Preventing Dementia?: Critical Perspectives on a New Paradigm of Preparing for Old Age (Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations Book 7)

"The conceptualization of dementia has changed dramatically in recent years with the claim that, through early detection and by controlling several risk factors, a prevention of dementia is possible. Although encouraging and providing hope against this feared condition, this claim is open to scrutiny. This volume looks at how this new conceptualization ignores many of the factors which influence a dementia sufferers' prognosis, including their history with education, food and exercise as well as their living in different epistemic cultures. The central aim is to question the concept of prevention and analyze its impact on aging people and aging societies"-- Provided by publisher Preventing Dementia? 2 Contents 6 Figures 8 Introduction — Reflections on the “New Dementia” 10 Part I — The Discursive and Social Practices of Dementia Prevention 26 Chapter 1 — A Window to Act? Revisiting the Conceptual Foundations of Alzheimer’s Disease in Dementia Prevention 28 Chapter 2 — The Vascularization of Alzheimer’s Disease: Prevention in “Glocal” Geriatric Care 49 Chapter 3 — If Dementia Prevention Is the Answer, What Was the Question? Observations from the German Alzheimer’s Disease Debate 74 Chapter 4 — Dementia Prevention: Another Expansion of the Preventive Horizon 101 Chapter 5 — Mind’s Frailty: Elements of a “Geriatric Logic” in the Clinical Discourse about Dementia Prevention 119 Part II — From the Prediction and Early Detection to the Prevention of Dementia 138 Chapter 6 — Revisiting MCI: On Classificatory Drift 140 Chapter 7 — The Preventive Uncertainty of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI): The Experts, the Market, and the Subjects of Diagnosis 160 Part III — Conceptual Premises and Normative Claims of Prevention 182 Chapter 8 — Staging Prevention, Arresting Progress: Chronic Disease Prevention and the Lifestyle Frame 184 Chapter 9 — Responsibilization of Aging? An Ethical Analysis of the Moral Economy of Prevention 201 Chapter 10 — Governing through Prevention: Lifestyle and the Health Field Concept 223 Afterword — Looking Forward 251 Index 260