Contesting Aging and Loss


Book Description

Disease and death are a part of life, but so too is being well. The lively voices found in this book are not shy about stating the ways in which the widely held notion that they are in decline has been a far larger problem than many other features of their lives. For students, scholars, and policy makers, the message is to attend to these voices, and to design and build better programs that address the social determinants of healthy aging and social inclusion throughout the life course.




Contesting Aging & Loss


Book Description

"This volume invites readers to re-imagine the losses of aging by listening to the views of elders themselves. Researchers, students of aging, and policy makers should find this work most enlightening." - Athena McLean, Central Michigan University




Aging in a Changing World


Book Description

This is a story about aging in place in a world of global movement. Around the world, many older people have stayed still but have been profoundly impacted by the movement of others. Without migrating themselves, many older people now live in a far “different country” than the one of their memories. Recently, the Brexit vote and the 2016 election of Trump have re-enforced prevalent stereotypes of “the racist older person”. This book challenges simplified images of the old as racist, nostalgic and resistant to change by taking a deeper, more nuanced look at older people’s complex relationship with the diversity and multiculturalism that has grown and developed around them. Aging in a Changing World takes a look at how some older people in New Zealand have been responding to and interacting with the new multiculturalism they now encounter in their daily lives. Through their unhurried, micro, daily interactions with immigrants, they quietly emerge as agents of the very social change they are assumed to oppose.




The Becoming of Age


Book Description

The Becoming of Age is an examination of the ways that aging and old age are represented in popular film. Arguing that the ideas behind cinematic depictions of aging are historical and open to revision, the author looks at how movies both promote negative portrayals of aging and challenge its persistent cultural devaluation. Movies are a site of struggle where the representation and the reality of aging intertwine, and they have the power not only to reflect but to reconstruct our understanding.




Learning to be Old


Book Description

This work examines what it means to grow old in America today. The book questions social myths and fears about aging, sickness, and the other social roles of the elderly, the over medicalization of many older people, and ageism. Here the author proposes alternatives to the ways aging is usually understood in both popular culture and mainstream gerontology. She does not propose the ideas of "successful aging" or "productive aging," but more the idea of "learning" how to age. Featuring new research and analysis, the third edition of this text demonstrates, more thoroughly than the previous editions, that aging is socially constructed. The book focuses on the differences in aging for women and men, as well as for people in different socioeconomic groups. The author is able to put aging in a broad context that not only focuses on how aging affects women but men, as well. Key updates in the third edition include changes in the health care system, changes in how long older Americans are working especially given the impact of the recession, and new material on the brain and mind-body interconnections. The author challenges conventional ideas about aging, and brings forth some new ideas surrounding aging in America today.




Research Design in Aging and Social Gerontology


Book Description

Research Design in Aging and Social Gerontology provides a review of methodological approaches and data-collection methods commonly used with older adults in real-life settings. It addresses the role of normative age-related sensory, cognitive, and functional changes, as well as the influence of generational cohort (age-period-cohort) upon each design. It discusses the role of older adults as true co-researchers; issues uniquely related to studies of persons residing in community-based, assisted, skilled, and memory-care settings; and ethical concerns related to cognitive status changes. The text concludes with detailed guidelines for improving existing data collection methods for older persons and selecting the best fitting methodologies for use in planning research on aging. Features of Research Design in Aging and Social Gerontology include: Descriptions and evaluations of a wide range of methodological approaches, and methods used to collect data about older persons (quantitative, qualitative, mixed, and emergent methods: photovoice, virtual environments, etc.) Ways to match research questions to selection of method without a preconceived methodological preference or dominance Real-world and applied examples along with cases from the gerontological literature "How to" sections about reading output/software reports and qualitative-analysis screenshots (from ATLAS.ti) and quantitative (SPSS) output and interpretation Pedagogical tools in every chapter such as text boxes, case studies, definitions of key terms, discussion questions, and references for further reading on chapter topics Glossary of key terms, complete sample research report, and an overview of past methodological research design work in gerontology Companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/Weil where instructors will find PowerPoint presentations, additional discussion questions, and a sample syllabus; and students will find flashcards based on glossary terms, a downloadable copy of the sample research report in the text, and links to data sets, related websites, further reading, and select gerontological journals This text is intended for upper-level undergraduates and masters students in aging and gerontology as well as students in human development, applied anthropology, psychology, public health, sociology, and social-work settings. Health care professionals, social workers, and care managers who work with older adults will also find this text a valuable resource.




The New Neighborhood Senior Center


Book Description

In 2011, seven thousand American “baby boomers” (those born between 1946 and 1964) turned sixty-five daily. As this largest U.S. generation ages, cities, municipalities, and governments at every level must grapple with the allocation of resources and funding for maintaining the quality of life, health, and standard of living for an aging population. In The New Neighborhood Senior Center, Joyce Weil uses in-depth ethnographic methods to examine a working-class senior center in Queens, New York. She explores the ways in which social structure directly affects the lives of older Americans and traces the role of political, social, and economic institutions and neighborhood processes in the decision to close such centers throughout the city of New York. Many policy makers and gerontologists advocate a concept of “aging in place,” whereby the communities in which these older residents live provide access to resources that foster and maintain their independence. But all “aging in place” is not equal and the success of such efforts depends heavily upon the social class and availability of resources in any given community. Senior centers, expanded in part by funding from federal programs in the 1970s, were designed as focal points in the provision of community-based services. However, for the first wave of “boomers,” the role of these centers has come to be questioned. Declining government support has led to the closings of many centers, even as the remaining centers are beginning to “rebrand” to attract the boomer generation. However, The New Neighborhood Senior Centerdemonstrates the need to balance what the boomers’ want from centers with the needs of frailer or more vulnerable elders who rely on the services of senior centers on a daily basis. Weil challenges readers to consider what changes in social policies are needed to support or supplement senior centers and the functions they serve.




Handbook of Research on Multicultural Perspectives on Gender and Aging


Book Description

As people grow older, cultural issues arise. Recognizing how social influences guide and restrict people leads to a better understanding of one’s self and helps people as they age. The Handbook of Research on Multicultural Perspectives on Gender and Aging provides emerging research on midlife issues, physical aspects of aging, and the emotional value in the context of the culture in which people are living. While highlighting topics such as elderly disabilities, quality of life, and gender dimensions, this publication explores self-esteem in older members of society. This book is an important resource for academicians, healthcare professionals, professionals, researchers, and students seeking current research on the social and cultural characteristics of growing old.




Freezing Fertility


Book Description

Welcomed as liberation and dismissed as exploitation, egg freezing (oocyte cryopreservation) has rapidly become one of the most widely-discussed and influential new reproductive technologies of this century. In Freezing Fertility, Lucy van de Wiel takes us inside the world of fertility preservation—with its egg freezing parties, contested age limits, proactive anticipations and equity investments—and shows how the popularization of egg freezing has profound consequences for the way in which female fertility and reproductive aging are understood, commercialized and politicized. Beyond an individual reproductive choice for people who may want to have children later in life, Freezing Fertility explores how the rise of egg freezing also reveals broader cultural, political and economic negotiations about reproductive politics, gender inequities, age normativities and the financialization of healthcare. Van de Wiel investigates these issues by analyzing a wide range of sources—varying from sparkly online platforms to heart-breaking court cases and intimate autobiographical accounts—that are emblematic of each stage of the egg freezing procedure. By following the egg’s journey, Freezing Fertility examines how contemporary egg freezing practices both reflect broader social, regulatory and economic power asymmetries and repoliticize fertility and aging in ways that affect the public at large. In doing so, the book explores how the possibility of egg freezing shifts our relation to the beginning and end of life.




The Ages of Life


Book Description

The binary construction of »young« and »old«, which is based on a biogerontological model of aging as decline, can be redefined as the ambiguity of aging from a cultural studies perspective. This concept enables an analysis of the social functions of images of aging with the aim of providing a basis for interdisciplinary exchange on gerontological research. The articles in this publication conceive the relationship between living and aging as a productive antagonism which focuses on the interplay between continuity and change as a marker of life course identity: aging and growing older are processes which cannot be reduced to the chronology of years but which are shaped by the individual's interaction with the changing circumstances of life.