Prologue

The Prologue sets the scene by describing the book’s protagonist on his deathbed in the late spring of 1797 and the thoughts that may well have come into his mind concerning his life before and, especially, during the French Revolution. It describes the principal source on which the study is based, the extensive correspondence from Colson to his friend, almost miraculously preserved in the archives of a small town in Central France. It also introduces some of the major themes to be examined. It argues that the life of Colson is important, first, as it throws light on the beliefs and behavior of the whole community of his neighbors on a small street in central Paris, many of whom would come to describe themselves as “sans-culottes”; second, as it illuminates his relations with the noble family for whom he worked as lawyer and financial accountant; and third, as it provides the example of a relatively elderly citizen in the Revolution—who was sixty-two years old in 1789. It concludes with a rapid overview of the chapters in the book.

Welfare Technologies and Ageing Bodies: Various Ways of Practising Autonomy

Contemporary policy strategies frame welfare technologies as a solution for welfare states facing the challenges of demographic change. Technologies are supposed to reduce or substitute the work of care workers and thereby reduce attrition among their ranks, reduce costs, and at the same make elderly people self-reliant and independent. In this paper, it is suggested that this way of framing how welfare technologies work with elderly people holds an instrumental view of technologies as well as of bodies and needs to be challenged. Drawing on an STS (Science Technology Studies) understanding of the constituting role of technology in people’s lives, the guiding question in this study is how autonomy is practised in the lives of elderly people using welfare technologies. The study is based on interviews with eight elderly citizens in a Danish municipality who have been provided with a wash toilet and often also other technologies as part of their welfare service package. The study shows how autonomy is practised in various ways, how autonomy is practised in specific areas of life linked to the specific life story and body of the elderly citizen, how autonomy is situational as it is practised in specific situations during the day/week, and how autonomy is relational as it is practised in relation to specific persons and things and with specific persons and things. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the implementation of welfare technology as well as forms of governance appropriate for embodied elderly citizens and technologies.

Municipal Representatives’ Accounts of Decision-Making Practices during Geriatric Case Conferences

This article addresses questions of elucidation in talk-in-interaction. How do social actors give accounts of what they are doing? To what degree do actors sustain a taken-for-granted level of reasoning? The analysis is based upon naturally occurring data consisting of a corpus of audio recorded case conferences at various geriatric wards in Danish hospitals. The article elaborates one of the important insights of Harold Garfinkel regarding the relationship between discourse and social interaction: as a general characteristic, people tend to treat their fellow interlocutors’ conversational contributions as adequate for-all-practical-purposes. Specifically, the article investigates how Danish municipal representatives account for their decisions about whether or not senior citizens are to be referred to residential homes. This practice, I demonstrate, is characterized by non-explicitness with regards to rules and regulations. Instead, municipal representatives make use of developmental discourse: a worsened condition is used to justify a referral to a residential home. On the other hand, an improved condition is used to justify that an elderly citizen is not referred to a residential home.

The experience of others and becoming a senior citizen

The study aims to describe the perception of seniors on the exercise of citizenship in the light of the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, based on the notion of the sexed body and the other's body. Discloses was from the participation of 13 elderly, members of acquaintance groups in the city of Jequié/BA, which produced experiential descriptions in three focus group meetings, during the month of April in 2012. Such descriptions were submitted to ambiguity analytics, a technique that consists in suspending the theories and notice the ambiguities inherent in them. From this analysis, two categories have emerged: being an elderly citizen in the expression of the sexed body and being an elderly citizen in the expression of the other's body. The reflections have shown that the inclusion of elderly women in acquaintance groups and their desire to exercise citizenship occur, primarily, by the need to be accepted in society and recognized as subjects of law.

The medical and demographic situation in Kazan in the late XX and XXI centuries

Aim. To assess the demographic situation in the city of Kazan in 1995-2010. Methods. An assessment has been conducted based on the analysis of the dynamics of population size and composition, indices of fertility and mortality. Calculations of intensive and extensive indicators and their dynamic comparison were used as the research methods. Results. The maximum value of natural decrease in the population of Kazan, resulting from excess mortality above the level of fertility, fall on the period 2000-2001. However, beginning from 2002 this parameter began to decrease, and in 2010, when the rates of mortality and fertility equaled, registered was a zero natural growth. Reduction in the total fertility rate of the population of the city in the last decade of the twentieth century gave way to the growth of this indicator in 2001-2010. In the structure of mortality of the population in the city of Kazan the leaders are diseases of the cardiovascular system (61.1%), then - malignant tumors (16.3%), followed by - traums, poisoning and accidents (10.3%). The mortality remains high in the working-age population and almost a four-fold prevalence of middle age male mortality over female mortality has been established. The slight increase in the population of Kazan is due to the influx of migrants to the city and to the annexation of the village communities to the city. In the population structure the proportion of middle-aged and elderly citizen increases, while the proportion of children decreases. Conclusion. The demographic situation, which determines the strategy of organization of medical care for the population, should be under the survailance of the society.

POLÍTICAS PÚBLICAS: A CONSTRUÇÃO DE IMAGENS E SENTIDOS PARA O ENVELHECIMENTO HUMANO.

RESUMO:O presente estudo visa analisar as políticas públicas brasileiras dirigidas à população idosa e examinar suas ressonâncias na produção de sentidos e imagens sobre o processo de envelhecimento. Para tanto, procuramos traçar cartografias que pudessem mapear figuras produtoras de sentido acerca do envelhecimento, percorrendo algumas políticas formuladas para a essa faixa etária, desde a década de 1920 até a criação do Estatuto do Idoso, no ano de 2003. Verificamos que o aparecimento de políticas públicas para a velhice ocorreu como resposta ao desafio de se gerir e controlar os rumos do processo de envelhecimento diante do crescimento da população idosa. O Estatuto do Idoso é um marco importante do avanço da gestão do Estado sobre a velhice e da substituição de um modelo assistencialista-filantrópico para um modelo preventivo e calcado na promoção de uma longevidade saudável e produtiva. Com isso, ao lado da figura do idoso adoecido e inativo começam a surgir figurações de um envelhecimento saudável e potente, atravessadas por imagens de vitalidade e rejuvenescimento.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Velhice. Políticas Públicas. Terceira Idade. ABSTRACT The present study aims to analyze the Brazilian public policies made for the elderly citizen population and to examine their resonance in the production of senses and images on the process of aging. For this, we draw cartographies that could find producing figures of sense about the aging, passing through some politics formulated for to this age group, since the decade of 1920 until the creation of the “Estatuto do Idoso”, in 2003. We checked that the appearance of public policies for the old age happened as an answer to the challenge of managing and controlling the aging process courses in front of the increase of the elderly citizen population. The “Estatuto do Idoso” is an important landmark of the management advance of the State upon the oldness and of the substitution of an philanthropic-assistance model for a preventive model which is based on the promotion of a healthy and productive longevity. With that, next to the figure of the sick and inactive elderly , it begins to appear figurations of a healthy and powerful aging, crossed by images of vitality and rejuvenation. KEYWORDS: Old age. Public Policies. Third Age.

Product Design Needs for the Elderly Consumer

The slowing down of general bodily functioning and the dulling of the sensory and motor processes that accompany aging, dictate the need for designing special equipment so that the elderly citizen can function effectively and independently as a member of society. Examples may be found in labeling, devices to help in opening jars and medicine bottles, counter-balanced doors, special “helps” for bathroom activities, and warning devices for the hearing impaired. This forum will serve to identify special product needs for the elderly consumer by bringing together members of the technical groups on consumer products, aging, and safety. Moreover, the methodologies used by these three groups will be discussed in light of the elderly consumer with special emphasis being directed towards the modifications and synthesis needed in these methodologies to obtain the required information.