Pub Date : 2024-11-12DOI: 10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101280
Stephen Katz
This Commentary discusses the key areas of thought brought together in this special issue on ‘Aging Together-With: The Growing Older of Humans, Non-Humans and More-Than-Humans’, edited by Michela Cozza and Anna Wanka. In particular, the articles in this issue present original and insightful discussions about the relational, material, embodied and interactive nature of ‘aging together-with’ environments, technologies, animals and pets, and more, across plural and hybrid temporalities and vital spaces of life. My writing both looks outward to where this issue critiques and advances current trends in aging studies and inward to reflect on my own contributions to these trends.
{"title":"Aging together-with: The growing older of humans, non-humans and more-than-humans. A commentary","authors":"Stephen Katz","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101280","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101280","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This Commentary discusses the key areas of thought brought together in this special issue on ‘Aging Together-With: The Growing Older of Humans, Non-Humans and More-Than-Humans’, edited by Michela Cozza and Anna Wanka. In particular, the articles in this issue present original and insightful discussions about the relational, material, embodied and interactive nature of ‘aging together-with’ environments, technologies, animals and pets, and more, across plural and hybrid temporalities and vital spaces of life. My writing both looks outward to where this issue critiques and advances current trends in aging studies and inward to reflect on my own contributions to these trends.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"71 ","pages":"Article 101280"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142654614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-09DOI: 10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101285
Kristina Chelberg , Linda Steele
Dementia is known to unequally affect women, whether as women living with dementia, or women who provide unwaged or paid care, yet dementia and long-term care (‘LTC’) research and policy often ignore gender. Using Australia as a case study and building on critical dementia, critical disability, and feminist scholarship, this discourse analysis study explored representations in the Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety (‘ACRC’) Final Report of experiences of women with dementia, and women care partners of people with dementia, using long-term care. This paper argues gender remained an overlooked topic in relation to dementia in the ACRC Final Report. This paper found women and dementia were co-constructed according to normative gendered scripts of passive femininity. In particular, harms experienced by women with dementia in long-term care were overlooked, while the feminised labour of women care partners was taken for granted. In failing to address normative gendered patterns, the ACRC Final Report entrenches rather than unseats marginalisation of women in dementia research and policy and is a missed opportunity to address gendered labour, discrimination and harms in long-term care. Ultimately, the paper highlights the need to recognise long-term care as a key site for critical dementia and feminist scholarly and activist interventions and intersectional approaches in reforms.
{"title":"Hidden in plain sight: Women and gendered dementia dynamics in the Australian Aged Care Royal Commission","authors":"Kristina Chelberg , Linda Steele","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101285","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101285","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Dementia is known to unequally affect women, whether as women living with dementia, or women who provide unwaged or paid care, yet dementia and long-term care (‘LTC’) research and policy often ignore gender. Using Australia as a case study and building on critical dementia, critical disability, and feminist scholarship, this discourse analysis study explored representations in the Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety (‘ACRC’) Final Report of experiences of women with dementia, and women care partners of people with dementia, using long-term care. This paper argues gender remained an overlooked topic in relation to dementia in the ACRC Final Report. This paper found women and dementia were co-constructed according to normative gendered scripts of passive femininity. In particular, harms experienced by women with dementia in long-term care were overlooked, while the feminised labour of women care partners was taken for granted. In failing to address normative gendered patterns, the ACRC Final Report entrenches rather than unseats marginalisation of women in dementia research and policy and is a missed opportunity to address gendered labour, discrimination and harms in long-term care. Ultimately, the paper highlights the need to recognise long-term care as a key site for critical dementia and feminist scholarly and activist interventions and intersectional approaches in reforms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"71 ","pages":"Article 101285"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142654196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-09DOI: 10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101284
Hans-Georg Eilenberger , Jenny Slatman
Today’s social gerontology of the body consists of an archipelago of different ideas and approaches. Social constructionism, phenomenology and other prominent frameworks come with distinctive and often unexamined assumptions about what a body is and does. These assumptions have given rise to competing understandings of key concepts, such as embodiment and the biological/material/physical body. In this paper, we propose an comprehensive approach to embodiment in later life that takes the phenomenological and existential significance of ambiguity as its starting point. Taking ambiguity seriously has the potential to overcome unfruitful conceptual distinctions. We draw on phenomenological philosophy, both in our methodological and theoretical choices. Our findings are based on an interview study that inquired into various aspects of older people’s lived experience (n=16; aged above 65). Our concrete theoretical frame builds on the notion of “bodily responsivity” derived from the work of Bernhard Waldenfels. Analysing the empirical material through the lens of bodily responsivity, we identify four distinct ways in which participants responded to the unfolding of ageing: the “bodily I,” “bodily it,” “bodily you” and “bodily we.”
{"title":"Four modes of embodiment in later life","authors":"Hans-Georg Eilenberger , Jenny Slatman","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101284","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101284","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Today’s social gerontology of the body consists of an archipelago of different ideas and approaches. Social constructionism, phenomenology and other prominent frameworks come with distinctive and often unexamined assumptions about what a body is and does. These assumptions have given rise to competing understandings of key concepts, such as embodiment and the biological/material/physical body. In this paper, we propose an comprehensive approach to embodiment in later life that takes the phenomenological and existential significance of ambiguity as its starting point. Taking ambiguity seriously has the potential to overcome unfruitful conceptual distinctions. We draw on phenomenological philosophy, both in our methodological and theoretical choices. Our findings are based on an interview study that inquired into various aspects of older people’s lived experience (<em>n</em>=16; aged above 65). Our concrete theoretical frame builds on the notion of “bodily responsivity” derived from the work of Bernhard Waldenfels. Analysing the empirical material through the lens of bodily responsivity, we identify four distinct ways in which participants responded to the unfolding of ageing: the “bodily I,” “bodily it,” “bodily you” and “bodily we.”</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"71 ","pages":"Article 101284"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142654617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-07DOI: 10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101281
Christian Maravelias
Governments need individuals to be willing and able to work as they age. Yet, studies of older individuals' employability report that labor markets become more rather than less restrictive when it comes to employing older people. The Swedish labor market is a case in point. Recent surveys and governmental reports show that job seekers' employability begins to decrease when they are in their 40s. Through interviews with jobseekers, employer representatives, and human resources and recruitment specialists, the paper examines the employability of older individuals in Sweden. It focuses on knowledge-intensive service occupations, where seniority and age may be considered strengths rather than mere liabilities. It shows that individuals who are proactive about their professional development and strive to ‘age well’ are still excluded from recruitment processes because of their age. Yet, they are not excluded due to ageism in the form of negative prejudice against older job seekers. Rather, they are excluded because employers and recruiters perceive them as being too focused on professional development and lacking the naïve, ‘just-do-it’ mentality of younger job seekers. Furthermore, their professionalism and experience are viewed as factors that make them stand out as potential threats to the managerial hierarchy. Using a governmentality lens, the study contributes to critical research on the intersection of successful aging and employability discourses by addressing a question this research raises but has left unanswered: why are younger job seekers sometimes preferred over older ones, even when employers know they are less skilled, less experienced, and not as proactive or eager to develop professionally? The analysis reveals a rift in the ableism reinforced by the neoliberal discourses on successful aging and employability. While they explicitly emphasize self-governance and proactivity, they implicitly build on individuals' subjection to hierarchical control. The older job seekers match the explicit precepts of the neoliberal discourses yet are excluded because they fail to match the implicit ones. The analysis, therefore, suggests that age is the factor revealing this divide within neoliberal governmentality.
{"title":"“Aging well” in knowledge-intensive service professions in Sweden – The idealization of youth in neoliberal labor markets","authors":"Christian Maravelias","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101281","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101281","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Governments need individuals to be willing and able to work as they age. Yet, studies of older individuals' employability report that labor markets become more rather than less restrictive when it comes to employing older people. The Swedish labor market is a case in point. Recent surveys and governmental reports show that job seekers' employability begins to decrease when they are in their 40s. Through interviews with jobseekers, employer representatives, and human resources and recruitment specialists, the paper examines the employability of older individuals in Sweden. It focuses on knowledge-intensive service occupations, where seniority and age may be considered strengths rather than mere liabilities. It shows that individuals who are proactive about their professional development and strive to ‘age well’ are still excluded from recruitment processes because of their age. Yet, they are not excluded due to ageism in the form of negative prejudice against older job seekers. Rather, they are excluded because employers and recruiters perceive them as being too focused on professional development and lacking the naïve, ‘just-do-it’ mentality of younger job seekers. Furthermore, their professionalism and experience are viewed as factors that make them stand out as potential threats to the managerial hierarchy. Using a governmentality lens, the study contributes to critical research on the intersection of successful aging and employability discourses by addressing a question this research raises but has left unanswered: why are younger job seekers sometimes preferred over older ones, even when employers know they are less skilled, less experienced, and not as proactive or eager to develop professionally? The analysis reveals a rift in the ableism reinforced by the neoliberal discourses on successful aging and employability. While they explicitly emphasize self-governance and proactivity, they implicitly build on individuals' subjection to hierarchical control. The older job seekers match the explicit precepts of the neoliberal discourses yet are excluded because they fail to match the implicit ones. The analysis, therefore, suggests that age is the factor revealing this divide within neoliberal governmentality.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"71 ","pages":"Article 101281"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142654615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-05DOI: 10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101286
Yaqi Yuan , Shun Yuan Yeo , Kristen Schultz Lee
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of people across the globe. Previous studies on the impact of the pandemic in North American contexts have shown that older adults are particularly vulnerable when facing the challenges brought by the pandemic. However, little is known about older women's experiences during the pandemic explicitly. Even less is known about the Asian contexts which are characterized by different beliefs about family, social solidarity, and the role of the government. How did older Singaporean women navigate the restrictions set by the government during the pandemic and what variations in social engagement were observed? To answer these questions, we analyze two rounds of in-depth interviews with 40 Singaporean older women aged 55 and above using a modified grounded theory approach. We identify three patterns of social engagement: decreased and weakened, intensified, and continuity. It was generally those who reported strong networks who either maintained or further intensified their social engagements. As for the sources of social connection, respondents drew primarily on family, but also on friends and other community resources, in seeking social engagement during the pandemic. The findings from our study uncover the variety of ways in which older Singaporean women responded to the constraints imposed on social engagement in the context of a pandemic, and the connections between social resources and social engagement.
{"title":"Social engagement among older women in Singapore during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Yaqi Yuan , Shun Yuan Yeo , Kristen Schultz Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101286","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101286","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of people across the globe. Previous studies on the impact of the pandemic in North American contexts have shown that older adults are particularly vulnerable when facing the challenges brought by the pandemic. However, little is known about older women's experiences during the pandemic explicitly. Even less is known about the Asian contexts which are characterized by different beliefs about family, social solidarity, and the role of the government. How did older Singaporean women navigate the restrictions set by the government during the pandemic and what variations in social engagement were observed? To answer these questions<strong>,</strong> we analyze two rounds of in-depth interviews with 40 Singaporean older women aged 55 and above using a modified grounded theory approach. We identify three patterns of social engagement: decreased and weakened, intensified, and continuity. It was generally those who reported strong networks who either maintained or further intensified their social engagements. As for the sources of social connection, respondents drew primarily on family, but also on friends and other community resources, in seeking social engagement during the pandemic. The findings from our study uncover the variety of ways in which older Singaporean women responded to the constraints imposed on social engagement in the context of a pandemic, and the connections between social resources and social engagement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"71 ","pages":"Article 101286"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142586019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-05DOI: 10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101282
Valerie Wright , Melanie Lovatt
Older age is often conceptualised as a stage of life in which the future is considered to be less relevant than the past. This is reflected in literature that emphasises the importance of the past in later life but overlooks the significance of the future. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by analysing narratives that older people write about the future. We do this through secondary analysis of diary entries written by older respondents to the British Mass Observation Project in 1988, in response to a directive about time. The aim of our analysis was to develop conceptual understandings of the relationship between older age and future time. Our thematic analysis identified four main orientations that respondents had towards the future: dreading the future; time running out; taking one day at a time; thinking beyond finitude. Underpinning all of these was a reluctance to contemplate and plan for changes in physical and cognitive health and future care needs, a finding echoed in more recent research. Drawing on critical time perspectives that foreground the fluid, complex and social nature of time, we suggest that reluctance to acknowledge and plan for the future in later life reflects conceptualisations of the future as unpredictable and inseparable from past and present temporalities. This contrasts with more instrumentalist ageing discourses that imply the future can be ‘managed’ from the present. We conclude by calling for a greater repertoire of how we imagine and narrate the future in later life.
{"title":"Thinking about the future in older age","authors":"Valerie Wright , Melanie Lovatt","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101282","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101282","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Older age is often conceptualised as a stage of life in which the future is considered to be less relevant than the past. This is reflected in literature that emphasises the importance of the past in later life but overlooks the significance of the future. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by analysing narratives that older people write about the future. We do this through secondary analysis of diary entries written by older respondents to the British Mass Observation Project in 1988, in response to a directive about time. The aim of our analysis was to develop conceptual understandings of the relationship between older age and future time. Our thematic analysis identified four main orientations that respondents had towards the future: <em>dreading the future; time running out; taking one day at a time; thinking beyond finitude</em>. Underpinning all of these was a reluctance to contemplate and plan for changes in physical and cognitive health and future care needs, a finding echoed in more recent research. Drawing on critical time perspectives that foreground the fluid, complex and social nature of time, we suggest that reluctance to acknowledge and plan for the future in later life reflects conceptualisations of the future as unpredictable and inseparable from past and present temporalities. This contrasts with more instrumentalist ageing discourses that imply the future can be ‘managed’ from the present. We conclude by calling for a greater repertoire of how we imagine and narrate the future in later life.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"71 ","pages":"Article 101282"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142586343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-01DOI: 10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101283
Leonoor Gräler, Martijn Felder, Hester van de Bovenkamp
Due to an increased policy focus on informal care in many Western countries, professionals and informal caregivers increasingly grow more interdependent. Increased involvement of informal caregivers in professional care has consequences for the work of professionals, the care that is received by care recipients, and the role of informal caregivers. Care needs to be negotiated between them within the dynamic networks of care recipients and caregivers (i.e., “care convoys”). Scant attention has been given to objects as part of these convoys and negotiations. Therefore, in this paper, we answer the question: How do objects become part of and what is their role in the negotiations between healthcare professionals and informal caregivers? We use interview data from 48 participants (care recipients, professionals, informal caregivers, and persons in managerial positions). In the results, we discuss how objects, in terms of their affordances and the values they embody, become important in the relationship between professionals and informal caregivers and how they become part of negotiations on quality of care. We find that seemingly mundane objects become topics of conversation to address more fundamental concerns in how healthcare is organized for and provided to individual care recipients. Our study helps to open the care convoys model to objects as important actors and further understand the politics within care convoys.
{"title":"The role of objects in negotiations in convoys of care: Addressing fundamental concerns of informal caregivers","authors":"Leonoor Gräler, Martijn Felder, Hester van de Bovenkamp","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101283","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101283","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Due to an increased policy focus on informal care in many Western countries, professionals and informal caregivers increasingly grow more interdependent. Increased involvement of informal caregivers in professional care has consequences for the work of professionals, the care that is received by care recipients, and the role of informal caregivers. Care needs to be negotiated between them within the dynamic networks of care recipients and caregivers (i.e., “care convoys”). Scant attention has been given to objects as part of these convoys and negotiations. Therefore, in this paper, we answer the question: <em>How do objects become part of and what is their role in the negotiations between healthcare professionals and informal caregivers?</em> We use interview data from 48 participants (care recipients, professionals, informal caregivers, and persons in managerial positions). In the results, we discuss how objects, in terms of their affordances and the values they embody, become important in the relationship between professionals and informal caregivers and how they become part of negotiations on quality of care. We find that seemingly mundane objects become topics of conversation to address more fundamental concerns in how healthcare is organized for and provided to individual care recipients. Our study helps to open the care convoys model to objects as important actors and further understand the politics within care convoys.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"71 ","pages":"Article 101283"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142572305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-10-22DOI: 10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101279
Linda McAuliffe, Deirdre Fetherstonhaugh, Jo-Anne Rayner, Samantha Clune
Activity programs are run by many nursing homes (also known as residential aged care facilities or long-term care facilities) however little is known about how activities are chosen or how well they meet the needs of residents. The aim of this study was to learn more about activity programs currently offered to older people living in nursing homes in Victoria, Australia. Interviews were undertaken with 13 activities/lifestyle staff working across six nursing homes. Staff were asked about their role and training; how activities were chosen, run, and evaluated; and barriers to providing social participation opportunities for residents. Thematic analysis of interview transcripts revealed six main themes: the role of the activities staff is to make people happy and meet their needs; activities staff largely choose (group based) activities; evaluation of activity programs is mostly informal; activity programs are poorly resourced; staff are often required to ‘go beyond’; and catering to the unique needs of residents is challenging. Given the established importance of social interaction to physical and psychosocial health, it is essential that activity programs and staff are viewed as integral to resident wellbeing; that staff are trained and supported; and that programs are funded and resourced adequately to deliver programs that are person-centred and meet the needs and preferences of residents.
{"title":"Having to ‘go beyond’: Staff perspectives on activity programs for older people living in nursing homes","authors":"Linda McAuliffe, Deirdre Fetherstonhaugh, Jo-Anne Rayner, Samantha Clune","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101279","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101279","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Activity programs are run by many nursing homes (also known as residential aged care facilities or long-term care facilities) however little is known about how activities are chosen or how well they meet the needs of residents. The aim of this study was to learn more about activity programs currently offered to older people living in nursing homes in Victoria, Australia. Interviews were undertaken with 13 activities/lifestyle staff working across six nursing homes. Staff were asked about their role and training; how activities were chosen, run, and evaluated; and barriers to providing social participation opportunities for residents. Thematic analysis of interview transcripts revealed six main themes: the role of the activities staff is to make people happy and meet their needs; activities staff largely choose (group based) activities; evaluation of activity programs is mostly informal; activity programs are poorly resourced; staff are often required to ‘go beyond’; and catering to the unique needs of residents is challenging. Given the established importance of social interaction to physical and psychosocial health, it is essential that activity programs and staff are viewed as integral to resident wellbeing; that staff are trained and supported; and that programs are funded and resourced adequately to deliver programs that are person-centred and meet the needs and preferences of residents.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"71 ","pages":"Article 101279"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142531229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-10-22DOI: 10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101278
Deborah Lupton
Engaging with the special issue's theme of ‘The growing older of humans, non-humans and more-than-humans’, this commentary provides an overview of how social theory has engaged with the ageing body. Beginning with discussion of initial scholarship in the sociology of the body, the commentary provides thoughts on how more-than-human theory, both ‘old’ and ‘new’ materialisms, can contribute to a deeper understanding of how human bodies age alongside nonhuman living things, situated in place and space. This approach acknowledges the distributed forces, agencies and capacities that are generated with and through the relational encounters of humans with nonhuman agents as they move through the life course. The commentary ends with some suggestions for incorporating a ‘gerontology of everything’ perspective into ageing studies as a step towards more-than-human mutual flourishing.
{"title":"Towards a gerontology of everything: A more-than-human perspective","authors":"Deborah Lupton","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101278","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101278","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Engaging with the special issue's theme of ‘The growing older of humans, non-humans and more-than-humans’, this commentary provides an overview of how social theory has engaged with the ageing body. Beginning with discussion of initial scholarship in the sociology of the body, the commentary provides thoughts on how more-than-human theory, both ‘old’ and ‘new’ materialisms, can contribute to a deeper understanding of how human bodies age alongside nonhuman living things, situated in place and space. This approach acknowledges the distributed forces, agencies and capacities that are generated with and through the relational encounters of humans with nonhuman agents as they move through the life course. The commentary ends with some suggestions for incorporating a ‘gerontology of everything’ perspective into ageing studies as a step towards more-than-human mutual flourishing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"71 ","pages":"Article 101278"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142531228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-10-19DOI: 10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101276
Alexandra Crampton , Cati Coe
The Aging Enterprise was first coined by Carol Estes to critique the hegemony of a gerontological discourse and policy in the United States in the 1970s. These policy interventions seemed to be serving the needs of policy-makers and aging professionals, rather than those of older adults. More recently she wrote on how these interventions limited the possibilities of the gerontological imagination and focused attention on “old age” as a social problem. This paper builds on her work and that of Lawrence Cohen to examine the reach of the Aging Enterprise in Ghana, a country with limited state investments in aging. Bringing together two research projects, we are able to make our argument through an examination of aging policy and interventions in the public and private sectors, including across academic institutions, NGOs, churches, and markets. In our analysis, we propose the term age enterprising instead of the Aging Enterprise for three reasons. One, the discourse which situates old age as a problem has not been fully imported to Ghana, but instead becomes adapted to local ways that aging is constructed as a problem. Second, the discourses of age enterprises should not be taken at face value, as their projects can often fail, especially in the short run. Finally, we see a mix of different age enterprises which do not concatenate to create a monolithic force, but which diverge in key ways, thus creating a much more contingent and contradictory set of discourses around aging.
{"title":"Age enterprising: “Old” age on the make in Ghana","authors":"Alexandra Crampton , Cati Coe","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101276","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2024.101276","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The Aging Enterprise was first coined by Carol Estes to critique the hegemony of a gerontological discourse and policy in the United States in the 1970s. These policy interventions seemed to be serving the needs of policy-makers and aging professionals, rather than those of older adults. More recently she wrote on how these interventions limited the possibilities of the gerontological imagination and focused attention on “old age” as a social problem. This paper builds on her work and that of Lawrence Cohen to examine the reach of the Aging Enterprise in Ghana, a country with limited state investments in aging. Bringing together two research projects, we are able to make our argument through an examination of aging policy and interventions in the public and private sectors, including across academic institutions, NGOs, churches, and markets. In our analysis, we propose the term age enterprising instead of the Aging Enterprise for three reasons. One, the discourse which situates old age as a problem has not been fully imported to Ghana, but instead becomes adapted to local ways that aging is constructed as a problem. Second, the discourses of age enterprises should not be taken at face value, as their projects can often fail, especially in the short run. Finally, we see a mix of different age enterprises which do not concatenate to create a monolithic force, but which diverge in key ways, thus creating a much more contingent and contradictory set of discourses around aging.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"71 ","pages":"Article 101276"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142531227","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：
京公网安备 11010802042870号