Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book seeks to empirically question scientific, political and everyday framings of age by focusing on the relationships between the production of knowledge, its uses in policy making and daily experience, and the social actors who take part in such dialectics. It begins by setting the scene, introducing the frequent site where science and policy first encounter each other in the realm of ageing: demography, which is called upon even more than usual to shape the debate by bringing numbers to the table. The book aims to expand the international perspective of ageing studies by acknowledging and moving past the Anglophone narrative in the field. From the perspective of knowledge studies, ageing provides a compelling case study in the 'regionalisation of knowledge': an area of knowledge that gathers discourses from many horizons and various disciplines.