Session 9: Elders in Company
1st Global Conference
Friday 3rd July – Saturday 5th July 2009
Mansfield College, Oxford
Human Life: A Social Collaborative Itinerary?
Alexandre Maas
University for Humanistics, Erasmus University Rotterdam/RSM, The Netherlands
In my Inaugural Address Shades of grey (to appear in March 2009) I explore the social and behavioural positioning of especially ageing people in their social contexts. Main argument is that in a society where individualism and entitatism (the thinking in entities like the market, the institution, the policy, the technology) are hailed, one is forgetting that we (young and old people) are in a collaborative or relational process with other people. We enter into daily relationships carrying with us a history of relations. Through interaction and communication the world and our identity come to be what they are for us. As a consequence, in defining ourselves, we position the other who is positioning us. Ongoing. In multiple contexts, places or spaces, at different times.
In the paper I elaborate what such a perspective could mean for older humans in particular. Who are the stakeholders in the relational practice of an ageing man or woman? How does older people work together to shape their world, and what is their relational context? I consider literature in several disciplines and try to make sense of which behavioural arguments could be elaborated in such a social relational perspective. I also explore what such a relational stand means for elderly entering a new, or unwanted context; how a relational perspective can be connected with changes and transformations ageing people encounter, and which implications such a stand has for the way we have (dis)organized especially our communities? A main perspective there is: How can we reconnect our elderly homes to community, and organize communities in cities and villages in such a way that people can ageing within the community is taken for granted. The concept of Community Sourcing based on a social relational perspective offers opportunities for the future, as I will elaborate.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
Get Me To A Nunnery: A Reflection on Ageing in Two Different Cultural Contexts, The Nursing Home and the Religious Convent
Christina (Ina) Olohan
Gardenrath Road, Kells, County Meath, Ireland
When considering the experience of ageing it is not long before the themes of home, belonging and identity emerge in the discussion. Based on collected narratives this article looks at a group of older religious sisters in Ireland and explores how their particular personal and cultural contexts influences how they perceive and experience moving away from a convent where some of them have lived for 70 years. Their communal migration contrasts with that of lay people moving to the nursing home, which is usually experienced alone and unaccompanied. The article draws on a qualitative research project conducted in Ireland and Australia which critically reviews the increasing marginalisation of older people in a postmodern society. The data demonstrate that the experience of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ and ‘identity’ in the two types of institutions differ markedly from each other. In terms of communal living, the convent inhabitants comprise of a cohesive group that enjoy long-term relationship and continuity of life and purpose. In contrast the aged-care institution is a contracted environment where identity and relationship are at best an individual concern but are generally seen as subordinate to a biomedical model of care.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
Social Networks of Older People: Negotiating the Moral Landscape of Kinship and Friendship
Christine Stephens
School of Psychology -Te Kura Hinengaro Tangata, Massey University, Aotearoa/New Zealand
Social relationships have been shown to have important influences on the physical and mental health of elders. Although there is acknowledgement in the social support and social network literature that not all relationships are supportive or healthy, there is much less attention to the complexity of social ties in the everyday lives of older people. In this presentation we describe a discursive narrative analysis of interviews that were conducted with fifty people aged 55-70 years in New Zealand to investigate their social connections. Narrative structures allow people to describe their social networks within the context of everyday social interactions and across the events of a life story. A discursive approach shows how such relationships are constructed through language. People’s talk about their relationships not only describes those connections but reproduces the social and moral values that are part of these relationships. Such talk demonstrates accepted understandings of how to be a certain sort of person within the context of socially circumscribed relationships. From the findings we provide examples of how people explain complex and contradictory ‘love/hate’ relationships to provide insight into the social and moral context of close relationships. This approach demonstrates the importance of wider social context and draws attention to the limitations of suggestions for individually based social support interventions.
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