This paper offers a realist critique of socialresearch on health inequalities. A conspectus of thefield of health inequalities research identifies twomain research approaches: the positivist quantitativesurvey and the interpretivist qualitative `casestudy'. We argue that both approaches suffer fromserious philosophical limitations. We suggest that aturn to realism offers a productive `third way' bothfor the development of health inequality research inparticular and for the social scientific understandingof the complexities of the social world in general.

In this article we focus upon the embodiment of vulnerability as an area in which medicine, society and the humanities can be profitably conjoined. We illustrate our argument with two interrelated case studies of narratives of the embodiment of ageing and longevity. First, we draw upon Leoš Janáček’s opera The Makropulos Case (1926) as a locus for debates about human longevity. Second, we discuss 70-year-old Janáček’s decade of unrequited love for a woman 37 years younger than himself, through an examination (...) of their intimate letters. We suggest that both the opera and elements of Janáček’s biography illuminate the passionate emotions that are often hidden behind ‘the mask of ageing’. Finally, we propose that a focus on the embodiment of vulnerability is a productive catalyst for research on narratives of ageing. (shrink)