Paper short abstract:

We give ethnographic accounts of how healthy ageing bodies are enacted in a clinical trial. The clinical trial generates three types of ageing bodies: disciplined or docile healthy ageing bodies; bodies in excess of the somatic qualities produced by the clinical trial; and other, unknowable bodies.

Paper long abstract:

Usually defined as the 'process of optimizing opportunities for physical, social and mental health' so as to support older people's participation in society, healthy ageing has been the object of social science critiques for its narrow economic discursive and normative framing. Less attention however has been focused on the concrete production of healthy ageing bodies. In this paper we report on an ethnographic study investigating the enactment of healthy ageing bodies in a clinical trial of diet and exercise to prevent age-related muscular frailty. We draw on Law's (2004) conceptualization of the method assemblage to understand how, in the clinical trial, researchers, participants, instruments, and protocols work together to enact a diversity of ageing bodies. We propose that the clinical trial generates three types of ageing bodies: disciplined or docile healthy ageing bodies; bodies in excess of the somatic qualities produced by the clinical trial; and other, unknowable bodies. Focusing on the embodied tensions and constant tinkering within the production of active and healthy ageing, we also how explore how the clinical trial problematizes and disrupts other bodies, practices and effects. We suggest that this analysis serves as a window to understand the complex relationship between healthy ageing ideals and the health practices of older people.