ABSTRACT of paper This paper presents a research agenda on the geographies of middle-age, drawing on life-history interviews with self-identified middle-aged participants from Greater Manchester, UK. The place of middle-age in debates about age within and beyond human geography is explored, including the extension of the category of youth and the deferral of older age. While lived experiences of middle-age are changing and significant, they are frequently overlooked in research. This paper argues that middle-age must be theorized through approaches and concepts of and around the middle. It draws upon more-than-representational theories as one such approach to thinking from and through the middle, emphasizing in-between affective states and forms of change, whilst highlighting a range of concepts and practices of the middle such as impasse, liminality and waiting. Thinking from and through the middle advances relational approaches to age by shifting attention away from the nodes at either end of a relation, towards the middle itself as being invariably in-relation. Geographers interested in ageing are urged to focus on the middle, be these moments of betweenness earlier or later in life, or midlife and middle-age itself. Future research must keep differences in experience at the fore and maintain a distinctly relational vantage point.
I have a new paper out in Social & Cultural Geography titled: Making sense of ‘middle-age’: thinking from and through the middle. It presents a research agenda on the geographies of middle-age, and the value of thinking around the middle more generally. 🔗https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2025.2537686
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