The Social Construction of Old Age as a Problem

Johnson, Malcolm L.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511610714.061

Cited by 14 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…In order to illustrate the importance of the way in which older people are viewed by designers, it is necessary to have an understanding of the dominant narratives of old age. According to Johnson (2005), there 'are two central global narratives of old age; one ancient, one modern. In their primary forms, they are almost diametrically opposite.…”

Section: Ageing As a Problem Technology As A Solutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…10 It is important to mention that in many Western countries, Asian or African migrant workers, predominantly women, are being brought in to do this care work, which shifts the problems from these Western countries to the countries of origin of these care workers as these women are no longer able to older people will further aggravate these problems. One factor that is said to compound these care labour problems further relates to the shifts in family structures (Johnson, 2005). Families have become smaller, geographic mobility has increased and divorce rates have also increased, which in turn could lead to a greater number of older people living alone with potentially fewer family members being available to care for them on a regular basis.…”

Section: Ageing As a Problem Technology As A Solutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These authors, who derive from various backgrounds, state that our current understanding of demographic ageing and its consequences is incomplete, flawed or stems from particular political stances and is used for the political goals of particular groups (see e.g. Van Dam, 2009;Van den Heuvel & Olaroiu, 2010;Johnson, 2005;Kinnear, 2001;Ney, 2009;Sanderson & Sherbov, 2010). Nevertheless, despite the efforts of these authors, the common-sense appeal of demographic ageing and shifting dependency ratios is great.…”

Section: Ageing As a Problem Technology As A Solutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Representations of the old and ageing in the design of the new and emerging : assessing the design of ambient intelligence technologies for older people

Neven¹

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for being friendly, kind and very helpful with all matters, however big or small. Thanks to the organizers of and the attendants to the STePS colloquia, research days, methodology seminars and user cluster meetings at which I have presented my work and have received many helpful questions and encouraging comments. Thanks to Stefan Kuhlmann for being very open to the idea of having a PhD student on the STePS daily board. Thanks to all the members of the STePS daily board and the WTMC education committee for providing a nice and cooperative atmosphere and for taking the plight of PhD students seriously. Thanks to Sally Wyatt, Els Rommes, Willem Halffman and Marjatta Kemppainen for organizing very informative and enjoyable WTMC workshops and summer schools in Ravenstein. I would also like to thank Kelly Joyce and Meika Loe for bearing with an inexperienced young writer, for inviting me to speak at the plenary session during a conference at the British Library, but most important of all, for unwittingly making an invaluable contribution to the overall focus and theoretical background of this thesis. I would further like to thank Alexander Peine, for working together on presentations and publications, for the inspiring discussions over coffee at the library café in Utrecht, and for sharing my enthusiasm for the subject of ageing and technology. Then there were my forays to, in Julian's words, 'a potty little place' in the NorthWest of England. I would like to thank Arie Rip for sending me on my Lancaster tangent. All my visits to Lancaster, however short or long, have been memorable for all the right reasons. This would not have been possible without

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Section: Ageing As a Problem Technology As A Solutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ageing As a Problem Technology As A Solutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ageing As a Problem Technology As A Solutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Representations of the old and ageing in the design of the new and emerging : assessing the design of ambient intelligence technologies for older people

Neven¹

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“…Author contact: bafford@brandeis.edu American popular rhetoric surrounding aging presents it as a crisis: at turns a social change in roles and relationships (Johnson 2005), an economic challenge to U.S. society's ability to provide materially for aging people (Long 2003), or an existential threat to personhood (Kimble 1990). However, how does the meaning of old age transform when it is conceived not as the end but only as the antechamber for the next, transcendent world?…”

Section: Douglas Bafford Brandeis Universitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Aging and the End Times: Evangelical Eschatology and Experiences of Elderhood in the United States and South Africa

Bafford

2019

A&A

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Recent trends in aging studies and popular U.S. discourse reformulate elderhood as a valuable, not necessarily negative, experience, and these new models of aging have extended to a consideration of religious practices that can make old age particularly meaningful. Among evangelical Christians, a shared cosmological (and specifically eschatological) narrative structure provides solace and semiotic coherence in the face of challenges characteristic of the “third” and “fourth age.” What remains less clear is the interplay between transnational religious forces like evangelical ideology and local social contexts in which they are enacted, a process illuminated only through cross-cultural comparison. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Kentucky and in South Africa, I argue that rather than viewing evangelical rhetoric as narrowly determinative, anthropologists ought to broaden common understandings of Christians’ end-times ideology as something that may, contingent on socio-historical context, alternatively help older congregants cope with the physical effects of aging or allow for reconciliation amid rapid societal change. U.S. evangelical churches often address existential concerns faced by a growing population of elders while downplaying the significance of race, yet white South African Christians employ a similar religious cosmology to place their actions during the apartheid era in a symbolically legible narrative. Both settings indicate the malleability of evangelical ideas to foreground certain concerns while erasing others, challenging assumptions about the uniform effects of global evangelicalism.

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“…Hazan (1994) similarly draws upon anthropological studies of old(er) age to suggest that there is an immense variety in the status that older people are accorded in different societies. Considering how old age has been constructed in different historical times, religions and cultures, Johnson (2005) concludes that what emerges is "an understanding of the impact of social, economic, intellectual, political and cultural change on the places older people are ascribed within kinship systems, local communities and nation-states" (p. 570). In other words, how we understand old(er) age is not objectively given but shaped by people themselves, differently depending on context, and may therefore usefully be understood as socially constructed.…”

Section: Constructions Of Old(er) Age and Old(er) Age Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identity, Old(er) Age and Migrancy : A Social Constructionist Len

Machat-From¹

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Identity research in relation to ethnicity and migration has tended to focus on younger people whilst identity research in relation to ageing and old(er) age has not focused on migrants. This inadvertent mutual neglect has led to a lack of identity research that examines the identity categories of old(er) age and migrancy together, a lacuna that this dissertation aims to redress. This dissertation departs from a social constructionist understanding of identity as situationally accomplished in the interplay between how one defines oneself (internally) and how others define one (externally). The questions raised by this perspective and addressed in this dissertation are: When (in what situations) and in relation to whom do old(er) age and migrancy (respectively) seem to become meaningful for identification? How do the identity categories of old(er) age and migrancy seem to be negotiated? The empirical material consists of in-depth interviews with 24 older migrants (13 men, 11 women) aged between 55 and 79 who have been living in Sweden for 18 to 61 years. Interviewees come from 12 different countries that vary in perceived cultural distance from Sweden. The findings suggest that identifications with old(er) age and migrancy seem to be dynamic and flexible rather than necessarily permanently meaningful, thus gaining meaning in specific situations and in relation to particular Others. External definitions furthermore do not always seem to match with internal ones. Regardless of how old(er) age and migrancy are constructed, they seem to be negotiable. This dissertation thus contributes to identity research by studying old(er) age and migrancy together and furthermore sheds light onto how the social constructionist lens allows us to see variability where stability otherwise would be presumed.

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The Social Construction of Old Age as a Problem

Cited by 14 publications

References 10 publications

Representations of the old and ageing in the design of the new and emerging : assessing the design of ambient intelligence technologies for older people

Representations of the old and ageing in the design of the new and emerging : assessing the design of ambient intelligence technologies for older people

Aging and the End Times: Evangelical Eschatology and Experiences of Elderhood in the United States and South Africa

Identity, Old(er) Age and Migrancy : A Social Constructionist Len

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