Abstract
This article examines how the people known as Smith Islanders interact with their environment over the life-course. The purpose of the study is to contribute to a better understanding of aging in a small, rural, coastal community which changes are environmentally driven. To address the aging process in changing environments in this essay, I explore the relationship between the place, sense of self, and knowledge. Because the majority of people on the island today are in late life, the main threads in the fabric of this ethnographic narrative weave themselves into stories about aging experiences. I focus on males’ experiences, their traditional knowledge, and the role of kinship over their life-courses. The life history narratives of a Smith Island waterman known as Eddie Boy, discusses two elements present in both his childhood narratives and his late adulthood: work and kinship. I show how changing socio-ecology has altered the potential for intergenerational relations, which older islanders cherish, and how such changes in late life pose a new aging dilemma for current Smith Islanders.
Highlights
The life history narratives of a Smith Island waterman known as Eddie Boy, discusses two elements present in both his childhood narratives and his late adulthood: work and kinship
I show how changing socio-ecology has altered the potential for intergenerational relations, which older islanders cherish, and how such changes in late life pose a new aging dilemma for current Smith Islanders
Eddie Boy and his wife June, like many others, are proud of their kids: “My granddaughter is doing really well at the University of Baltimore Law School. She already has an internship and her article was accepted to a professional journal, she is doing well!” Eddie Boy said multiple times over the last two years: “As far as I know she is the first lawyer from Smith Island and when the judge picked her for an internship, he told her that a reason he picked her is because he knew she must have worked twice as much than others to get where she is.”
Summary
Smith Island, accessible only by boat, is the home of Maryland’s largest island community in the Chesapeake Bay (9.2 mi2, 4.5 mi Land / 4.7 mi Water). I recorded 24 life histories, observed and photographed people at work, at church, their homes or when walking in public spaces It is from those histories, observations and visual practices, that I developed an interest in exploring Smith Islanders’ patterns of knowledge as they relate to patterns of learning about a place to which they are so deeply connected. From the beginning of my fieldwork, I was struck by the contrast between the membership and leadership of older adults in the Smith Island community and the struggle for “agency of marginalized older adults” Lynch 2013, 199 on the US mainland Their engagement in their island’s traditional work, social life, and problems with land management proved to generate an “active and energetic adulthood” Lynch 2013, 188. Research that addresses alarming and uncertain changes in diverse coastal socio-ecological systems world-wide, suggests that because the globalization of trade in marine products is impacting marine ecosystems and global climate patterns, it is critical to reconnect social (human) and ecological (biophysical) systems (Berkes 2015; Paolisso 2006; Roscoe 2014; Fiske 2016)
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