The association between the physical appearance of the ageing body and notions of tragedy can be traced back to ancient Greece (Fox 2006) suggesting that negative attitudes to bodily ageing are not just a consequence of the youth-based obsessions of modern societies. However, as Turner (1991) has argued, time and memory are more problematic in modern societies and in a period of rapid social change our cultural references are rapidly transformed into the stuff of nostalgia so that, in his words, to become old is to be ‘museumized’ (Turner 1991: 253). For Turner this is strongly related to the pace of generational change. Consequently, individual experiences of, as well as meanings attached to, ageing bodies need to be understood in the social context of generational habitus. As we have argued in Chapter 1, second modernity refers to a radicalisation of modernity itself; a dominant feature of which is an increasing emphasis on individualisation and self-regulation, as well as self-discipline and the purposeful and continuous re-working of individual identities (Bauman 2000; Beck, Giddens and Lash 1994; Beck 2006). This is closely related to the rise of the ‘will to health’ and the ‘somatisation of the self’ where the body, body maintenance and body image are at the centre of social relations (Rose 2001). The body emerges as a site for regulatory work but, according to Turner, instead of traditional religious-based discipline, within a secular consumer culture, the body is treated as a site of surface impressions and ultimately becomes a sacred concern. In this context the aged body is interpreted as a sign of failure and, as Sennett (2006) argues, old age brings with it the spectre of uselessness. There are contradictions here of course in that

a culture of ageing also opens up possibilities for new lifestyles, activities and meanings while at the same time closing down opportunities (Gilleard and Higgs 2000, 2005). This chapter considers attempts within the sociology of health and

illness to address the body or bodies at later ages. Since Shilling (1993) referred to the body as an absent presence within sociology, considerable theoretical and empirical work has been undertaken to try to address this lacuna; but until recently very little of this work addressed ageing bodies (Twigg 2004). In fact, both ageing and the body have been neglected fields within sociology and before Shilling made his prescient remark Turner (1991) had already argued that the absence of ageing in sociology could be attributed to the absence of a sociology of the body (p. 245). While work that draws on the traditions of medical sociology has focused on the problem of embodiment (Williams 2003) much of the recent literature on ageing has focused on social attitudes to the appearance of old age within postmodern culture (Gullette 2004; Woodward 1991). Such work has challenged ‘taken for granted’ understandings of ageing but does not fully engage with the ageing body. In this chapter therefore we review work on the sociology of the body and draw on critical realist theory to develop a critique of postmodern accounts of ageing bodies. Following this we turn to work that attempts to situate sociological accounts of the body in the context of second modernity and consider the implications of the rise of the reflexive self and the vicissitudes of ageing bodies for the lived experience of disability.