Social Divisions and Later Life

Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard ◽  
Paul Higgs

This book is concerned with the social differences, divisions and diversity of later life. We argue that later life is no longer the marginalised category it once was. Instead, it is characterised by growing differences and divisions, including the divisions associated with class, gender, ethnicity and disability (infirmity). Many of these divides in later life echo and reflect similar divisions in working life. However, age and retirement create a new set of conditions that modifies both the nature and the consequences of these divisions. Each division, we suggest, is contingent upon both past and present influences. They are, in consequence, less sharply drawn and less clearly organised than similar divisions observed earlier in working life. Exploring these divisions and their various articulations in later life both illuminates the nature of the divisions themselves at the same time as highlighting the changing social locations that now constitute later life.

Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard ◽  
Paul Higgs

This chapter draws the distinction between social divisions that reflect structural patterns of inequality and social differences that express social identity and the articulation of communities of interest. It then goes on to consider some of the distinct features of such divisions and differences that help define the social locations of later life. These include the impact of the transition from working to post working life, the intersectionality that exists amongst these divisions and the growing salience of the body as both a site and source of division.


2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (8) ◽  
pp. 1681-1702 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRIS GILLEARD ◽  
PAUL HIGGS

ABSTRACTThis paper concerns the social divisions of later life. Although research in this field has focused on class, gender and, more recently, sexuality as sources of division in later life, the division between the fit and the frail has tended to be ignored or viewed as an outcome of these other divisions. This paper challenges this assumption, arguing that corporeality constitutes a major social division in later life. This in many ways prefigures a return to the 19th-century categorisation of those ‘impotent through age’, whose position was among the most abject in society. Their ‘impotence’ was framed by an inability to engage in paid labour. Improved living standards during and after working life saw age's impotence fade in significance and in the immediate post-war era, social concern turned towards the relative poverty of pensioners. Subsequent demographic ageing and the expanding cultures of the third age have undermined the homogeneity of retirement. Frailty has become a major source of social division, separating those who are merely older from those who are too old. This division excludes the ‘unsuccessfully’ aged from utilising the widening range of material and social goods that characterise the third age. It is this social divide rather than those of past occupation or income that is becoming a more salient line of fracture in later life.


Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard ◽  
Paul Higgs

This chapter addresses the question of intersectionality and the positioning of older people at points in a complex set of locations structured and leant upon by multiple sources of difference and inequality. It argues that social locations are no longer organised through simple binary divisions underpinned by single hierarchies of power and influence. Instead, identities and inequalities are located in the interstices that social divisions and differences form. The positioning both of age and of able-bodiedness, class, ethnicity, gender is rendered contingent by this intersectionality, making each of these potential divisions the source of at most a limited set of demi-regularities that constrain both the political claims of different social groups and the restrict the commonalities of different communities. The chapter concludes that intersectionality, though a much-contested concept, does draw attention to the social positioning of and social divisions within later life.


Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard ◽  
Paul Higgs

In the concluding chapter of the book, we summarise some of the main issues concerning social divisions and social differences in later life. First we stress the transformation of later life in second modernity, from its categorisation as a residuum, a role-less role, a residuum of a life once lived to a richer and more diverse set of social locations. It is not simply that older people have shifted from being a category of the poor to a subset of the rich. Such representations are both false and misleading. Still they constitute a partial fact, namely that older people have become more diverse and no longer capable of being categorised as a distinct class or community. This transition can be explored in terms both of classical social divisions, like class, gender, disability or ethnicity, as well as through social differences and distinctions realised through the lens of citizenship, consumption and community. We conclude by arguing that examining both divisions and differences, inequalities and identities, in later life enables both a greater understanding of the changing nature of later life and of the changing constitution of division in contemporary society.


Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard ◽  
Paul Higgs

This chapter highlights the importance of bodily impairment and infirmity in creating social divisions in later life. It begins with a consideration of what constitutes disability and impairment. It examines such distinctions and divisions in the light of the social model of disability and the distinction between ageing with disability and ageing into disability. While the former draws more easily upon the social model, the social identification with disability is more difficult for those whose adult lives have placed them in the position of being able-bodied adults. The confounding of age and disability represents not simply a social divide, but a divide within the person. While policies designed to serve older people as former workers who have become pensioners to some degree protects the financial interests of older disabled people, the absence of community framed by disability risks a greater social exclusion. The rise of policies designed both to encourage older people to be responsible for the success of their own ageing and to more strictly delineate distinctions (and entitlements) between the frail and the non-frail has sharpened this division. The difficulties are highlighted of aligning a social model of disability and the common interests of disabled people with a model based on frailty as an intersectional location fashioned around age disadvantage and disablement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
Arni Rahmah Wasdili ◽  
Iman Santoso

The tittle of this research is An AnalysisDeixis in “Nom nom’s Entourage” Manuscript on We are Bare BearsMovie Seaso. Deixis is one of branch from pragmatics that shown relation between language and context in that language it self. The aim from this research is to know and identify the type of deixis in Nom nom’s Entourage movie season. That have some steps to collecting the data firs is watching the We Are Bare Bears movie season with Nom nom’s Entourage title. Second is reading the script of that movie. Third, selecting and collect the data. Fourth is classifying the type of deixis and the last is produce the conclution. This research using descriptive qualitative method to analyze the data. The result from this research is that have five type of deixis there are person deixis, time deixis, place deixis, social deixis and discourse deixis. Person deixis divided to three part there are firs person as speaker, second person as hearer and third person as other, with 195 word in that movie. Time deixis shows a certain period of time, consist of 10 word in that movie. Place deixis describe the location in a conversation, consist of  26 word in that movie. Social deixis is show how the social differences when talking with other, consist of 18 word in that movie. Discourse deixis is show deitic expressions which point to prior succeeding parts of the discourse with 4 word in that movie. Keywords:  Pragmatics, Deixis, Movie


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard ◽  
Paul Higgs
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
David Dwan

Orwell’s writings repeatedly extol the virtues of solidarity, or what he liked to call brotherhood. But brotherhood was often something of an ordeal for Orwell as much as it was a coveted value and practice. The issue may be partly a question of character, but it also had a conceptual element: a) the compatibility of solidarity with other values, b) its internal coherence, as it sometimes re-enlists the social divisions it seeks to transcend, c) its problematic scope given its seemingly partisan nature, and d) its practicality in a modern social setting. This chapter examines these four issues in detail, showing how they contribute to the particular heft of Orwell’s writing—its angular sympathies and superbly uneven tone.


Author(s):  
Stephanie L. Derrick

The emphasis of this monograph has been on the historical, cultural, religious, and social factors that shaped C. S. Lewis and his reception. Until recently those who have considered the subject have attributed his popularity to virtues of the man himself. The fact that Lewis, in effect, was an image, a mitigated commercial product, a platform, has largely been overlooked. A critical component of Lewis’s reception is the opportunities that education provided the middle classes for social mobility in the twentieth century and the social divisions and anxieties attendant upon those evolutions. Of equal importance is the timing of Lewis’s life and publications with print history and the rise of mass media and entertainment. Lewis’s platform as a contrarian Christian resisting modernity and his reactions to the intellectual, social, and religious changes of his day made the critical difference to his transatlantic receptions.


Author(s):  
Sharon D. Welch

Assaults on truth and divisions about the nature of wise governance are not momentary political challenges, unique to particular moments in history. Rather, they demonstrate fundamental weaknesses in human reasoning and core dangers in ways of construing both individual freedom and cohesive communities. It will remain an ongoing challenge to learn to deal rationally with what is an intrinsic irrationality in human cognition and with what is an intrinsic tendency toward domination and violence in human collectivities. In times of intense social divisions, it is vital to consider the ways in which humanism might function as the social norm by, paradoxically, functioning in a way different from other social norms. Humanism is not the declaration that a certain set of values or norms are universally valid. At its best and most creative, humanism is not limited to a particular set of norms, but is, rather, the commitment to a certain process in which norms are continuously created, critically evaluated, implemented, sustained or revised. Humanism is a process of connection, perception, implementation, and critique, and it applies this process as much to itself as to other traditions.


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