Ricca Edmondson (2015). Ageing, Insight and Wisdom: Meaning and Practice across the Life Course. Bristol: Policy Press and Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 224 pp. ISBN 978 1 84742 559 1 (paperback)

Abstract

What is wisdom? What does it mean to our lives and how might we understand its practice as we age? Is there something special, even numinous, about ageing that confers upon us a power with deep insights into family and society? It has been a given in most cultures that becoming an elder means possessing something others who are younger do not have, a fount of experience that enables us to make judgments, model action, and practice behaviors that demonstrate intelligence, perception, and acumen. Elders are treated with special respect and listened to carefully in many societies, feted grandly on 60, 88, and 100 birthdays. Yet there have been ominous developments during the 20 centurywhich have led to discounting these traditional ideas about wisdom. This change in how older people are treated in post-modern societies has also meant a challenge to the traditional beliefs and practices of ageing conferring wisdom, special insights, and powerful judgments. As the author of this important book Ricca Edmondson has noted, we have seen how ‘‘public discourses impoverish understanding of the last stages of life.’’ The power of meaning-making, respect for the roles of those in the latter stages of life,