Social Divisions and Later Life

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard ◽  
Paul Higgs
Keyword(s):  
Later Life ◽  
Social Divisions

The ‘elected’ and the ‘excluded’: sociological perspectives on the experience of place and community in old age

2007 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRIS PHILLIPSON
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Community Change ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Community Attachments

This article explores various issues concerned with belonging and identity in the context of community change and residential location. It examines the changing nature of community attachments in later life, and their impacts on the quality of old age lives. It also notes the increased importance of environmental perspectives within gerontology, not least because environments are being transformed through the diverse social, cultural and economic changes associated with globalisation. The argument is developed that globalisation offers a new approach to thinking about community and environmental relationships in later life, and that the impact of global change at a local level has become an important dimension of sociological aspects of community change. It is argued that it is especially important to apply these perspectives to older people, given that many have resided in the same locality for long periods. At the same time, globalisation also gives rise to new types of movement in old age, and is constructing an expanding mix of spaces, communities and lifestyle settings. A key argument of the article, however, is that global processes are generating new social divisions, as between those able to choose residential locations consistent with their biographies and life histories, and those who experience rejection or marginalisation from their locality.

scholarly journals Ageing, corporeality and social divisions in later life

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (8) ◽  
pp. 1681-1702 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRIS GILLEARD ◽  
PAUL HIGGS
Keyword(s):  
Later Life ◽  
Demographic Ageing ◽  
Social Division ◽  
Third Age ◽  
The Third ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
Social Divide ◽  
The 19Th Century

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.

Social Divisions and Later Life

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard ◽  
Paul Higgs
Keyword(s):  
Later Life ◽  
Social Divisions

Social divisions and social differences

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard ◽  
Paul Higgs
Keyword(s):  
Working Life ◽  
Later Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Differences ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Communities Of Interest ◽  
A Site ◽  
Distinct Features ◽  
The Impact

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.

Identity and intersectionality

2020 ◽  
pp. 123-140
Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard ◽  
Paul Higgs
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Later Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Social Positioning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Power And Influence

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.

Intersections of Ageing, Gender and Sexualities

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Ageing Population ◽  
Social Divisions

With an increasingly diverse ageing population, we need to expand our understanding of how social divisions intersect to affect outcomes in later life. This edited collection examines ageing, gender and sexualities from multidisciplinary and geographically diverse perspectives and looks at how these factors combine with other social divisions to affect experiences of ageing. It draws on theory and empirical data to provide both conceptual knowledge and clear ‘real-world’ illustrations, and includes section introductions to guide the reader through the debates and ideas.

Diversity, difference and division in later life

2020 ◽  
pp. 141-162
Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard ◽  
Paul Higgs
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Social Differences ◽  
Distinct Class ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Second Modernity ◽  
The Rich

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.

Dependency, Relationality, Power, and Situatedness

Being Born ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 85-117
Author(s):  
Alison Stone
Keyword(s):  
Early Life ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Self ◽  
Adult Care ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Care Givers ◽  
The World

This chapter looks at four features of human existence—dependency, the relationality of the self, embeddedness in social power, and situatedness—and shows how they are connected with birth. We are dependent both as infants and children—natal dependency—and also to varying degrees throughout life. Because we begin life dependent on adult care, we attach to our care-givers very intensely; these attachments shape our selves and personality structures, partly through processes of identification as they are theorized in psychoanalysis. This makes us highly receptive in early life to social power relations, which even shape our possibilities for criticizing social power in later life. Finally, at birth we begin life situated within the world with respect to many variables, including culture; gender, race, class, and other social divisions; geography; history; body; and placement in a specific set of personal and wider relationships such as kin networks and generations.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document