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Out of time?: Chronocracy and ageism in Brexit-Covid-19 England

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Cathrine DegnenORCiD

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Abstract

Generation or relative age is a common way humans define social difference. In Europe and North America, old age is frequently perceived as a period of decline and loss, a condition ‘successful aging’ paradigms exhort individuals to avoid for as long as possible. Explicit and implicit ageist beliefs, discourses, and practices marginalize later life, portraying it as undesirable and inferior. This paper explores how imagined generational relationships with time – younger people as future facing, older people as ‘out’ of time – enrol linear, future-oriented temporal perspectives in reproducing ageism. The aftermath of the Brexit referendum followed closely by the covid-19 pandemic serve as my ethnographic examples. These two extraordinary events permit me to highlight how chronocracy (Kirtsoglou and Simpson 2020) – that is, the denial of coevalness or coexistence in time through everyday temporal regimes – reinforces unequal power dynamics, and to explore how generational groups are differently valued in contemporary England.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Degnen C

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Cultural Anthropology

Year: 2026

Volume: 41

Issue: 2

Pages: 193-217

Online publication date: 20/05/2026

Acceptance date: 24/06/2025

Date deposited: 21/05/2026

ISSN (print): 0886-7356

ISSN (electronic): 1548-1360

Publisher: American Anthropological Association

URL: https://journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca/article/view/5951

DOI: 10.14506/ca41.2.01

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