Intergenerational Encounters Research Articles

Messing with the emotions of the other exploring ambiguous youth-adult relations in a residential care institution

This article provides insights into the lived ambivalence, between support and control that arises in care work. It does so through an analysis of the spatialised entanglements of emotions, age and formal position in intergenerational encounters at a residence for young people suffering from social and mental distress. By identifying the dominant norms associated with the roles of ‘resident’ and ‘professional in the social space of the residence’, Warming explores what may, drawing on Haraway, be termed popular, oppositional and inappropriate practices and the emotions and power relations linked to them. The analysis reveals how the three types of practices – all framed by neoliberal youth policies and psy-knowledge about age, (ab)normal personalities and ‘professionalism’ as spatialised in the institutional organisation of work and the physical space as well as rules, norms, and routines - represent very diverse ways of navigating. Moreover it demonstrates, how ‘messing with other people's emotions' and trying to change their behavior is regarded as manipulation if it challenges norms or power relations rooted in spatially anchored perceptions of appropriate practices, but as empowerment if it chimes with norms that correspond to the roles and intersecting binary constructions of childish/young/insane client – adult professional.

Intergenerational relations and the power of the cell phone: Perspectives on young people’s phone usage in sub-Saharan Africa

Cell phones present new forms of sociality and new possibilities of encounter for young people across the globe. Nowhere is this more evident than in sub-Saharan Africa where the scale of usage, even among the very poor, is remarkable. In this paper we reflect on the inter-generational encounters which are embedded in young people’s cell phone interactions, and consider the wider societal implications, not least the potential for associated shifts in the generational balance of power. An intriguing feature of this changing generational nexus is that while many young people’s phone-based interactions, from their mid-teens onwards, are shifting away from the older generation towards friendship networks in their own age cohort, at the same time they are repositioning themselves – or becoming repositioned – as family information hubs, as a consequence of their phone expertise. The paper draws on mixed-methods research with young people aged c. 9–25years and in-depth interviews with older age-groups in 24 sites (ranging from high density poor urban to remote rural) across Ghana, Malawi and South Africa.

Teasing, laughing and disciplinary humor: Staff–youth interaction in detention home treatment

This study explores how disciplinary humor is deployed to shape and reshape social order in inter-generational encounters. Data are drawn from an ethnographic study of staff–resident encounters at a treatment home for boys (including about 30 hours of video recordings), focusing on sequential patterns in the local design of jokes and teasing, analyzing language and multimodal interaction in detail. It was found that staff and boys recurrently laughed together and teased each other by invoking local hierarchical positions such as child–adult. The intrinsic ambiguity of humor and teasing allowed staff members to engage in temporary breaches of social order, while simultaneously enforcing local rules of conduct. Similarly, the boys would joke with the staff, exaggerating or transgressing institutional and generational divides. But ultimately, the joking could also be seen to remind the participants of the very hierarchies that separate staff from residents and men from boys, or adults from children.

Intergenerational Encounters in Multigenerational Centers in Germany

Intergenerational Encounters in Multigenerational Centers in Germany

Intergenerational and Intercultural Encounters: Connecting Students and Older People Through Language Learning

Due to its extensive and dynamic migrant history, Australia is a society rich in cultural and linguistic diversity. Older people are important catalysts for language maintenance, which presents a g...

A Method for Improving Intergenerational Encounters: The Case of Mama Bettie

The purpose of this article is to describe a method for developing and improving intergenerational interactions or encounters. Older peoples' life experiences do not mirror the life experiences of younger cohorts today. As such, we propose a method for fostering intergenerational interactions and increasing bases for communication through exploring the life experiences of elders within the context of a larger world or national historical timeline. Younger people can benefit from the use of an historical timeline—the events on which can serve as anchor points in understanding and communicating with older adults.

Meeting the Other

The idea that we are living in a society which is more and more segregated according to age is often voiced today. A feeling of facing a widening generation gap is mirrored in writings from governmental offices and non-governmental organizations in Sweden and in other parts of the world. The UNESCO Institute of Education's (UIE) conference in 1999 about Intergenerational Practice and Programmes (IP) is one example of the efforts made to analyse the gap between generations. In the declaration from the conference a definition of intergenerational programmes: “Intergenerational programmes are vehicles for purposeful and ongoing exchange of resources and learning among older and younger generations for individual and social benefits and is given as well as guiding principles for future intergenerational projects.”1 An account of ongoing intergenerational projects in different countries is also included (Hutton-Yeo & Ohsako, 2000:3). The authors point out that there is a need to move from the traditional one-way IP (the young learning from the old) to IP based upon reciprocal relationships between different generations. They also underline the need to further develop non-familial IPs where biologically unrelated members of different ages interact (Hutton-Yeo & Ohsako, 2000:4–6). The Swedish drafting committee about issues of ageing and life in later years, “Senior 2005,” points out that research and exchange of the experience regarding the potentialities of intergenerational encounters should be encouraged and reinforced. Only few such projects in Sweden have been accounted for. Boström states in her dissertation that in spite of the fact that many minor projects are carried out by voluntary organisations, interest groups, and enthusiastic individuals, most of these are not analysed and remain undocumented (Boström, 2003). The present article reports about a Swedish project aiming at a rapprochement between the generations. After a short presentation of the organisation in charge of the project, the different parts of the project are described. A discussion of the observations made in the course of the project is followed by an introduction of some theoretical concepts and ideas and the observations that are analysed and explained.

Computer and Video Games in Family Life

In this ethnographic study of family life, intergenerational video and computer game activities were videotaped and analysed. Both children and adults invoked the notion of a digital divide, i.e. a generation gap between those who master and do not master digital technology. It is argued that the digital divide was exploited by the children to control the game activities. Conversely, parents and grandparents positioned themselves as less knowledgeable, drawing on a displayed divide as a rhetorical resource for gaining access to playtime with the children. In these intergenerational encounters, the digital divide was thus an interactional resource rather than a problem.

Intergenerational Educational Encounters: Part 2: Counseling Implications of the Model

This second paper commences where Part 1 concluded in volume 33, number 1, 2006. The paper describes the relations reflected in the Model-of-Knowledge between all partners of the intergenerational encounters at school—children, old adults, and teachers. The Model-of-Knowledge represents a relatively balanced approach toward the generations' typical needs, while teachers are regarded as members of the middle generation who may contribute to the intergenerational mediation process. By discussing concepts such as “authority,” “productive aging,” “search for meaning,” and “life span,” the paper offers possible ramifications for the social images and status of older adults. Additionally, it discusses the experimental realism of the intergenerational programs at school. Gerontologists and education professionals are invited to explore the psychosocial insights that the model brings to the fore.

Intergenerational Educational Encounters: Part 1: A Model of Knowledge

This paper, the first in a 2-part series, proposes a Model-of-Knowledge for the social analysis of intergenerational encounters between older adults and children and discusses professional intervention. The model is based on the findings of a pilot counseling activity at a primary school in Israel. It sets forth 4 types of encounters between children and older adults. The encounters included an estimation of the relative advantage of knowledge on both sides, a mutual estimation of equal knowledge, and a mutual estimation of equal lack of knowledge. Beyond the presentation of each type's content, the paper deals with this question: How does the proposed Model-of-Knowledge reflect the intergenerational gap between children and older adults and mediate between them? Gerontologists and educational professionals are invited to explore the psychosocial insights that the model brings to the fore.

Age and Judgments of Attractiveness as Factors of HIV Preventive Behavior Among HIV-Positive Men Who Have Sex with Men

Abstract An ethnically diverse sample (N = 250) of HIV seropositive men who have sex with men (MSM) in the New York City and San Francisco metropolitan areas were interviewed in depth to elicit their experiences regarding living with HIV and their sexuality. Topics included coping with HIV, factors influencing partner selection, and sexual risk behaviors. Analyses of these responses revealed several interrelated themes regarding age and physical appearance that naturally emerged. These themes included: (1) protecting younger sexual partners from HIV infection compared with older partners; (2) assumptions regarding the HIV status of younger casual sex partners; (3) disclosure of HIV serostatus by older men; and (4) issues regarding sexual desirability and physical appearance. These findings point to the direct impact that age and sexual desirability have on sexual decision-making on intergenerational sexual encounters among HIV-seropositive MSM.

Accommodation and nonaccommodation across the lifespan: Perspectives from Thailand, Japan, and the United States of America

This study investigates perceptions of intra‐ and intergenerational communication among young adults in Thailand, Japan, and the U.S.A. Interactions with older adults were reported to be generally more problematic than those with other younger people. While older people were seen as more nonaccommodative than younger people, younger adults felt more obliged to be polite to, and respectful of, the former than their peer age group. Young adults were also avoidant of communication with older people. Overall, young Americans reported their intergenerational communicative encounters to be more positive than both young Thais and Japanese. Young Thai people reported the highest levels of respect/obligation and avoidant communication among young people of the three cultures, and found older Thais to be particularly nonaccommodative. Cultural and modernity issues were invoked to account for these findings.

Growing up monolingual in a bilingual community: The Quichua revitalization paradox

The present investigation concerns language ideology and language practices in relation to a language shift – from Quichua-Spanish bilingualism to Spanish monolingualism – that seems to be under way. The analyses are based on fieldwork in an Ecuadorian sierra community characterized by ethnic revitalization. Among adult comuneros, the vernacular is seen as an essential part of their Indian cultural heritage. In the children's daily lives, the adults, particularly women and the elderly, speak Quichua among themselves, yet children are not addressed in the vernacular by either parents or elder siblings, and those under 10 years of age are generally more or less monolingual in Spanish. The paradoxical mismatch between ideology and daily practices – the ethnic revitalization paradox – is analyzed in light of Quichua speaking practices in intergenerational encounters, and in children's play dialogues. Ultimately, being Quichua means something different to members of each generation.

“They talk to us like children”: language and intergenerational discourse in first-time encounters in an African township

This paper analyses language discourse in first-time encounters between young and old women in an African township. Forms of address, stories and complaints are analysed in terms of generational differences and similarities in identity ascription. Young women identify themselves on the basis of their ethnic membership and class, while old women do so on the basis of family relations and implied ethnic membership, which can be gleaned from their name and place of birth or origin. The discourse is marked by frequent complaints by old women to young women about the youth. Some complaints may be interpreted as masked forms of bragging. Old women complain that “they [the youth] talk to us like children,” but their words were initially used by the youth to describe old people. Within their use of language old women try to reinforce traditional power to withstand youth power and to retain some influence, even within non-familial intergenerational encounters.

Intergenerational communication: evaluations and analyses of talk exchanged between older adults and younger adults.

This special journal issue focuses on potential barriers and facilitators of successful intergenerational encounters. Communication Accommodation Theory has provided a useful and broad-based conceptual framework for understanding the nature of both appropriate and inappropriate modifications made in intergenerational communication. The first three articles concern the nature, eliciting conditions, and interpretations of patronizing speech. The last three articles shift from the manner of communication to an examination of the content of communication between young and older adults through discourse analysis.

Accommodating the elderly: Invoking and extending a theory

ABSTRACTThe article begins by exploring briefly the role of the elderly in sociolinguistic theory and research. After an outline of the parameters of speech accommodation theory together with a new schematic model, it is argued that speech accommodation theory is a profitable framework for elucidating the sociolinguistic mechanics of, and the social psychological processes underlying, intergenerational encounters. A recent conceptual foray in this direction, which highlights young-to-elderly language strategies, is then overviewed with some illustrations. Contrastive data from a case study are then introduced, a discourse analysis of which allows us to conceptualize various elderly-to-young language strategies. This interpretive analysis suggests important avenues for extending speech accommodation theory itself. A revised, more sociolinguistically elaborated version of this framework is then presented which highlights strategies beyond those of convergence, maintenance, and divergence and leads to the conceptualization of over- and underaccommodation. Finally, and on the basis of the foregoing, a new model of intergenerational communication is proposed and Ryan et al.'s (1986) “communicative predicament” framework duly revised. (Accommodation theory, elderly, overaccommodation, case studies, discourse management, stereotypes, underaccommodation, interdisciplinary)

ELDERLY PERSONS’ ATTITUDE TOWARD CHILDREN

Abstract Many school systems and other agencies across the nation are implementing or planning to implement programs involving older persons with children. Thus it now seems crucial to examine older person's attitudes toward children. Intergenerational encounters can be positive only if the attitudes of both groups are known and taken into consideration. The instrument, Elderly Persons’ Attitudes Toward Children, was administered to a random sample of persons over age 65 throughout the nation (N = 542). Results indicated that the elderly hold overall positive attitudes toward children; however, their responses reveal the complexities of attitudes. Negative attitudes toward some personality characteristics of children, as well as the belief that stricter methods of discipline should be used, were found. Higher levels of education, more frequent contact with children, and having grandchildren under the age of twelve were related to more positive attitudes toward children. This information should be useful t...

Observations on the First International Conference on Children of Holocaust Survivors.

This first large-scale gathering of children of Holocaust survivors revealed-more from the unanticipated group process of the conference than from its official proceedings-that the second generation seeks a collective identity subordinate neither to the older generation of parents nor of mental-health authorities. Vital moments of tension and reconciliation at the conference between the children's self-help movement (with a sizable membership of young mental-health professionals) and distinguished mental-health experts indicated the legitimacy of intergenerational encounter and the place that it will likely be accorded in future meetings.

The Intergenerational Encounter: A Method in Treatment

The Intergenerational Encounter: A Method in Treatment