Miriam Bernard is Professor of Social Gerontology and Director of the Research Institute for Life Course Studies at Keele University.Thomas Scharf is Professor of Social Gerontology and Director of the Centre for Social Gerontology at Keele University.

• Critical perspectives on ageing societies ~ Miriam Bernard and Thomas Scharf; Critical gerontology: reflections for the 21st century ~ Martha B. Holstein and Meredith Minkler; Using human rights to defeat ageism: dealing with policy-induced 'structured dependency' ~ Peter Townsend; The remedicalisation of later life ~ Robin Means; Narratives as agents of social change: a new direction for narrative gerontologists ~ Ruth E. Ray; Redressing the balance? The participation of older people in research ~ Mo Ray; Revisiting The Last Refuge: present day methodological challenges ~ Julia Johnson, Sheena Rolph and Randall Smith; The road to an age-inclusive society ~ Bill Bytheway, Richard Ward, Caroline Holland and Sheila Peace; Justice between generations: the recent history of an idea ~ Harry R. Moody; Progress in gerontology: where are we going now? ~ Tony Warnes and Judith Phillips.

"This valuable and timely collection adds substantially to the critical gerontology literature by assessing progress, renewing the committed scholarship that provided the original impetus behind this approach and by ensuring that the voices of older people are at centre stage in its analyses." Alan Walker, University of Sheffield