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Ricca Edmondson , Ageing, Insight and Wisdom: Meaning and Practice Across the Life Course , Policy Press , Bristol, UK , 2015, 244 pp., pbk £25.99, ISBN 13: 978-1-184742-559-1 .
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It is almost ironic to think about this - we as a field have extensively studied virtually every aspect of later life, but too often we shy away from meaning in the lived context, which, according to Ricca Edmondson, effectively 'advances the ideology of work as the be-all and end-all of life' (p. 15). This is a book that takes up the difficult task of tackling issues and debates surrounding meaning and meaning-making in later life; both of which, as demonstrated throughout the book, are constantly dismissed and discouraged by social, political and cultural practices. Many scholars in humanity and social sciences have written on this topic, and yet the most remarkable contribution of this book is to extend the inquiry beyond the dominant paradigm and ask: What are the approaches that gerontologists have taken to understand meaning and insight? And where do we go from there? This book does not intend to come up with a grand theory about the meaning of life or the meaning in life; rather, its entire thesis sets out to...