ABSTRACT
Two trends have signalled an integration of research on ageing and research on place within recent scholarship: a placement of geographical work within the broader field of health geography, and the embracing of the fundamentally geographical theme of place by researchers in other disciplines. This chapter selectively reviews the recent shifts in thinking among geographers that have – at least in name – transformed medical geography and brought with them new possibilities for incorporating concerns with ageing into geographical scholarship. Such shifts led to a reconceptualised ‘health geography’ and have involved a philosophical and empirical distancing from concerns with disease and the interests of the medical world. The net result has been the deployment of a sharper focus on people’s situated well-being often invoking social models of health and health care. These moves within geography over the last 15 years have occurred contemporaneously with a key shift beyond geography, as suggested: the increasing centrality of place within research elsewhere in the social sciences. Given these contexts, this chapter reviews ways in which research on ageing and place can be interpreted through the lens of a medical geography, recently revitalised through a health orientation. First, the centrality of place in health geography is considered. Second, three key sites in the geography of ageing are examined: the body, the home and the institutional setting. Third, the application of the more generalised concept of ‘landscapes of ageing’ is considered. A short set of conclusions closes the chapter.
