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This article is concerned with ageing embodiment and social change. It operates a synthesis of Bourdieu's theory of the logic of practice and understandings of agency as an embodied process. Is age a source of habitus? Within what structural circumstances can ageing embodiment lead to social transformation? What are the limitations to this? An analysis of the minutiae of everyday embodiment of older social actors active in the social field of Veteran athletics supports the contention that overtime we become caught up in an age habitus. A challenge to this can be effected through modalities of embodiment within social fields in transition. The permeability of the field, and its own internal logic, the achievement of bodily competence, combined with the active control of the organization of the field, offer some opportunities to reconstruct the discourse of ageing.

There is a growing public health focus on the promotion of successful and active ageing. Interventions to reduce sedentary behaviour (SB) in older adults are feasible and are improved by tailoring to individuals' context and circumstances. SB is ubiquitous; therefore part of the tailoring process is to ensure individuals' daily sedentary routine can be modified. The aim of this study was to understand the views of older adults and identify important considerations when creating a solution to modify daily sedentary patterns. This was a qualitative research study. Fifteen older adult volunteers (mean age = 78 years) participated in 1 of 4 focus groups to identify solutions to modify daily sedentary routine. Two researchers conducted the focus groups whilst a third took detailed fieldnotes on a flipchart to member check the findings. Data were recorded and analysed thematically. Participants wanted a solution with a range of options which could be tailored to individual needs and circumstances. The strategy suggested was to use the activities of daily routine and reasons why individuals already naturally interrupting their SB, collectively framed as assets. These assets were categorised into 5 sub-themes: physical assets (eg. standing up to reduce stiffness); psychological assets (eg. standing up to reduce feelings of guilt); interpersonal assets (eg. standing up to answer the phone); knowledge assets (eg. standing up due to knowing the benefits of breaking SB) and activities of daily living assets (eg. standing up to get a drink). This study provides important considerations from older adults' perspectives to modify their daily sedentary patterns. The assets identified by participants could be used to co-create a tailored intervention with older adults to reduce SB, which may increase effectiveness and adherence.

Physical activity is increasingly positioned as playing an important role in preventing and mitigating many of the decrements associated with biological ageing. As a result, public health messages encourage older people to remain active in later life. Despite this, physical activity participation rates among older adults are low. This may be in part related to the conventional approach to understanding physical activity participation as a product of motivation. We contend that this approach does not allow for a deeper exploration of the wider structural, historical and discursive contexts in which physical activity participation occurs. Therefore, we propose that physical activity can be reconceptualised as a career. Through a synthesis of findings from four studies exploring physical activity experiences in later life, we demonstrate that beginning and maintaining a physical activity career requires a disposition towards physical activity, the legitimation of physically active practices and dealing with contingencies. In addition, we demonstrate that maintaining a physical activity career requires investment and deliberation to adapt physical activity practices continually within an individual's own personal biography. As such, we conclude that current strategies to promote physical activity to older adults are unlikely to result in increased levels of participation. To promote physical activity to older adults an understanding of how structural, cultural and historical contexts influence participation is needed.

From 19th to 22nd November 2018, 26 researchers representing nine countries and a variety of academic disciplines met in Snekkersten, Denmark, to reach evidence-based consensus about physical activity and older adults. It was recognised that the term ‘older adults’ represents a highly heterogeneous population. It encompasses those that remain highly active and healthy throughout the life-course with a high intrinsic capacity to the very old and frail with low intrinsic capacity. The consensus is drawn from a wide range of research methodologies within epidemiology, medicine, physiology, neuroscience, psychology and sociology, recognising the strength and limitations of each of the methods. Much of the evidence presented in the statements is based on longitudinal associations from observational and randomised controlled intervention studies, as well as quantitative and qualitative social studies in relatively healthy community-dwelling older adults. Nevertheless, we also considered research with frail older adults and those with age-associated neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and in a few cases molecular and cellular outcome measures from animal studies. The consensus statements distinguish between physical activity and exercise. Physical activity is used as an umbrella term that includes both structured and unstructured forms of leisure, transport, domestic and work-related activities. Physical activity entails body movement that increases energy expenditure relative to rest, and is often characterised in terms of intensity from light, to moderate to vigorous. Exercise is defined as a subset of structured physical activities that are more specifically designed to improve cardiorespiratory fitness, cognitive function, flexibility balance, strength and/or power. This statement presents the consensus on the effects of physical activity on older adults’ fitness, health, cognitive functioning, functional capacity, engagement, motivation, psychological well-being and social inclusion. It also covers the consensus on physical activity implementation strategies. While it is recognised that adverse events can occur during exercise, the risk can be minimised by carefully choosing the type of activity undertaken and by consultation with the individual’s physician when warranted, for example, when the individual is frail, has a number of co-morbidities, or has exercise-related symptoms, such as chest pain, heart arrhythmia or dizziness. The consensus was obtained through an iterative process that began with the presentation of the state-of-the-science in each domain, followed by group and plenary discussions. Ultimately, the participants reached agreement on the 30-item consensus statements.

This paper discusses findings from a qualitative study which explored older adults' experiences of becoming regular exercisers in a gym triggered by health problems and their interactions with their younger gym instructors. A key question which the study sought to address was whether becoming embedded in the sub-field of exercise challenged traditional discourses of ageing (age habitus). While these older gym users reported significant benefits (greater health capital, expanded social networks and a return to active life after illness), they nevertheless were engaged in a complex and ambiguous negotiation of attitudes to bodily ageing and meanings of fitness and competence. In contrast, the instructors subscribed to a model of physical activity oriented towards physical capital as greater fitness. The paper suggests that these positions manifest competing understandings about what constitutes appropriate and desirable physical capital in later life. Budgetary constraints, beliefs about physical ability, professional expectations and the persistence of the discourse of decline prevent this gap from being easily bridged and allow alternative notions of ageing physicality to colonise the sub-field of exercise. The paper concludes that there is a need to develop ways of breaking down barriers in communication to overcome divergent understandings of what constitutes legitimate physical capital as we get older.

PurposeThis paper aims to reflect on the nature of “parkrun tourism” and the challenges this presents to the understanding of sports tourism.Design/methodology/approachThe contradictions and contested terrain of sports tourism is discussed with the reference to three of the most widely used definitions for the field.FindingsParkrun tourism is introduced comprising four formats: spanning the domestic and global; the informal and formal; the organic and institutional; and the experience and commercial product.Research limitations/implicationsThe particular challenges that parkrun tourism presents to existing understandings of sports tourism is considered. The conclusion discusses the prospect of future research, both empirical and theoretical, on parkrun tourism.Practical implicationsThe authors outline a range of ways in which parkrun tourism affords opportunity for further inquiry for parkrun scholarship and sports tourism.Originality/valueA new specification for sports tourism is proposed that accommodates parkrun tourism.

This article seeks to explore new ways of understanding and researching old age by drawing on Foucauldian analysis. The focus is on the government of populations and of the self, in a changing welfare climate. Recent theoretical developments in sociology have problematic dominant cultural and social constructions of ageing, and the ways in which old people mate sense of their ageing selves against these normalizing processes, by highlighting therelevance of structural processes on the experience of old age. Drawing upon an exploratory study designed to explore the housing histories of older people, we evaluate the usefulness of a Foucauldianbased analysis as a way of bringing out thecomplexity of older people's lives and identity construction in a changing cultural context. The Foucauldian concept of government is proposed as a useful tool for accessing the interaction of broad structural processes with processes constitutive of old age.

This paper investigates the modalities of the government of old people in contemporary society by looking critically at current social gerontological discourse and the claims to truth it makes about the experience of growing and being old, and its impact on the cultural economy of old age. Recent theoretical developments in sociology have problematised dominant cultural, social and academic constructions of ageing and the ways in which old people make sense of their ageing selves against these normalising processes. The impact of structural processes on the experience of old age has been highlighted, dominant discursive practices in relation, for instance, to the care of old people have been deconstructed and spaces of resistance have been identified. At the same time, social gerontology has turned its attention to positive or successful ageing and its payback for individual old people and policy-makers. However, because it is embedded in a broader discourse which gives primacy to lifestyles, social and economic opportunities and moral responsibility, successful ageing is an ambiguous project caught between resisting the mask of ageing and reaffirming the continued cultural repression of the declining body and, by extension, of the ageing self. Recent findings from an on-going life history project involving old people who have moved to ‘age-appropriate’ housing will be used to illustrate the extent to which people who are now old have appropriated new forms of regulation.

The work presented in this thesis examines experiences of ageing amongst 21 male and female Veteran elite runners. Experiences of ageing continue to be understood within a discourse of decline. The body plays a central role in this process but primarily in its biological manifestations. Sociology has neglected ageing bodies and little is as yet known about the phenomenological dimension of growing older. The ageing literature is beginning to give some attention to the place of the body in experiences of ageing and some theoretical development has been in progress since the pioneering conceptualisation of the modern experience of bodily ageing within the Mask of Ageing perspective. However we need to specify the interaction between bodily experiences and the social location of people as they age. I am proposing to bring to light the complexity of ageing experiences by reconceptualising it within a theoretical framework influenced by the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. This requires paying heed to the phenomenological dimension of bodily use and bodily change but also to the wider cultural and structural landscape of late modernity in which bodily use is embedded. To this end I have chosen to locate my investigation amongst a group of people whose everyday experiences take place in the context of athletics and who thus appear to challenge traditional age-appropriate expectations about appropriate bodily use and dispositions. The findings will reveal the claims for bodily competence made by agers themselves and the self-conscious engagements with the struggle for social and symbolic distinction which this involves. I will propose broadening the concept of habitus proposed by Bourdieu to include age, in order to access the changing nature of embodiment but also the potential for social change made possible by modalities of embodiment which are based on the reconstruction of ageing as ambiguity.