Ageing Asia: Multimedia Representations of Ageing and Older Adults in Asian Societies

This volume offers a critical examination of how widening age asymmetries across diverse Asian societies shape the representational economies through which older adults are constructed, mediated, and understood. Foregrounding the intersection of gender and age, it analyses the discursive positioning of older women in multimodal media environments and situates such portrayals within broader configurations of kinship, intergenerational obligation, and socio‑emotional labour. The essays assembled here draw on textual, visual, and audiovisual materials from China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, and Taiwan to interrogate emergent narratives of ageing and to map shifting cultural, familial, and institutional expectations surrounding later lifeBy engaging with demographic change, transformations in family structures, and evolving regimes of care, the collection elucidates the rearticulation of filial responsibility, economic dependency, and affective interdependence in rapidly ageing societies. It further considers how contemporary multimedia reframes the experience of decline, loss, and grief, and how these representational practices mediate broader ideological debates about the status, agency, and social value of older adults. Collectively, the contributions provide a theoretically grounded and empirically rich account of the cultural imaginaries through which ageing is negotiated in Asia, highlighting the profound reconfigurations of social relations and life-course expectations unfolding across the region.