Un/Masking Vulnerabilities – Centenarians and the Practices of Being “Exceptionally Old”

In many European countries, adults over 100 years old represent the fastest-growing population group. Existing research has explored the lives of centenarians primarily from psychological or public health perspectives, arguing that centenarians are prototypes for healthy, successful, and exceptional ageing. This paper develops a "doing" perspective on centenarianism by exploring the practices through which centenarians, as subjects of exceptional ageing, are positioned as unique in their local communities. Based on qualitative interviews and participatory research conducted with 25 centenarians in Austria, this paper traces how the boundaries between “normal” and “deviant,” “expected” and “exceptional,” and “successful” and “unsuccessful” ageing are negotiated and established in the everyday lives of centenarians. The results highlight that practices of exceptional ageing revolve around the careful masking of vulnerabilities that emerge from the embodied experience of ageing. In our material, the 100th birthday is acknowledged as an important temporal marker in later life, establishing ideas about a good, valuable, and long life, while at the same time masking or making invisible the vulnerabilities that accompany ageing. Living a long life is further presented as an individual achievement, rather than a collective accomplishment, as it is often attributed to personal diligence, genetic advantages, and hard work. The paper discusses these results in relation to a late-modern culture of subjectivity, which foregrounds an agentic, self-realized self and tends to make invisible the vulnerabilities that characterize embodied existence. Based on these findings, the paper contributes to recent advancements in the sociology of ageing, challenging the common assumption that vulnerability poses a threat to meaningful and successful ageing. Instead, it highlights the power that lies in acknowledging the (shared) vulnerabilities that characterize life in late-modern societies.