10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17389
application/pdf
2038-3460
17389
2
en
Roberto Lusardi
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Tiago Moreira, Science, Technology and the Ageing Society, Routledge, 2017
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
8
Book Reviews
2018-01-29
2023-06-25
2018-01-29
2023-08-24
244-246
TS
Roberto Lusardi
2017
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17389
244
University of Bergamo
2038-3460
2
en
246
Tiago Moreira, Science, Technology and the Ageing Society, Routledge, 2017
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17389/16249
8
244                                                          Tecnoscienza – 8 (2)

Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-
       Theory, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Latour, B. (2013) An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the
       Moderns, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.



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    Tiago Morera
Science, Technology and the Ageing Society, London and New York,
Routledge, 2017, pp. 240

Roberto Lusardi University of Bergamo

    In this book, Tiago Moreira makes an interesting operation. He takes
the concept of ageing – not exactly part of the most popular STS vocabu-
lary – and then breaks it into its parts and analyses the processes connect-
ed using the STS gaze. Recalling a metaphor always effective (and dear to
the STS world), he “opens the black box” of ageing and the book wit-
nesses what he found.
    First, Moreira says that ageing is not just a demographic, medical, or
economic concern. It is a repertoire of practices and an institutional setup
that the author calls “ageing society”. He makes clear his interpretative
proposition: that the ageing society “is first and foremost a collective pre-
dicament, a swelling uncertainty concerning how to deploy procedures of
scientific research and technological innovation in addressing ageing as
an issue” (p. 1).
    As STS scholars know very well, every collective predicament, every
controversy – regardless of whether it concerns political, environmental,
or health issues – implies sociotechnical arrangements, expert knowledge,
power relations, and economic interests. The demographic data is not
secondary, of course. The United Nations set the threshold of popula-
tion’s sustainability to 7% of people being 65 or older in any given coun-
try. In Italy, according to the last ISTAT report on the national popula-
tion, the percentage of people being 65 or older has overcome that mark
by far and is at 22%.
    The same phenomenon is affecting all the so-called Western nations,
albeit in different percentages. This means that the demand for
healthcare services and funding of health insurance is increasing, as are
the pressures on systems of formal care and on processes of informal care
within families and communities. Finally, the demographic trend affects
the political and cultural attitudes of society, which tend to become more
Book Review                                                               245
conservative.
    Moreira proposes not to analyse only demographic data, but also to
examine the ways in which we understand and manage the ageing process
in society and how they shape our collective life (Ch. 1). His approach is
derived from Foucault in that he offers a genealogical history of the pre-
sent, focusing on the link between structures, practices and contingen-
cies. He proposes to understand the ageing society as an epistemic as-
semblage, in which making procedures and institutions, techniques, and
technologies shape how we see our society through a demographic prism.
The ANT apparatus stands out in the book’s toolbox: Michel Callon,
Bruno Latour, John Law, Annemarie Mol, among others, discuss with
gerontologists, demographers, epidemiologists, cultural geographers and
economists (Ch. 2).
    The author states that the ageing society is challenging the epistemic
infrastructure of the liberal welfare state and the system of expert
knowledge on which it relies. To demonstrate these transformations,
Moreira invites the reader to rethink the relationship among birth, death,
and migration. Races and migrations are indispensable concepts for un-
derstanding the constitution of the ageing society despite the fact that
they have not until recently taken into account the management of demo-
graphic ageing (Ch. 4).
    This omission seems to rely on a precise bio-political orientation that
contrasts migratory flows on one hand and medical technologies and
health services on the other as resources to mitigate some of the economic
effects of ageing populations (Ch. 5). Due to this orientation, widespread
in the 1980s and 1990s, “the relationship between health and longevity
has become central to the problem of population because of the fact that
the problem of population decline is the disqualified immigration and the
fertility as a solution to the problem of demographic ageing” (p. 71).
    The author investigates the same concept of chronological age – by
the number of years lived since birth – which we use to measure a per-
son's functional capacity or health. Moreira discusses how the diffusion
of this analytical tool is linked to the requirements of precision and classi-
fication inherent in the information requisites of modern state bureaucra-
cies and administrations. The author shows how this model is challenged
by emerging epistemic and normative uncertainty about chronological
age as a variable and marker for social and political rights and duties. At
present, no alternative model has been imposed to replace chronological
age with its age-specific norms, values, and expectations although its so-
lidity and reliability has been questioned widely.
    Chronological age is at the base of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study
of Aging (BLSA), a massive U.S. public programme of investigation on
ageing that has been funded from 1958 to the present day (Ch. 6).
Moreira reconstructs the history of this programme and its epistemic rep-
ertoires to demonstrate how epistemic and methodological procedures
246                                                          Tecnoscienza – 8 (2)

shape the ageing society: “Ageing is an individualized process [that] be-
came entangled with a set of methodological procedures and practices
encased in the longitudinal approach” (p. 117).
    He then introduces a more recent key concept: functional age (Ch. 7).
This consists of tools and instruments (e.g. the Work Ability Index) that
measure and manage individual functional abilities and indicate the roles
or tasks a person may be involved in. For Moreira, this concept repre-
sents the relation between work and technology and the ageing society,
and it aims to “maximise older people’s participation in the economy by
identifying unused capacities and opportunities to employ them” (p.
120). Tracing the assemblage around the concept, Moreira unveils the
epistemic tensions that it hides.
    Another interesting object analysed is the Instrumental Activities of
Daily Living Scale, a tool used in the assessment and planning of older
people’s care (Ch. 8). Moreira suggests that its relevance relies on the ex-
pectation of aligning aging-in-place policies with active ageing instru-
ments. Following the genesis of this tool and analysing its contexts of use
– that require the process of rational decomposition of daily life activities
such as cooking, housekeeping, laundry, etc. – Moreira describes how the
reliability of tools like this is constantly challenged by situated practices
of customization of ageing-in-place tools to individual needs.
    Finally, the author’s last efforts lead to an analysis of the most recent
epistemic scaffolding named “biomedicalization of ageing”. Using Alz-
heimer’s disease as a case study, Moreira emphasizes how this new plat-
form is based on the frail alliance among biogerontology, mainstream
medicine, and anti-aging movements (Ch. 9).
    To conclude, this is a very interesting book, which proposes an un-
precedented reading of contemporary society and the theme of the ageing
population. It is not easy to read because the argumentation is complex;
very articulate. It integrates theories, analytical tools, and empirical mate-
rials from different scientific fields and epistemic domains. Nevertheless,
given the relevance of the topic and the innovative approach, it is certain-
ly worth it.



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