Resisting the ‘mask’ of old age?: the social meaning of lay health beliefs in later life

Abstract

While the substantial literature on lay health beliefs gives some consideration to older people's conceptions of health and illness, it is material which has yet to be examined from the perspective of postmodern theory. This article, therefore, critically examines the value of using ideas from postmodernism in such a context and focuses on data obtained from a series of in-depth interviews with a sample of fifteen older people. During the interviews they were asked to talk about themselves in relation to issues which included health, illness, disease, death and dying. What they said revealed that, while medicine remained a location of power and knowledge, many of their health beliefs were nonetheless at odds with conventional medicine and indeed with the traditionally passive role of the NHS patient. In conclusion, we suggest that, whilst not always in an explicit or conscious sense, interviewees were discovering self-empowering strategies by questioning the meta-narratives through which the social world is fabricated.