Relational Sociology: Contributions to Understanding Residential Relocation Decisions in Later Life

Abstract

The increasingly globalised emphasis on casting individuals as consumers, empowered with choice and decision-making strategies enabling them to exercise individual agency in diverse markets has been reflected in policy discourse and service provision targeted at older people; hence they are portrayed as independent agents, free to choose and select products, services and lifestyles as informed consumers, notably when it comes to their health and social care preferences. This emphasis finds its routes in neo-liberal thinking which gives primacy to individual, voluntaristic, rational choices embedded within decision-making predicated on intentional, consequential action. Whilst this is a welcome move from the long-standing, dichotomous social representation of older people as either "dependent-disempowered"/"independent-empowered" social agents, it nonetheless overlooks the possibility of a more nuanced construction of their social action as the product of temporal, transactional processes evolving with others through complex figurations of interdependent relationships. This chapter aims to demonstrate the relevance of relational sociology as an ontological orientation with the potential to provide renewed understanding of the social phenomenon of later life residential relocation decision-making as a transactional processes. Viewed through a relational lens, the concepts of temporality, transactional process and interdependencies will provide a framework for making sense of older people's experiences of the residential relocation process, as depicted through their own narratives. It is hoped that this work will enhance theory in the field of gerontology, where scholars have tended to focus on theorizing later life social phenomena through the lens of macro-level structural determinism and its constraining influence on individual agency, or the micro-level focus of humanistic approaches. The field of gerontology has therefore yet to adopt, in any depth, the ontological insights provided by relational sociology.

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“…Marcel Mauss, the nephew of Emile Durkheim, operationalizes relational sociology in a unique manner to study human relations through an analysis of reciprocity and gift exchange (Papilloud, 2018). Hillcoat-Nalletamby (2018) studies decisions made by older people regarding residential relocation. She indicates that older people use their relations to acquire relevant information and decide whether and where to relocate (Hillcoat-Nalletamby, 2018).…”

“…Hillcoat-Nalletamby (2018) studies decisions made by older people regarding residential relocation. She indicates that older people use their relations to acquire relevant information and decide whether and where to relocate (Hillcoat-Nalletamby, 2018). The development of a model that enables people to empirically examine social networks within the “relational expectation and behavior” of human and non-human actors is still ongoing (Fuhse, 2015b).…”