Critical Gerontology Research Articles

"I Needed to be That Voice": A Multi-Party Study of the Healthcare and Social Service Experiences and Needs of Transgender and Gender-diverse Older Adults in Canada.

The social contexts of transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) older adults remain under-examined. In this qualitative study, which involved six virtual focus groups with a total of 21 participants inclusive of TGD adults ages 50+, service providers, and community advocates, we sought to examine the healthcare and social service experiences and needs of TGD older adults in Canada. Drawing theoretically on critical gerontology and intersectionality, and methodologically on interpretive description, we examined the perspectives of different participant groups to develop insight into TGD older adults' issues and priorities in the context of their engagements with systems of care. Our findings revealed the role of histories of marginalization, precarity, contemporary sources of intersectional oppression, and resistance in shaping the experiences of this population, while also highlighting community-driven ground-up activities to address evolving needs. Drawing on this conceptualization, we explored the implications of our research for ongoing inquiry, policy, and practice.

USING TRANSDISCIPLINARY CO-PRODUCTION TO GAIN INSIGHTS INTO SPATIAL JUSTICE AND AGE-FRIENDLY CITIES

Abstract Globally, a popular policy approach to address the two interrelated challenges of population ageing and urbanisation has been to adopt the World Health Organization’s Age-Friendly City framework, a model that can help to identify and address barriers to the well-being and participation of older people. This paper reports early findings from the ‘Ageing in Place in Cities’ project. The research was conducted from a critical gerontology perspective and embedded a spatial justice perspective by centring the concepts of equity, diversity and co-production in our underpinning theoretical framework. Discussing findings from seven case study cities (all who were early adopters of the Age-Friendly Cities framework), this paper discusses how a transdisciplinary co-production approach has been used to gain greater understanding of age-friendly initiatives in each city. Using mixed methods, we first developed descriptive profiles for each city using both census and other local demographic data to explore how the populations have changed over time, and narratives and policy documents detailing the initiatives used to support ageing in place. Second, we conducted semi-structured interviews with a variety of actors in each city to examine how the cities delivered age-friendly change. We integrated the data using a comparative case study approach to draw out insights across the cities. Our findings reveal the role of key leaders and stakeholders in age-friendly cities and will be of interest to policy makers and academics interested in population ageing and urban change. Further, our transdisciplinary co-production methods present a novel approach to conducting age-friendly research.

THE SOCIOLOGY OF AGING AND SOCIAL GERONTOLOGY: CRITICAL TENSIONS AND NECESSARY DISTINCTIONS

Abstract This paper argues that the sociology of ageing has been diverted from developing a clearly sociological approach to ageing and old age by its entanglement with social gerontology. Dominated by social and health policy and advocacy on behalf of older people, the sociological analysis of later life has taken second place. The rise of critical gerontology and cultural gerontology have put further distance between sociology and the sociology of ageing. The changes to ageing and old age challenge the residualisation of ageing within the wider sociological community and set up new tasks for a sociology of ageing which resonates with contemporary later life. We argue that to achieve those tasks requires not only separating the sociology of ageing from social gerontology, but also employing contemporary sociological theory can enable the sociology of ageing to move beyond the ‘problem’ of old age. This involves an analysis of the social structural dimensions of contemporary ageing, its symbolic representations and the embodied and agentic experiences of people becoming older. We conclude that a re-envisioned sociology of ageing can also better equip social gerontology with more effective tools to understand the ‘new ageing’.

Exploring the Digital Literacy Needs and Training Preferences of Older Adults Living in Affordable Housing

This article reports on research about the digital literacy needs and training preferences of older adults living in affordable housing. Partnering with a Canadian public library and affordable housing corporation, we conducted a thematic analysis of interviews with 15 seniors in affordable housing. The analysis indicates that these seniors need training that is adaptable to an individual’s interests, promotes confidence, and addresses financial barriers to using information and communication technologies effectively. Findings affirm the value of accessible training located within seniors’ social networks. Drawing on critical gerontology, we discuss practical and policy implications for public libraries and affordable housing networks.

The qualitative embedded case study method: Exploring and refining gerontological concepts via qualitative research with older people

This article argues that a tailored version of the qualitative embedded case study method can be used to build strong conceptual and inclusive insights from qualitative research with older people, and, in doing so, advance theoretical scholarship in social and critical gerontology. Gerontology has often been described as “data-rich and theory-poor” (Birren & Bengtson, 1988). It is a field which draws heavily on post-positivist traditions of quantitative research and notions of prediction, generalization, and statistical significance. While critical qualitative approaches have gained ground through interdisciplinary scholarship in the social sciences and humanities, few attempts have been made to articulate the relationship between research questions designed to understand older people's experiences and concept- or theory-building in gerontology. This piece makes a case for engaging with the theoretical/methodological interface by drawing on an evolving approach entitled the qualitative embedded case study, as it was used in three qualitative studies on the concepts of frailty, (im)mobility, and precarity. It suggests this is an evolving approach with the potential to develop conceptually sound, meaningful research from older people's experiences, including diverse, underrepresented, and marginalized groups, and to draw on these insights to direct change.

"Sometimers, Alzheimer's? I love that! That's definitely me": Readers' Responses to Fictional Dementia Narratives.

This article presents findings from an interdisciplinary project which invited readers to experience the impact of dementia via fictional characters' narratives. Combining methods from critical gerontology and literary linguistics-a field that examines the language of literature-we undertook an empirical reader response study of dementia fiction. We constructed a large corpus of dementia fiction; selecting 12 extracts, each containing first-hand, focalized accounts of fictional characters' experiences of living with dementia. Readers (31) were purposively sampled for 4 separate reading groups-student social workers (9); general public (9); family carers (6); and people with dementia (7). Over 6 weeks they engaged in separate, facilitated, on-line group discussions of extracts. Discussions were independently coded using ATLAS.ti. Although readers from all 4 groups reported that fictional characters drew them into the internal life of someone with dementia, some carers questioned whether fictional characters' experiences were plausible. Readers with dementia recognized themselves in the extracts; viewing fictional characters as eloquent envoys of their lived experiences of diagnosis, social isolation, loss of language, and use of humor. Fictional characters offer an entry point for understanding contrasts in caregiver and care-receiver experiences of dementia. Fictional characters are potentially useful for moving dementia narratives beyond monstrous cultural metaphors and onto a disability-based rights agenda.

Reorienting vitality for ageing cities

Measures of urban vitality as criteria for evaluating cities have limits when considering the lives of older citizens. Preference for ‘activity’ as a measure of vitality, increasingly through intensity of technology use, can be insensitive to both the slowing of certain activities or abilities with age, and neglect the ways in which technology, space, and agency co-constitute the experience of ageing. There is also insufficient attention among scholars of urban vitality on how vitality might ignore inequality and democracy. This paper will demonstrate how the concept of vitality, enhanced by both the humanism of critical gerontology and post-humanist perspective, can curtail the instrumental uses of vitality in evaluating cites and redeploy the concept to ensure spatial justice and democracy.

DIGITAL STORYTELLING AND INTERGENERATIONAL COLLABORATIONS: OLDER ADULTS AND COLLEGE STUDENTS

Abstract The use of digital storytelling can be a helpful tool within community work, health and social work research and policy. Digital storytelling refers to life-story telling that can be done in a variety of ways and used to encourage social change and transformation. This presentation will include experience on how this method was used in a study and an intergenerational project between older adults and university graduate and undergraduate students. This group of older adults specifically shared their experiences with equine interactions and activities, while the university students worked with the older adults to create a digital story. For this study and project, recruitment included students enrolled in different disciplines. Discussion on digital storytelling’s connection to the narrative method and critical gerontology framework will be noted. Challenges and barriers, including Institutional Review Board and ethical considerations while preparing for this method will also be discussed.

OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF INNOVATIVE QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS

Abstract Using new qualitative methods can be exciting and add value to the field. However, Institutional Review Boards (IRB) approval can be a challenge if the methods are relatively new. This symposium provides an overview of 1) how several new methodologies have been used 2) IRB approval challenges and resolutions and 3) how varied disciplines can work together to understand phenomena. The first presentation explains how older adults used photographs to document meaning/purpose in their lives. IRB expressed concerns over identifying information in photographs. Discussion of how interdisciplinary collaborations create opportunities for diverse data dissemination will be included. The second presentation focuses on intersectionality and the benefits/challenges to understanding socially constructed identities. Discussion explains how to implement this methodology, including how category complexity creates additional possibilities for data analysis but also difficulties with narrowing down approaches. In the third presentation, examples of how to conduct co-research, such as photovoice with older adults will be reviewed, including best practices. Smartphones offer extensive possibilities for co-research; but developing IRB protocols to address concerns are needed. The fourth presentation outlines digital storytelling between older adults and university students. An explanation of how digital storytelling is connected to the narrative method and critical gerontology framework will be addressed. Advantages and pitfalls of digital storytelling with also be discussed. The last presentation focuses on using reminiscence with older migrant workers who have dementia, using a decolonial framework. The project seeks to improve participatory action research, with increased focus on “hearing” participants.

Re-imagining ‘how’ community dance affects the health and wellbeing of older adults

We are currently experiencing unprecedented population aging worldwide, with people over 65 projected to outnumber youth for the first time in human history. As such, the need to support this demographic’s health and wellbeing has never been more acute. There is a growing recognition that engagement with dance and arts provides numerous benefits for the health of older people, with existing research existing primarily within a biomedical model of efficacy. Driven by the primary research question “how does dance affect the health and wellbeing of older adults”, we reflect on the potential insights gained by returning to the root of research aims and methodologies. Sitting in conversation with dance and health scholarship and leaning into critical gerontology debate, this article broadens discourse to consider not only how evidence is articulated, but as importantly, how it is being asked. Through a series of exploratory “how” questions that critically engage with literature from practitioner, participant, and sector perspectives, we consider elucidating the origins of research enquiry as fundamental to broadening and deepening our understandings of the benefits of community dance for the health and wellbeing of older adults.

Aging Successfully in the Changing Norwegian Welfare State: A Policy Analysis Framed by Critical Gerontology.

In the 21st century, the future of the Norwegian welfare state is broadly debated. In Norway, as in other countries, concerns regarding the sustainability and affordability of the welfare state in light of the projected population development have been voiced in public and academic discourse, and not least in governmental statements and documents. Because we consider texts, such as government white papers, as both products and producers of discursively based understandings of the social world, a close examination of policy documents can provide insight into the predominant understanding of a distinct phenomenon in a specific society at a particular point in time. The article is based on a critical discourse analysis of 3 recent Norwegian government policy documents addressing the older adult population. We demonstrate that prominent ideas from the widely contested successful aging paradigm are embedded and forwarded in current Norwegian policies, where ideas about successful and healthy aging produced and reproduced in the documents frame and shape expectations toward older adults. We argue that the ideas and ideals of successful aging and neoliberalism in parallel pave the way for changes in the historically generous and comprehensive Norwegian social democratic welfare state. For decision makers, the rhetoric of successful aging that emphasizes activity, productivity, self-reliance, and freedom of choice is undoubtedly more convenient to communicate to the public than explicit arguments for the necessity of downscaling public services.

Critical Gerontology : An orientation

Critical gerontology remained unheard of in German language research on ageing for along time and has so far only hesitantly been taken up in the discourse. This article first traces the development of the approaches that today are assembled under the label of the "thought space" of critical gerontology. Subsequently, the concept of the critique of critical gerontology is examined more closely in order to clarify the question of what is critical about critical gerontology and which social theoretical considerations underlie the respective directions. It is argued that despite their shared orientation towards the emancipation and autonomy of older and old people, the individual approaches differ considerably in their understanding of critique and their conception of the status of scientific theories. Thus, it remains diffuse what the specific perspective of critical gerontology is in order to distinguish it from other social gerontological approaches. A total of four criteria are formulated that critical gerontology should fulfil.

Invisible, unrecognised and undervalued: examining stories of unpaid work performed by older adults in their local neighbourhoods

Abstract Over the past 40 years, positive ageing discourses that speak to an expectation of continued productivity have gained prominence within research and policy. Such discourses have been critiqued as placing disproportionate value on the extension of older adults' working lives, while obscuring other valuable forms of work performed by older adults. Despite the emergence of theoretical conversations about the expansion of conceptions of work, few studies have adopted an explicit focus on the work performed by older adults within their neighbourhoods. Informed by conceptions of work positioned at the intersection of critical gerontology and critical feminism, we drew upon qualitative data from a larger ethnographic study, generated from 17 participants aged 65 and older, to examine: (a) the various forms and contributions of unpaid work that older adults carry out at the neighbourhood level, and (b) the ways in which older adults' representations of this work relate to dominant notions of productivity. Specifically, each participant engaged in three types of qualitative interviews, including additional spatial and visual data generation: (a) completing a narrative interview; (b) carrying a small Global Positioning System (GPS) device to automatically log locations, completing an activity diary and a follow-up interview; and (c) participating in a go-along interview or a photo elicitation interview. Our findings highlight a range of unpaid work performed by participants in their neighbourhood, including formal volunteering, informal caring and informal civic participation. Although these forms of work were, at times, discussed by participants as enabling social inclusion, significant tensions arose from the general lack of discursive and social value assigned to them. In particular, participants described being subject to overwhelming expectations placed on older adults, and women in particular, to carry out this work, with little recognition or acknowledgement of their contributions to the neighbourhood. Taken together, our findings suggest the need not only to diversify understandings of the forms of work perceived as aligning with productive contributions to society in older age, but also to attend to the invisible work performed by older adults within their neighbourhoods. Additionally, we propose a variety of ways organisations and communities that benefit from older adults' unpaid labour may enhance accessibility, thereby reducing the work done by older adults to negotiate tensions between ableist expectations for productivity and their ageing bodies.

Algorithmic harms and digital ageism in the use of surveillance technologies in nursing homes.

Ageism has not been centered in scholarship on AI or algorithmic harms despite the ways in which older adults are both digitally marginalized and positioned as targets for surveillance technology and risk mitigation. In this translation paper, we put gerontology into conversation with scholarship on information and data technologies within critical disability, race, and feminist studies and explore algorithmic harms of surveillance technologies on older adults and care workers within nursing homes in the United States and Canada. We start by identifying the limitations of emerging scholarship and public discourse on “digital ageism” that is occupied with the inclusion and representation of older adults in AI or machine learning at the expense of more pressing questions. Focusing on the investment in these technologies in the context of COVID-19 in nursing homes, we draw from critical scholarship on information and data technologies to deeply understand how ageism is implicated in the systemic harms experienced by residents and workers when surveillance technologies are positioned as solutions. We then suggest generative pathways and point to various possible research agendas that could illuminate emergent algorithmic harms and their animating force within nursing homes. In the tradition of critical gerontology, ours is a project of bringing insights from gerontology and age studies to bear on broader work on automation and algorithmic decision-making systems for marginalized groups, and to bring that work to bear on gerontology. This paper illustrates specific ways in which important insights from critical race, disability and feminist studies helps us draw out the power of ageism as a rhetorical and analytical tool. We demonstrate why such engagement is necessary to realize gerontology's capacity to contribute to timely discourse on algorithmic harms and to elevate the issue of ageism for serious engagement across fields concerned with social and economic justice. We begin with nursing homes because they are an understudied, yet socially significant and timely setting in which to understand algorithmic harms. We hope this will contribute to broader efforts to understand and redress harms across sectors and marginalized collectives.

On the co-constitution of age(ing) and digital technologies : A critical gerontological discussion of the thematic focal point "Commercially available digital technology in the daily routine of older persons: a research update"

The thematic focus addresses two interwoven megatrends of the 21st century: demographic and technological change. This commentary aims to contextualize and reflect on this update from the perspective of a critical gerontology.

Ratifying frailty

Taking as a point of departure the role that the category of frailty increasingly plays in the classification, sorting and management of ageing populations in contemporary societies, this paper focuses on the crafting and validation of mouse models of frailty. The paper suggests that such models embody therapeutic and techno-economic expectations of ageing research, particularly as these are re-invigorated by current attempts to manipulate or eradicate cell senescence. The paper brings together critical gerontology, social studies of science and more-than-human anthropology to contextualise and analyse ethnographic data collected during fieldwork in a biology of ageing laboratory. The paper proposes that to build a mouse model of frailty, researchers need to learn to ‘think like a mouse’, provisionally taking the animal's point of view, to then efface that link and reconfigure the scientific chain of reference that enables translation between humans and mouse models of frailty.

Ageing, embodiment and datafication: Dynamics of power in digital health and care technologies

As a growing body of work has documented, digital technologies are central to the imagining of aging futures. In this study, we offer a critical, theoretical framework for exploring the dynamics of power related to the technological tracking, measuring, and managing of aging bodies at the heart of these imaginaries. Drawing on critical gerontology, feminist technoscience, sociology of the body, and socio-gerontechnology, we identify three dimensions of power relations where the designs, operations, scripts, and materialities of technological innovation implicate asymmetrical relationships of control and intervention: (1) aging bodies and the power of numbers, (2) aging spaces and the power of surveillance, and (3) age care economies and gendered power relations. While technological care for older individuals has been promoted as a cost-effective way to enhance independence, security, and health, we argue that such optimistic perspectives may obscure the realities of social inequality, agist bias, and exploitative gendered care labour.

“I'm definitely not socially excluded!”- Perceptions of social exclusion among Australian government housing residents aged 80 and older who live alone

The oldest old - those aged 80 years and over - are the fastest growing sector of the Australian population and are generally assumed to be at risk of social exclusion which impedes healthy aging. The voices of those thought to be vulnerable to social exclusion are seldom heard. Informed by a critical gerontology framework, socio-ecological model of health and life-course perspectives, this research involved semi-structured in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of 13 people aged 80 and older living alone in government housing, in a socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhood in Melbourne, Australia. Interview transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings reveal a positive picture of survival despite hardship, supportive relationships, a sense of autonomy from living independently, and contributing to society. These findings challenge ageist assumptions, which equate advanced age with social exclusion.

On Aging: a Critical Phenomenology of Transitions

This article advances a critical phenomenology of the meaning of aging embodiment. Its broad aim is to profoundly challenge an idealized view of aging as foremost and fundamentally a natural or normative procession of “ready-made” stages pre-set “in” time (i.e., infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and “old age”) or pre-given units of time that unfurl along a timeline (i.e., chronological age), from past to present to future. Combining, defending, and adapting resources from Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception with a reading of the concept of institution (Stiftung) via the phenomenon of puberty in Institution and Passivity: Course Notes from the Collège de France (1954-1955) as well as insights from critical gerontology, I argue that the phenomenon of aging embodiment demands to be understood in terms of transitions, that is, as an intensive reorientation in relationality, sociality, and the style in which one has a past rather than as changes along a timeline.

Bioethics and Gerontology: The Value of Thinking Together.

The interdisciplinary field of bioethics focuses on what it means to be a person, flourish as a person, and be respected as a person in different conditions of health, illness, or disability. Bioethics and policy research considers normative questions such as how a good society, through its priorities and investments, should demonstrate its commitments to the lives of different populations. Bioethics and humanities scholarship, often known as "health humanities," shares affinities with age studies and disability studies and with narrative-based approaches to the study of human experience. Gerontology is concerned with the many aspects of life that affect how people age, including social structures and values that influence the experience of growing old. In this article, we briefly explore the evolution of bioethics, from a discourse that emerged in relation to developments in biomedicine, bioscience, and biotechnology; to research ethics; to broader ethical questions emerging from real-world conditions, with attention to how bioethics has considered the experience of aging. Until recently, most age-focused work in bioethics has concerned age-associated illness, particularly end-of-life decision making. Given the reality of population aging and the ethical concerns accompanying the shift in age for most places in the world, the further evolution of bioethics involves greater attention to the support of flourishing in late life and to social justice and health equity in aging societies. We argue that the discourses of bioethics and critical gerontology, in dialogue, can bring a new understanding of privilege and preference, disparity and disadvantage, and reflection and respect for aging individuals.