서양 역사 속의 노년 ; 노년에 대한 현대의학의 개입 -문화인류학이 바라본 당대의 노년- = Biomedicine`s Hegemony over the Issue of Later Life: A Cultural Anthropological Examination of Later Life in Contemporary Society

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Every historical period has its own definition of later life. Cultural anthropology pays particular attention to biomedicine as a hegemonic institution providing definitions of later life in contemporary society. This study examines the issue of later life by applying cultural anthropology`s view of biomedicine. Occupying an unprecedentedly influential position over the body, biomedicine constructs and disseminates discourses on the bodies of later life. As a modern institution, having internalized the modern gaze, biomedicine, focusing on the materiality of human existence, defines later life as the abnormal and the pathologized in contrast with younger life as the normal and the healthy. Biomedicine`s recent hegemony in the discipline of gerontology, which originally began as multi-disciplinary study, has contributed to the medicalization of later life. The rise of Viagra exemplifies the medicalization and a materialistic viewpoint of later life by biomedicine. In a move which pathologizes and medicalizes the sexuality of later life, Viagra solely focuses on the biochemical aspects of erection, silencing the multi-layered meanings of later life`s sexuality. Korean medicine`s view destabilizes biomedical discourses on later life. Korean medicine is characterized by its circulatory view of the course of life; admitting change rather than emphasizing younger life as the normal standard. Korean medicine also attends to the social roles of later life, rather than minimizing it as a pathologized and dependent period of life. Biomedicine`s discourses of later life, despite its emphasis on the material aspects of the body, actively intervenes into the social issues of later life by muting endeavors to seek social, cultural, and psychological meanings of later life.