Social Gerontology: Older People and Everybody Else

2013 ◽  
pp. 45-58
Author(s):  
Christina Victor
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Social Gerontology

The relational making of people and place: the case of the Teignmouth World War II homefront

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 725-752 ◽  
Author(s):  
GAVIN J. ANDREWS
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Older People ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Gerontology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Military Networks

ABSTRACTBuilding on the pioneering research of a small number of gerontologists, this paper explores the rarely trodden common ground between the academic domains of social gerontology and modern history. Through empirical research it illustrates the complex networking that exists through space and time in the relational making of people and places. Indeed, the study focuses specifically on the lived reality and ongoing significance of life on the small-town British coastal homefront during World War II. Seventeen interviews with older residents of Teignmouth, Devon, United Kingdom, investigate two points in their lives: the ‘then’ (their historical experiences during this period) and the ‘then and now’ (how they continue to reverberate). In particular, their stories illustrate the relationalities that make each of these points. The first involves residents’ unique interactions during the war with structures and technologies (such as rules, bombs and barriers) and other people (such as soldiers and outsiders) which themselves were connected to wider historical, social, political and military networks. The second involves residents’ perceptions of their own and their town's wartime histories, how this gels or conflicts with public awareness, and how this history connects to their current lives. The paper closes with some thoughts on bringing together the past, present and older people in the same scholarship.

scholarly journals Medgeneracijsko sodelovanje: interes mladih za delo in pomoč starostnikom

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Goran Vukovič ◽  
Andrej Raspor ◽  
Nuša Erman ◽  
Bojan Macuh
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Older People ◽  
Elderly Care ◽  
Institutional Care ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Ageing Population ◽  
Social Gerontology ◽  
Professional Career ◽  
Homes For The Elderly ◽  
Trained Staff

The aim of the research is to present an interest of young people in giving help to the elderly through institutional and non-institutional care. We live in a time when global and consequently also Slovenian society became strongly aware of importance of the elderly as one of its consisting part. So, it has to be stressed that additional study programmes should be introduced which will bring education in various fields of social gerontology. This need was particularly emphasized during the COVID-19 epidemic, when all homes for the elderly faced the lack of trained staff. The aim of the paper is examination of a topic summarized in a questionnaire which was used to find out how well present and future students know problems of older people and their ways of life. We also asked them, whether they would be willing to dedicate their professional career to dealing with ageing population. We realised that young people know that work with the elderly is strenous. They are acquainted with problems of ageing and ways of older people living. Furthermore, they are aware that dealing with the elderly requires much benevolence, empathy and personal respect to other people. It is recommended that offer of education in a field of elderly care gets improved and upgraded. It would lead to a higher number of young people who would decide to enrol into educational programmes of social gerontology.

scholarly journals The ideology of ageism versus the social imaginary of the fourth age: two differing approaches to the negative contexts of old age

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (8) ◽  
pp. 1617-1630 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Higgs ◽  
Chris Gilleard
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Social Gerontology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Aspects

AbstractThe development of social gerontology has led to the emergence of its own terminology and conceptual armoury. ‘Ageism’ has been a key concept in articulating the mission of gerontology and was deliberately intended to act as an equivalent to the concepts of racism and sexism. As a term, it has established itself as a lodestone for thinking about the de-valued and residualised social status of older people in contemporary society. Given this background, ageism has often been used to describe an overarching ideology that operates in society to the detriment of older people and which in large part explains their economic, social and cultural marginality. This paper critiques this approach and suggests an alternative based upon the idea of the social imaginary of the fourth age. It argues that not only is the idea of ageism too totalising and contradictory but that it fails to address key aspects of the corporeality of old age. Adopting the idea of a social imaginary offers a more nuanced theoretical approach to the tensions that are present in later life without reducing them to a single external cause or explanation. In so doing, this leaves the term free to serve, in a purely descriptive manner, as a marker of prejudice.

Carework as a form of bodywork

2000 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
JULIA TWIGG
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Community Care ◽  
The Body ◽  
Dirty Work ◽  
Body Dimension ◽  
Social Gerontology ◽  
At Home

The paper argues for the importance of recognising carework as a form of bodywork. It discusses why this central dimension has been neglected in accounts of carework, pointing to the ways in which community care has traditionally been analysed, the resistance of social gerontology to an overly bodily emphasis, and the conceptual dominance of the debate on care. Drawing on a study of the provision of help with bathing and washing for older people at home, it explores the body dimension of the activity, looking at how careworkers negotiate nakedness and touch, manage dirt and disgust, balance intimacy and distance. Finally, the paper draws together some of the key themes of this bodywork: its designation as ‘dirty work’, its hidden, silenced character, the low occupational esteem in which it is held and its gendered nature.

The ever-breaking wave of everyday life: animating ageing movement-space

2018 ◽  
pp. 63-82
Author(s):  
Gavin J. Andrews ◽  
Amanda M. Grenier
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Breaking Wave ◽  
Social Gerontology ◽  
Conscious Thought

Older people move in cities, towns, across settings and in their homes and accommodations either in sync or out of sync with dominant flows, but certainly in their own unique ways. This chapter draws on Non-Representational Theory to think about how we might re-approach ageing movement in research and animate its happening. Specifically, it articulates five core facets or qualities of what might be termed ‘ageing movement-space’ that overflow conscious thought and action; rhythm and momentum, vitality and infectiousness, imminence and encounter. These, it is argued, might constitute key areas of a livelier social gerontology truer to the active world.

Consumption and Identity in Later Life: Toward a Cultural Gerontology

1996 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 489-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Social Gerontology ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Age Class ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Modern Mass

AbstractThis paper considers the role of contemporary consumer culture in helping older people re-fashion their own identity in later life. As a result of the expanding role played by consumption in modern mass societies, adult identities now are being denned as much by how people spend their time and money as by the goods and services they can produce. An increasing number of retired people are able to participate in this consumer culture, and in doing so are creating new possibilities of being ‘old’. The contemporary period, whether deemed ‘late’ or ‘post’ modernity, seems to present a growing challenge to the dominance of structures of age, class and gender in defining the nature of our personal identity. There is more emphasis upon the exercise of choice and agency across all periods of the lifespan. The means by which this process is enacted in the lives of pre- and post-retired people should become central to a new, culturally focused social gerontology.

The Aged and Diachronic Solidarity in Modern Society

1975 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 329-346
Author(s):  
Rainer C. Baum ◽  
Martha Baum
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Limited Evidence ◽  
Social Gerontology ◽  
Regime Stability ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Industrial Societies

Theory in social gerontology has mostly taken the individual as the main unit of inference. But one may learn more about the conditions of older people through a focus on diachronic solidarity conceptualized as a societal requisite. For this suggests that industrial societies have varying needs for older people. Depending on the stability of their institutions, identification with them, and presumptions about their stability, older people may or may not be accorded an important role in the symbolization of societal continuity. Limited evidence on the relation between income stratification by age and regime stability supports this hypothesis.

scholarly journals Citizenship and Old Age: The End of the Road?

1995 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Higgs
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Social Gerontology ◽  
Citizenship Rights ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Large Sections ◽  
Dependency Approach ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractThis paper is concerned with the interlinked issues of citizenship and the structured dependency of older people within Social Gerontology. It argues that implicit in much British Social Gerontology is a strategy of advancing the wellbeing of elderly people through the extension of citizenship rights. Absence of these rights leads to poverty, exclusion and ageism being commonplace experiences of large sections of the older population. This approach draws heavily on the ideas regarding social citizenship of T. H. Marshall who has influenced much mainstream social policy in Britain since 1945. Changes to the Welfare State since 1979 have seriously questioned the validity of this approach and many of these criticisms apply to the structured dependency approach. Recent work on citizenship can help us to see how the relationship between old age and citizenship has changed and how far theory in social gerontology needs to change to take account of these new circumstances.

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