The Good Old Days: how Older Adults in Present-Day Ghana Compare themselves to Older Adults in Past Generations

Abstract

This study explores nostalgia among older adults in present-day Ghana by investigating how they subjectively compare themselves to older adults in the past. A purposive sample of 23 older adults provided data through semi-structured face-to-face interviews and data analysis employed a general inductive approach, with a focus on content and thematic analytic procedures. The findings show an overall theme of 'the good old days', how participants compare themselves negatively to older adults in their past, believing and feeling that older adults in the past enjoyed better health and longevity and had more care and respect. While participants generally praise the past for its perceived virtue and vitality, they scold the present for a perceived degeneration. Findings of this study support theoretical descriptions and empirical research conclusions on nostalgia as: an emotionally invested remembrance of the past; a yearning to relive the past or reconnect with people and things past, or to return to places in the past; and an evocation of the beauty of the past in contrast to the ugliness of the present. Consonant with this, the study shows how participants evoke the beauty of the past, where, comparatively, older adults enjoyed a life of dignity. In what is characteristic of nostalgic evocations, participants reclaim the lost beautiful past, where people ate natural - healthy - foods, engaged in physically active work, and were stronger into late adulthood. Again, consonant with nostalgia as a discourse of critique of the present with the past as yardstick, participants express disenchantment with the present for a perceived steady degradation of the values of care, respect, and obedience to elders, which made older adults in past generations a privileged class. To this end, we may conclude that nostalgia not only speaks to the present from the past, it seeks to recreate the past in the future.