Social Construction Of Age Research Articles

Galvanizing the “Missing Revolution”: Processes and Meanings of the Child/Adult Binary in the Social Construction of Age

Galvanizing the “Missing Revolution”: Processes and Meanings of the Child/Adult Binary in the Social Construction of Age

The social construction of aging through participation in social work with senes of the Sesc – CE

Introduction: The elderly have a perception of aging related to the choices made throughout life, also considering financial resources, family support, social network, and elderly groups. Objective: To analyze the perception of aging of participants in social work with elderly people from the Social Service of Commerce (Sesc) in Ceará. Method: This is a descriptive study with a qualitative approach. For data collection, the conversation wheel technique was used, with the participation of 126 elderly people - 110 women (87%) and 16 men (13%) -, aged between 60 and 102 years (73.69 ± 7.12 ). The narratives were analyzed using the Content Analysis Method and the categories of aging, activities, and coexistence were identified. Results: It was observed that aging is the result of the history of these elderly people and a natural stage of life, while the activities are a starting point for the feeling of renewal of life as opposed to accommodation, and coexistence was the positive element to establish a relationship intimate with an exchange of voluntary affections of friendships through the interaction provided by the open space and the exchange of knowledge. Final considerations: The study presented narratives that encourage empowerment and the ability of the elderly to see themselves as active in society.

Older adult Cubans moving to the Canary Islands (Spain): Migrants' strategies in later life

The research on migration to Spain of Cuban citizens in later life proposes to overcome the lack of academic knowledge from these analytical perspectives: migrations of older adult people beyond the issue of lifestyle mobility; the transnational diasporic nexus favoring migrations; and the Cuban community residing abroad, outside the United States of America. The combination of these elements in this case study shows the agency of older adult Cuban citizens who move to the Canary Islands, trying to achieve a greater level of material well-being and taking advantage of the diasporic ties between the Canary Islands and Cuba; but this is a process that brings out, simultaneously, feelings of dislocation and nostalgia in the stage of old age. The development of a mixed methodology and the focus on the life course of migrants offer an opportunity to reflect on the cultural and social construction of ageing in migration studies. Consequently, this research allows a deepening of knowledge on human mobility from the perspective of ageing in a counter-diasporic migration, showing the relationship between emigration and life cycle and demonstrating the strength and spirit of achievement of those individuals who decide to emigrate despite their advanced age.

The Social Construction of Age and ‘Best Interests’ Discourses: An Intersectional Analysis of Canadian Immigration and Refugee Policy for Children

AbstractCanada has received worldwide recognition for its implementation of the Canada Chairperson’s Guideline 3: Child Refugee Claimants. This informal immigration rights policy, statutorily authorized by the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, instructs immigration officials to provide special considerations to accompanied and unaccompanied child migrants. Our analysis examines the language of Guideline 3 to understand how the social construction of age influences the provision of protections. Our findings demonstrate that, although chronological age is prominently featured throughout Guideline 3, other factors known to impact the social construction of age, such as gender and cultural background, are only superficially discussed. The homogenized discourse of children within Guideline 3 illustrates the protection of an idealized conception of childhood, which does not accurately reflect the heterogeneity of migrant and asylum-seeking children. The implications of such an idealized notion of childhood in informal immigration rights policies delineates children worthy of protections, and children who are excluded.

Ageism in Working Life: A Scoping Review on Discursive Approaches.

Background and ObjectivesThis review investigates the contribution of discursive approaches to the study of ageism in working life. It looks back on the 50 years of research on ageism and the body of research produced by the discursive turn in social science and gerontology.Research Design and MethodsThis study followed the 5-step scoping review protocol to define gaps in the knowledge on ageism in working life from a discursive perspective. About 851 papers were extracted from electronic databases and, according to inclusion and exclusion criteria, 39 papers were included in the final review.ResultsThe selected articles were based on discursive approaches and included study participants along the full continuum of working life (workers, retirees, jobseekers, and students in training). Three main themes representing the focal point of research were identified, namely, experiences of ageism, social construction of age and ageism, and strategies to tackle (dilute) ageism.Discussion and ImplicationsDiscursive research provides undeniable insights into how participants experience ageism in working life, how ageism is constructed, and how workers create context-based strategies to counteract age stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. Discursive research on ageism in the working life needs further development about the variety of methods and data, the problematization of age-based labeling and grouping of workers, and a focus on the intersection between age and other social categories. Further research in these areas can deepen our understanding of how age and ageism are constructed and can inform policies about ways of disentangling them in working life.

Adultes “encore” jeunes, jeunes “déjà” adultes ?

Cet article étudie la construction sociale des âges, et notamment de la jeunesse et du passage vers l’âge adulte. À partir des résultats d’une recherche qualitative sur la sexualité et la masculinité chez de jeunes hommes marocains (20-30 ans), immigrés en Europe, le texte se propose d’interroger la transition vers l’âge adulte sous l’angle des processus d’identification de genre et des vécus sexuels des interviewés. L’article montre comment le pouvoir de l’hétérosexualité, dont l’action s’imbrique avec l’expression des rapports intra- et intergénérationnels et intra- et interculturels, façonne les représentations des âges chez ces jeunes hommes et participe à produire les significations attribuées à leurs expériences biographiques en milieu migrant. L’objectif est de montrer l’intérêt d’une approche en termes de genre et de sexualité des catégories d’âge afin de penser la jeunesse et la transition vers l’âge adulte en tant que rapports sociaux s’inscrivant au sein d’un ensemble plus large de relations de domination.

#50+ fashion Instagram influencers: cognitive age and aesthetic digital labours

PurposeThis paper demonstrates how #50+ fashion Instagram influencers contribute to the social construction of cognitive age through their aesthetic digital labours.Design/methodology/approachNon-participative netnography was used in the form of visual and textual analysis of over 300 Instagram posts including images, captions and comments.FindingsFindings reveal how outfit selection, background choices and bodily poses redefine expressions of look age through forms of aesthetic labour. Post-construction, hashtag and emoji usage illustrates how influencers refrain from directly posting about the fashion brands that they endorse. Instead, image and personality work visually attracts followers to politically charged posts which directly impact upon the social and cultural contexts where influencers are active. This ties into present-day wider societal discourses.Practical implications50+ fashion influencers have high spending power. Fashion brands should refrain from using #brand and collaborate in more subtle ways and concentrate on challenging the negativity of the old-age cliché.Originality/valueThe study advances theory on the social construction of age in fashion studies by combining cognitive age with aesthetic labour to identify the characteristics of the social phenomenon of the 50+ Instagram influencer. It applies principles from critical visual analysis to digital context, thereby advancing the qualitative netnographic toolkit.

Hide and Seek

Since the publication in 1960 of Philippe Ariès’s foundational, if problematic, Centuries of Childhood, the history of childhood has developed into a rich and varied field. At the annual conference of the Western Society for French History in 2018, a call for panelists for a roundtable on the history of childhood expanded into two separate panels ranging from the medieval era through the thirty glorious postwar years. The panelists and the audience grappled with questions about the social construction of age, the ages of childhood, and the challenges of finding sources for a group that left few “ego documents.” Although children per se never exercised political or global power, attention to children clarifies how critical children were to political and international systems. Material generated by children themselves can be difficult to locate, but adults generated plenty of material about children. The intersectionality of the history of childhood with fields like labor history, urban history, the history of the welfare state, and the history of psychology parallels the intersectionality of children themselves, who come from every race, social class, and gender. All humans, it turns out, start out as children.

A Social Model of Loneliness: The Roles of Disability, Social Resources, and Cognitive Impairment.

Purpose of the studyWe consider the points at which cognitive impairment may impact on the pathway to loneliness for older people, through impeding social interaction with family and friends, or by interfering with judgments concerning satisfaction with relationships.Design and methodsWe conceptualize a mediation model anticipating that social resources (LSNS-6) will mediate the pathway between disability (Townsend Disability Scale) and loneliness (De Jong Gierveld 6-item scale) and a moderated-mediation model in which we hypothesize that cognitive impairment (MMSE) will moderate the association between disability and social resources and between social resources and loneliness. To validate the hypothesized pathways, we draw on the CFAS Wales data set (N = 3,593) which is a nationally representative study of community-dwelling people aged 65 and older in Wales.ResultsDisability had a significant indirect effect on loneliness through the mediating variable social resources. Cognitive impairment was significantly associated with social resources, but did not moderate the relationship between disability and social resources. Cognitive impairment had a significant impact on loneliness, and moderated the effect of social resources on loneliness.ImplicationsSocial structures can (dis)empower people with cognitive impairment and lead to exclusion from social resources or impact on the social construction of aging, cognitive impairment, and dementia. The sense of self for an older person with cognitive impairment may be influenced by social norms and stereotypes, or through a temporal social comparison with an “earlier” sense of self. We conclude that loneliness interventions should be theoretically informed to identify key areas for modification.

Social Construction of Aging

In life, we must take the good with the bad, and how we view these life events determines our well being and ability to adjust. Aging is not optional. We are all, in fact, aging from the moment we are born. The biggest issue regarding aging and getting old is how we look at it. Social constructivisms uncover the ways in which individuals participate in the creation of their perceived social reality. It involves looking at the ways old age are perceived, created, institutionalized, and made into traditions by human beings. Individuals construct their own life course through the choices and actions they take within the opportunities and constraints of history and social circumstances. This paper examines social construction of old age and aging in general and self-aging in particular among a small sample of 300 male and female respondents in the age range of 25-85 years. Main themes that emerged in the context constructions of general aging were as follows: good aging – ‘all responsibilities being over’; worst part of growing old – ‘empty nest’; females spend less time than males with elderly parents but expect a better relationship with them and are perceived to be the best support to elderly; best type of support for male elderly – ‘emotional’, for female elderly – ‘physical’; best support that old parents can extend is in ‘caring for children’; amount of advice that young adults are willing to accept from elderly – ‘only a bit’; for old respondents caring for elderly – a ‘government’s responsibility. When people were asked to construe their own old age they reported that the most predominant feeling in old age would be ‘loneliness’; most important concern –‘health’; expectations about living in old age – ‘with son and their families’; possibilities of receiving day to day care from grown up children – ‘great’. Data analysis revealed several interesting findings by way of anxiety about aging, ageist attitudes and some utopian expectations. Most importantly, it indicated that even though people try to maintain a distance from elderly people, are unable to engage with them and/or care for their elderly parents they are sure of receiving, in their own old age, much better support, emotional closeness and daily care from their children.

Rethinking Risk and Ageing: Extending Working Lives

This paper critically examines the development of recent policy and theoretical issues concerning the ‘extension of working lives’ for older people in the United Kingdom. It grounds its analysis in ideas from the ‘risk society’ thesis (Beck, 1992) to explore how the matrix of population ageing, job and pension changes impinge on the shifting emphasis on increasing the retirement age, coupled with individualising pensions from state provision to a focus on self-responsibility via private provision. This neo-liberal re-positioning of extending work and pension policy has implications for the management of risk for older people in the UK. The paper explores the impact of population ageing on government ideas associated with social policy relating to extending working lives. It concludes with an assessment on the lessons policy makers and social policy analysts can learn from such shifts and the impact on the social construction of age.

Rhythms, ageing and neighbourhoods

To demonstrate the potential of time in understanding older adults’ experiences of place, this paper draws attention to the everyday temporal dimensions of ageing in urban neighbourhoods. In this qualitative research, we utilise Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis to illustrate how the rhythmic orderings of people and place come into being and inform their experiences. Rhythmanalysis proved to be a useful tool in eliciting how the social construction of ageing in social policy, with its focus on activity and work, becomes embodied in older adults’ everyday lives in terms of how they value their own rhythms. The findings reveal how the contrasting daily rhythms of the older respondents and younger residents emphasise the slowness of the rhythms of later life. To counteract the negative connotations of these slowed rhythms, respondents sought temporal anchors that would enable them to experience daily life in their neighbourhood as eventful. That the rhythms of older and younger residents were not synchronised in time and space resulted in experiencing a ‘generational divide’ that emphasised respondents’ stasis in the neighbourhood. Our findings suggest that the everyday rhythms linked to urban ageing can evoke a sense of ‘otherness’ within a neighbourhood. In the future, a challenge for societies will be to prevent neighbourhoods from becoming ensembles in which older adults feel ‘out of sync’ and out of place.

Claiming Subjectivity: Re-Storying Clinical Psychology and Myself

This article explores becoming a clinical psychologist later in life. Drawing on the author’s experience as a developmental psychologist who becomes a clinical respecialization student, it traces shifts in narratives of identity, belongingness, perspectives on psychology, and ways of knowing that both influence and construct her perspective on age and midlife. The paradigm shifts of going from professor, to student and intern, and philosophical shifts, transitioning from a stance of objectivity, to one informed by deep subjectivity, are considered. The ways that age matters is pondered as an artifact of the larger social construction of aging. The article proposes that a rich later-in-life perspective often includes the capacity to utilize self-knowledge and affective interpretation that nurtures subjectivity. The capacity to summon subjectivity facilitates rich authentic empathic connection with patients in clinical practice. The author explores the process of learning and re-storying herself in a manner that draws on self-reflection, clinical subjectivities, the life-learned ability to be humble, and a theory-informed lens of clinical psychology that is truly different from developmental psychology. The promise for future contributions to both clinical work and the greater field by “new” clinicians at midlife is explored.

Transitions to religious adulthood: relational geographies of youth, religion and international volunteering

This paper offers important insights into the contemporary nature of youth transitions and the ways in which religious affiliation and engagement with international volunteering influences and interplays with negotiations of the life course. Situated within interdisciplinary debates about youth transitions, as well as discussions about relational geographies of age, religion and voluntarism, we demonstrate the multiple relationalities that are at play as young religious international volunteers negotiate the transition to religious adulthood. We focus on religious, vocational and aged relationalities to explore how these are engaged with, and experienced by, young people ‘over there’ in Latin America and ‘back home’ in the UK. Additionally, we explore how these relationalities shape identities within and between religiosity, age (youth) and volunteering, and how these are (re)organised through networks, flows and mobilities. To do so, we draw on our analysis of the experiences of young volunteers who participated in faith‐based international volunteering with an evangelical Christian organisation that sends teams of young people on short‐term missions to Latin America. We draw on our analyses of two sets of interviews with 22 young volunteers, 14 of whom also completed a diary about their experiences, supplemented by four focus groups. Our analysis points to the ways in which the spatial emphasis of geographical engagements with youth transitions can be well informed through considerations of religion; a key challenge being how young volunteers renegotiate their sense of religious self on returning ‘back home’. In addition, although our participants displayed some self‐reflexivity about the social construction of age, they did not necessarily exhibit an understanding of the power underpinning their encounters with others. Finally, our findings open up possibilities for appreciating the diversity of volunteering experiences and the role that volunteer organisations have in shaping the expectations and aspirations of those who participate in their programmes.

A qualitative approach to the use of ICTs and its risks among socially disadvantaged early adolescents and adolescents in Madrid, Spain

An exploratory qualitative research was carried out in Madrid, Spain, focusing on early adolescents and adolescents from low-income families, most of them with a migration background. The main subject was to describe their perceptions about risk and harm in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Focus groups and creative workshops were conducted in order to identify risk perceptions, conflicts, solutions and the main agents involved in each case. Despite their lack of financial resources, these adolescents intensively use media and modern technologies with the support of formal and informal institutions outside the family. In this context, they use technology as a set of different resources coordinated in a network in order to achieve specific goals of early adolescence and adolescence. Risks emerge as this network affects their family rules, the social construction of age, and the status inside the family and among peers.

‘Against the grain’: over 75 years and joining a community exercise programme

This study explores the meanings that 22 men over 75 years attributed to their experience when joining a community exercise programme. Information gathered via interviews was analysed by inductive analysis. Four dominant themes emerged and these provide a framework for representing the findings. All men believed a physical active lifestyle was desirable for well-being and quality of life, although engagement at various levels is strongly influenced by the social construction of ageing and one’s personal history. Being physically active via a programme in later life is as much an embodied as a technical endeavour. It is also as much biographical as biological, and for ongoing engagement exercise must be deemed purposeful to self, irrespective of whether or not what occurs is in accordance with the scientific script prescribed for optimal health. Just being ‘older’ poses a variety of challenges to adopting a physically active lifestyle in the later years, something the men in this study imply needs to be better understood.

Why We Need an Archaeology of Old Age, and a Suggested Approach

Archaeologies of identity have enriched our interpretations of the past in the last 20 years; however, despite interest in the social construction of age there has been little consideration of the later part of the life span. This is rooted in a mixture of methodological difficulties and social attitudes to old age in present-day societies. This article explores the ways in which old age can be constructed on both a physical and social level, and asks how this might be relevant to archaeological examples. In addition, it proposes a new way of understanding skeletal changes with age which allows us to explore the specific way that old age is constructed in particular archaeological contexts. In this way, it becomes possible to explore the relationship between the ageing process and social change. This is explored using a case study from Early Bronze Age Austria.

Practical psychiatry of old age John P Wattis Practical psychiatry of old age Stephen Curran Donna Doherty, RGN, BSc(Hons), RMN, MSc Gerontology, PGDip Dementia Studies Radcliffe 4th £29.95 280 1 85775 796 3 1857757963

The text begins with an excellent chapter that discusses the different types of ageing. Issues such as the social construction of ageing are welcomed and would be a useful starting point for anyone researching this subject. The discussions on the demography of ageing could have been more developed but the authors provide enough detail to give readers a basic understanding of the facts and the implications.

Cumulative trivia: a holistic conceptualization of the minor problems of ageing

In 1999 Hockey postulated the hypothesis that some older people experience a continual accumulation of small, individually minor events or difficulties that degrade their resilience until they ‘cannot cope with another thing’. She referred to this accumulation as cumulative trivia. The essence of cumulative trivia lies in their everyday nature, where regular occurrence and variety of challenge stack up to form perceived threats to an older person's ability to function independently. There is a strong overlap between this concept of cumulative trivia and an established concept in the health psychology literature called daily hassles. Consistent with the mainstream psychology approach, the vast majority of research into daily hassles has been quantitative. In the present article we adopt a critical stance to the knowledge produced from this research, questioning its foundations in the positivist epistemology. In particular the research is criticized for absenting the social context from our understanding of daily hassles, and for focusing too strongly upon the individual. The considerable lack of research into daily hassles in the lives of older people is also highlighted, indicating the need for work in this area. Using a social constructionist framework, we attempt to develop a holistic conceptualization of cumulative trivia, through which some key differences between the cumulative trivia and daily hassles concepts are indicated. We argue that cumulative trivia could be seen within the framework of the daily hassles literature but that this framework would require to be developed further and refined to accommodate the specific characteristics associated with Hockey's concept. We suggest that the social construction of ageing may serve to normalize experiences in ageing such that they become trivialized. Finally we examine how the social construction of independence as an ideal state may create or exacerbate the effects of cumulative trivia, and argue for its reconstruction to legitimize older people's experiences of minor difficulties. Through these arguments we relocate responsibility for cumulative trivia toward the social context.

Ageing, technologies of self and bio‐medicine: a Foucauldian excursion

This paper unravels the conceptual and theoretical insights of Foucault’s later work on technologies of self in order to understand Bio‐medicine which impinges on the social construction of ageing. The article attempts to show how Foucault’s theoretical insights allows scholars of sociology and social policy to provide a critical appraisal of ageing. The paper also examines the relationship between ageing and self‐care in three contextual domains: good health management; use of counselling; and bodily enhancement.