Introduction

In this chapter the focus is on ways of conceptualising health, care and the lifecourse. Health has been a major focus in the social sciences since the middle of the 20th century, and disciplinary differences as well as changes and developments within disciplines can be traced in a range of conceptualisations and models of health. Social research on non-medical perceptions of health and illness has generated interest in the meaning of health. Until recently, relatively little attention has been paid to the significance of age as an influencing factor in the construction of the meaning of health. As Higgs and Rees-Jones (2009) argued, until recently most medical sociologists have tended to treat age as a homogenised category, have neglected inequalities in health in old age and have failed to engage with older people's individual experiences of chronic illness. The ageing of societies and the extension of life expectancy have stimulated more interest in ageing, and in epidemiology there has been a growth of interest in lifecourse perspectives (Kuh and Ben Schlomo 2004). Care has been an important focus of feminist research over the decades. In 1978 Hilary Land (1978) argued that social policies on family care neglected inequalities between men and women, and in the years since then feminist researchers have focused on the complex relationship between women's position in the labour market and their responsibilities for care. More than 30 years on, the same debate continues in the context of globalisation and the internationalisation of care work (Williams 2010). At the same time the perspectives of disability rights researchers have focused attention on the negative dimensions of care (Thomas 2004, Shakespeare 2006).

The centrality of health and care to old age is unquestionable. Victor (2010) identified the determinants of health in old age as individual genetic make-up, individual behaviour, exposure to environmental and occupational hazards and the availability and quality of healthcare, as well as social factors such as gender, ethnicity and class, which impact on health status, health behaviour and access to healthcare. From a lifecourse perspective the determinants of health must also include care, since it is only through being cared for in infancy that an individual survives to reach old age.