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Tula Brannelly, Living Longer: Ageing, Development and Social Protection, Community Development Journal, Volume 41, Issue 2, April 2006, Pages 249–252, https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsl003
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Peter Lloyd-Sherlock (Editor), United Nations Research Institute for Social Development and Zed Books, November 2004, 308pp., ISBN 1 84277 357 7, £19.95
Living Longer provides the reader with an overview of current developments in social policy for older people in a fast-changing world. As its United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) status suggests, this text brings together the complexities and subtleties of changing welfare state systems worldwide. It has been published as a culmination of UNRISD funded international research, initially disseminated at a conference in Madrid in 2002. This book has appeal for community activists, policy-makers, practitioners and academics who wish to understand more fully the state of development and social policy affecting older people in a diverse range of countries, each of which is influenced by global change.
Contributions come from authors who are clearly knowledgeable about their own country's historical and political context and who are thus able to demonstrate the impact of recent policy on those people it is designed to help. Individual contributions are also underpinned by a critical analysis of what else is left to do and an appraisal of the sorts of intervention that continue to be required. It was refreshing to read an acknowledgement that older people, while being active members of society, are also likely to need help and care as old age progresses. Throughout the book the principles of active ageing, engagement of older people in the policy/political process and human dignity remain at the core of the authors' contributions, thus making the book an inspiration to read. Indeed, Martha Nussbaum's chapter starts from the point that not only do older people need care but that all people need to give and provide care, older people included. This important conceptual shift recognises the essential vulnerability of humanness, rather than seeing people who have needs as vulnerable. This is the foundation of an ethic of care, a political argument for the recognition of care giving as a tenet of citizenship (see for example Gilligan, 1982; Tronto, 1993; Sevenhuijsen, 1998).
