Images Of Old Age

Jorge Correia Jesuíno

Jorge Correia Jesuíno Instituto Universitário De Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL)

Keywords: ageing, ageism, stigmatic versus symbolic thinking, themata, paradoxical representations

Abstract

Aging is examined as a new social issue emerging from the ever increasing of longevity
which is triggering a new salience to the oscillating stereotypes towards elderly people
pervading the history of humankind. An attempt is here made to anchor the ageism, as a
negative stereotype, within Moscovici’s thematized distinction between stigmatized
versus symbolic social thinking, concluding that aging as well as ageism could be better
understood as an instance of what Moscovici called paradoxical social representations.

Author Biography

Jorge Correia Jesuíno, Instituto Universitário De Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL)

JORGE CORREIA JESUINO has a PhD in Sociology from the Technical University of Lisbon.
He is Professor emérito at the Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa - Instituto
Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) in Lisboa, Portugal, and was awarded Honoris Causa by
the Universidade Federal do Paraiba (UFPB) Brazil. Teaching and research activities centre
around Organizational Behaviour and Social Representations, and publications include a number
of texts on leadership, group processes, social representations and epistemology.