider set of possibilities 

for imagining what it is to live meaningfully in later life” (p. XII.) 

 
The contributions are organized in four parts: “Gender, sexuality, and the allure of anti-aging”; “Ideals 

of independence, interdependence, and intimate sociality in later life”; “National policies and everyday 

practices: Individual and collective projects of aging well”; and “Medicine, morality, and self: Lessons 

from life’s ends”. These titles allude to the major parameters of the bio-political and philosophical 

paradigm of successful-aging in late life (i.e. gender and sexuality; autonomy and independence; global 

and national political agendas; biomedicalization and end of life), but the authors go beyond these 

theories to point to everyday practices of challenging, negotiating and creating alternative modes of 

aging meaningfully. These practices not only deny the uniformizing character of the contemporary 

paradigm, as the cultural and individual differences presented vary greatly, but they also destigmatise 

frailty, which is antithetical to an ideology of aging focused on maintaining able/unchanging bodies and 

minds throughout the life course. 

 
The authors’ implicit critiques of this paradigm frequently point to the gendered, hetero-normative and 

individualistic character of what is considered to be successful aging. For example, in North America, 

older women are pressured to maintain their youthful bodily appearance, while men, whose signs of 

aging, such as grey hair, are considered appealing, find themselves expected to maintain sexual 

functionality all the way into late life (chapter 1). The feminine model of successful aging contains 

similar contradictions: while some women view ‘choosing’ not to maintain a youthful appearance as a 

condemnable example of self-neglect, others find the refusal of cosmetic intervention, and 

corresponding opportunity for self-exploration beyond youthful beauty norms and bodily appearance, 

liberating (chapter 2). In intersection with gender, the authors further explore the hetero-normative 

‘white’ character of the successful aging ideology with an account of African-American lesbians and 

gay men who must contend with ageism as yet another type of discrimination over the course of their 

lives (chapter 3). The extreme relativity of what it means to age ‘successfully’ is further problematized 

by models of ‘successful failure’ in other cultures. For example, in Mexico, some men embrace erectile 

disfunction in late life as a moral opportunity to engage in deeper, more responsible, and more 

affectionate relations with family, rather than understanding it as a shameful malfunction to be fixed 

(chapter 4). 

 
Through other empirical cases, the authors expose various articulations of the concept, ‘aging in place’. 



 

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Practices of professional-assisted care, for example, foreground the independence experienced by many 

late-life Chicagoans still residing in their own homes (chapter 5). This form of silenced (inter-) 

independence, while highly valued by the older beneficiaries, obscures burgeoning social stratification 

in the realms of health, economics and ethnic status. Some professional care-givers put their own 

health, financial remuneration, and immigration status second to their clients’ needs for comfort, 

independence, and autonomy. This self-disregard, in turn, can affect the care-givers’ own potential for 

‘successfully aging’, by increasing their likelihood of impairment, economic insecurity, and residence 

distant from support networks later in life. When studied through the network of a religious community, 

such as Catholic nuns (chapter 6), the carer-cared dyad is understood in terms of valuing one’s 

(permanent) personhood and autonomy—fundamental aspects of successful aging—on a relational 

basis: the relations within the community of faith that continue after death. In a spiritual community 

that is experienced as extending past physical death, the personhood of an older individual, even in 

advanced stages of cognitive decline, is acknowledged and understood as not limited to its earthly 

embodiment. Such a view centres on reciprocal interdependence and a reverse of the activity-passivity 

divide between physical activity of the young and spiritual activity (i.e. prayer) of the elderly. 

 
The authors (chapter 7) go on to present an example of old age understood as opportunity, in the Polish 

national policies of active aging, which include practices of attending third-age universities and 

gardening. While highly gendered, these practices point to the fact that those experiencing old age are 

afforded certain opportunities they could not attain in their younger years. These Polish policies reveal 

an interesting aspect of the materiality of old age in the cultural practice of maintaining a tidy garden 

on a rented plot— also highlighting the value of self-discipline in old age. In Chapter 8, the authors 

move on to more emotional discussions of people living with Alzheimer’s, in which the great challenge 

brought about by cognitive decline is seen as an opportunity for creating moral, compassionate 

communities. This approach mirrors a later chapter of tales from Brazil, in which heroic care for people 

with Alzheimer’s is seen as a dynamic cultural story that shifts the moral focus of sacrifice between the 

various parties involved (chapter 13).  

 
While some papers focus on discourses of ageing at the national level, such as the complicated 

inheritance of a colonial history in regards to cultural valuations of life stages and family ties (e.g. the 

case of Kenya and Uganda; chapter 12; Epilogue), others shift focus to the individual level of value 

negotiations. One example is the case of an older Japanese woman who, in spite of her culture’s norms 

of seriousness, modesty, and endurance, offers a more malleable view on life, frailty and mortality by 



 

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approaching these life stages with humorous acceptance or, as the author calls it, ‘foolish vitality’ 

(chapter 10). In other examples from New York City’s elderly, people resist adding positive or negative 

value to activity and passivity by reframing the aging paradigm as one of ‘comfortable aging’, a model 

focused on finding ways to cope with pain, frailty and reduced mobility (chapter 14). All these 

examples point to the importance of positionality of the individuals involved in societies’ ongoing 

negotiation of value, such as the valuation of physical and mental fitness. These negotiations can 

become more flexible as people who engage in them age themselves, pointing to the potentiality of old 

age as a position from which to explore and embrace, rather than deny, late life’s challenges.  

 
As someone who approaches the study of aging from an anthropology of death and dying viewpoint, I 

found the book to offer highly rewarding critical analysis about coming to terms with one’s frailty, 

vulnerability, and mortality during the stages before death. The book does not draw any parallels from 

the ‘dying well’ movement, one of the biggest counterparts to the successful aging paradigm, but it can 

still be quite useful for scholars of both aging and of death and dying studies more generally. The 

book’s greatest strength, I believe, resides in its range of examples on renegotiating aging as a 

reflective process that incorporates persons and communities in-the-making, counter to performative, 

pre-established, and morally-loaded ideologies of individual success. This clearly written and 

refreshing text could also be read by a larger audience interested or involved in various aspects of 

aging: policy makers; care-givers; social and health care workers. Ultimately, the book offers insightful 

and sometimes highly emotional accounts of how we find meaning in the limits of our human 

condition, making it a delightful read regardless of one’s professional orientation. 

 
 
Works Cited 
 
Lamb, S. 2014. “Permanent Personhood or Meaningful Decline? Toward a Critical Anthropology of 
Successful Aging” Journal of Aging Studies 29: 41–52. 
Works Cited: 

 

Cristina Douglas is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, UK. Her 

research focuses on the relations between people living with a dementia diagnosis and therapy-

animals. 

 

 

© 2018 Cristina Douglas 


