ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on older people, who are often presented under the ‘particular deficient vulnerability’ model as an archetype of vulnerable people. The chapter explores four aspects of life for older people: bodies, autonomy, identity, and the role of the state. It examines the consequence of applying the ‘particular deficient vulnerability model’ to older people and will then explain how the approach to these issues would change under the ‘universal beneficial vulnerability’ model. The chapter argues that the shift from seeing vulnerability as resting in few people who are in need of particular state assistance in order to escape from that undesirable state, to seeing vulnerability as a beneficial state that is an inevitable part of being human. Ageing is seen as a crisis or a burden; becoming old is a pathology. This creates not only a personal problem for individuals but is also seen as creating a problem of wider significance.
