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‘Active ageing’ has become a key phrase in discourses about challenges and remedies for demographic ageing and the enrolment of older adults into voluntary work is an important dimension of it. The pattern and factors conditioning volunteering among older people has so far been an under-researched topic in Europe and this is the first book to study volunteering among older people comparatively and comprehensively. In this topical book older people's volunteering is studied comparatively in eight European countries representing different kinds of welfare regimes, at the structural, macro, meso and micro levels. Overall it highlights how different interactions between the levels facilitate or hinder older people's inclusion in voluntary work and makes policy suggestions for an integrated strategy. This book provides important new insights for academics and students interested in ageing societies, active ageing and voluntary work. It will also be of great value for policy makers and practitioner in third sector, older volunteers and voluntary organisations.

The book provides a comprehensive analysis of research and policies examining the development of age-friendly cities and communities. The chapters examine the theoretical assumptions behind the idea of an ‘age-friendly community’; provide case studies of age-friendly work in contrasting environments in Asia, Australia and Europe; and assess different design and policy interventions aimed at improving the physical and social environments in which people live. The book also has a ‘Manifesto for Change’, directed at the various stakeholders working in the field, containing a range of proposals aimed at raising ambitions for developing age-friendly activity.

Population ageing and globalisation represent two of the most radical and far reaching social transformations that have occurred since the middle of the last century. This book provides, for the first time, an accessible overview of how they interact. Ageing has been conventionally framed within the boundaries of nation states, yet demographic changes, transmigration, financial globalization and the global media have rendered this perspective problematic. This book critically applies theories of globalisation, notably Appadurai’s model of the landscapes of global modernity, to gerontology. In so doing the books aims to assess the impact of globalization on the experiences and expectations of ageing and later life. Drawing on data from a wide range of studies, the book explores the state of the health, financial circumstances, identity and sense of belonging of the world’s older population. The key argument presented in the book is that, although we are witnessing the decline of the nation-state as the dominant spatial unit through which to understand ageing and later life we are yet to witness the emergence of a global spatial order. The book concludes by arguing that the economic, political and cultural co-ordinates of later life have become increasingly located in a series of overlapping spatial logics encompassing the local, the national, the regional and the global.

With socio-economic and demographic changes taking place in contemporary societies, new patterns of family relations are forming partly due to significant family changes, value shifts, precariousness in the labour market, and increasing mobility within and beyond national boundaries. This book explores the exchange of support between generations and examines variations in contemporary practices and rationales in different regions and societies around the world. It draws on theoretical perspectives and empirical analyses to discuss both newly emerging patterns of family reciprocity and more established ones which are affected by changing opportunities and pressures in contemporary societies. The book is split into two parts: the first reviews key theoretical and conceptual debates in this field, while the second offers new insights and an understanding of exchange practices based on case studies from different regions and different relationships.

Targeted as ‘grey consumers’, people retiring now participated in the creation of the post-war consumer culture. These consumers have grown older, but have not stopped consuming. Based on extensive analysis over two years, this book examines the engagement of older people with consumer society in Britain since the 1960s. It charts the changes in the experience of later life in the UK over the last fifty years, the rise of the ‘individualised consumer citizen’ and what this means for health and social policies.

This book is a timely collection of interdisciplinary and critical chapters about the fields of ageing studies and the sociology of everyday life as broadly conceived to explore the meaningful connections between subjective lives and social worlds in later life. The scope of the writing expands beyond traditional approaches in these fields to engage with cross-cultural, feminist, spatial, ethnographic, technological, cinematic, new media and arts research. Readers will find the detailed attention to everyday experiences, places, biographies, images, routines, intimacies and temporalities illuminating, while appreciating the wider critiques of ageism and exclusion that inform each chapter. The book also contributes to the growing international area of ‘critical gerontology’ by comprising two parts on ‘materialities’ and ‘embodiments’, foci that emphasize the material and embodied contexts that shape the experiences of ageing. The chapters on ‘materialities’ investigate things, possessions, homes, technologies, environments, and their representations, while the complementary chapters on ‘embodiments’ examine living spaces, clothing, care practices, mobility, touch, gender and sexuality, and health and lifestyle regimes. Overall, in both its parts the book contests the dominant cultural narratives of vulnerability, frailty and disability that dominate ageing societies today and offers in their place the resourceful potential of local and lived spheres of agency, citizenship, humanity and capability.

This collection of in-depth ethnographic analyses examines the care, or lack of care, older people receive in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and how it affects the contemporary life-worlds of those older people in need of social and health care. It provides the pan-African evidence and analysis needed to move forward debates about how to address the long term care needs of this vulnerable population. Case studies from different regions of the continent (southern, central, east and west Africa) examine formal and informal (familial) care, including inter- and intra-generational care, care in contexts of poverty, HIV/AIDS and migration, as well as institutionalization.

At a time of extreme globalisation Ageing in the Mediterranean fills a key void in international literature on ageing societies. This important and timely volume brings together a distinguished set of international scholars who provide rich information about the social, economic, political, and historical factors responsible for shaping ageing policy in the Mediterranean region. It is a regional handbook that highlights the idiosyncrasies of overlapping ageing issues in one particular territory and presents a range of key issues and concerns including migration, care-giving, employment, and health care amongst others, whilst providing rich data from various countries such as Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Malta, Portugal, Tunisia and Turkey. Ageing in the Mediterranean will be warmly welcomed by researchers in social and public policy, gerontology and geriatrics, welfare economics, and health care. It will also be of interest to policy makers and NGOs involved in welfare and social care services.

Many western nations have experienced a rise in the number of marginalised and deprived inner-city neighbourhoods. Despite a plethora of research focused on these areas, there remain few studies that have sought to capture the ‘optimality’ of ageing in place in such places. In particular, little is known about why some older people desire to age in place despite multiple risks in their neighbourhood and why others reject ageing in place. Given the growth in both the ageing of the population and policy interest in the cohesion and sustainability of neighbourhoods there is an urgent need to better understand the experience of ageing in marginalised locations. This book aims to address the shortfall in knowledge regarding older people's attachment to deprived neighbourhoods and in so doing progress what critics have referred to as the languishing state of environmental gerontology. The author examines new cross-national research with older people in deprived urban neighbourhoods and suggests a rethinking and refocusing of the older person's relationship with place. Impact on policy and future research are also discussed. This book will be relevant to academics, students, architects, city planners and policy makers with an interest in environmental gerontology, social exclusion, urban sustainability and design of the built environment.

Demographic ageing is identified as a global challenge with significant social policy implications across local, national and international contexts. The 2008 economic crisis and related austerity policies further compound and complicate this challenge. Social policy pressures characterising ageing societies increasingly need to be understood within the context of the economic recession and the evolving circumstances of austerity. Yet, the extent to which the global economic crisis intensifies problems experienced in later life has been largely neglected as a research and policy topic. This book addresses this deficit by using Ireland as a site for unpacking social policy issues in ageing through austerity. The book interrogates whether or not the economic recession and austerity has in fact altered ageing experiences for older people in Ireland. A selection of internationally recognised policy issues for ageing societies are explored; demography; citizenship; participation and volunteering; work, gender and pensions; age-friendly communities and place; dementia care; and social exclusion. The book presents a critical analysis to contextualise and elaborate on international debates around these issues within the Irish austerity setting, and to identify future directions for research and policy that are relevant beyond Ireland. A central goal of contributors is to demonstrate linkages between the global, national and local levels that shape the experiences of ageing in a time of austerity. The emphasis, however, is as much on the capacity of the local to shape and manipulate global influence and forces, as it is about the power of globalisation over national and community contexts.

This is the first book to address the issue of ageing after a long life with disability. It breaks new ground through its particular lifecourse perspective, examining what it means to age with a physical or mental disability and what the implications are of ‘becoming old’ for people who have had extensive disabilities for many years. These people may have had to leave the labour market early, and the book looks at available care resources, both formal and informal. Ageing with disability challenges set ideas about successful ageing, as well as some of those about disabilities. The lifecourse approach that is used unfolds important insights about the impact of multiple disabilities over time and on the phases of life. The book highlights the meaning of care in unexplored contexts, such as where ageing parents are caregivers or regarding mutual care in disabled couples. These are areas of knowledge which have, to date, been totally neglected.

Life-course meaning and insight remain stubbornly significant for (older) people: it is damaging to inhabit societies that believe existence loses meaning after paid employment ceases. This view amounts to the social exclusion of older people, needing to be countered both politically and by exploring alternative interpretations of older age. Using examples from the author’s experience in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Austria and the US, the book deploys a confluence of disciplinary approaches, exploring compelling versions of later-life meaning in everyday life and gerontological literature. In earlier chapters it interrogates taken-for-granted practices making it harder to attach meaning to later life, including problems in discussing ethics, everyday reasoning, or the importance of human connectedness. It then examines varieties of meaning attributed to later life among gerontologists and older people themselves: meaning as stressing connectedness with values or practices outside individuals; meaning stressing (life-)time, life-course development and ‘generativity’; and meaning as insight, including inside into the human condition, and wisdom. Exploring these, the book uses ‘reconstructive ethnography’ to interpret meaning connected with time, narrative and practice. It probes ideas about wisdom in psychology and philosophy, including Aristotle’s connection of wisdom with reasoning, ethics, and urgent practical politics in uncertain circumstances. The book offers a social, transactional account of wisdom, used in co-operation among imperfect individuals who together can achieve more than they could alone. It illustrates the appeal of this idea in art and everyday life: reviving ideas about wisdom offers coherence, hope and meaning for social and individual life-course aims.

The volume discusses the interrelationship between critical and humanistic gerontology. It prepares the common ground for these two paradigms that have developed separately with each drawing on their own traditional resources. The purpose of this volume is to explore the extent to which they presuppose and complement each other: as structural analysis and articulations of interpersonal meanings in later life. This general theme is explored with a changing focus on specific themes, such as globalization, the post-traditional society, autonomy and interdependence; interpersonal meanings in ageing, agency and the fourth age; dementia, spirituality and self development; autonomy and social isolation; social work with older people and participatory action research. The volume is completed by a critical commentary on some of its main themes.

Based on forty years' interviewing experience, this book illustrates the variety of religious, spiritual, and other beliefs held by older people. It provides models of research procedure, especially in the context of bereavement. Participants include not only British Christians, but also Muslims, Humanists, and witnesses of the Soviet persecution of religion. The author argues that both welfare professionals and gerontologists need to pay far more consideration to belief as a constituent of well-being in later life. The book looks to the future and increasing diversity of choice in matters of belief among Britain and Europe's older citizens as a consequence of immigration and globalisation.

This book argues that concepts such as successful, active, positive, healthy and productive ageing - ubiquitous terms in research, marketing and policymaking concerned with older adults – are paradigms that reflect and exacerbate inequalities in older populations. The book presents a new theory to make sense of the popularity of this family of successful and active ageing concepts. Readers are invited to view them through the prism of model ageing – a new social theory that throws light on the causes and consequences of attempts to model ageing as a phenomenon and stage of the life course that is in need of direction, reshaping and control. The term model ageing encapsulates systems of ideation pertaining to the question of ‘how to age in contemporary Western society’: these systems amount to a distinctive and coherent social construction of what it is to live like a model older person in 21st-century welfare states. Model ageing comprises policy ideals, commercial depictions and academic conceptualisations of what model old adults are or ought to be like. The theory of model ageing offers an explanatory account of the origins, mechanics and consequences of this ubiquitous activity of modelling ageing. This is an interpretive theory that seeks to make sense of how later life is socially constructed and moulded in contemporary aged societies.

Dementia has been widely debated from the perspectives of biomedicine and social psychology. This book broadens the debate to consider the experiences of men and women with dementia from a sociopolitical perspective. It brings to the fore the concept of social citizenship, exploring what it means within the context of dementia and using it to re-examine the issue of rights, status(es), and participation. Most importantly, the book offers fresh and practical insights into how a citizenship framework can be applied in practice.

Specialist forms of housing with care are becoming increasingly popular in the United Kingdom, largely as a result of the ageing of the population and the relative wealth of the latest generation of older people. Retirement villages and extra care housing are two models of provision that have seen particularly spectacular growth. This is partly because in many ways they are perceived to promote government agendas for increasing independence and wellbeing for older people. They also aim to meet older people's aspirations for a good quality of life in their retirement years and to live somewhere they feel they belong. Many such housing developments are marketed as ‘communities of like minded people’, offering security, peace of mind, a range of facilities, and new opportunities for friendship and social interaction. This important book investigates changing concepts and experiences of community across the lifecourse and into older age and how they play out in housing with care settings. An overview of how the housing with care sector has developed, both in the UK and internationally, is provided. The book emphasizes the central importance of a sense of community for older people's quality of life and explores the impact of a range of factors including social networks, inclusive activities, diversity, and the built environment.

This book brings together international scholars working within a critical gerontology perspective. Chapters review and update our understanding of how the field has developed over the last twenty-five years and, through the lens of ‘passionate scholarship’, provide a challenging assessment of the complex practical and ethical issues facing older people, and those who conduct research on ageing, in the 21st century. The chapters extend the critical gerontological approach conceptually, methodologically and practically. They offer close and scholarly analysis of policies affecting the lives of older people and provide insights into why research is done in particular ways. Special attention is paid to feminist contributions and new approaches to working in partnership with older people; age discrimination and ageism; the impact of neo-liberal policies and the passage of various human rights instruments; the re-medicalisation of later life; the participation of older people in research; and justice between generations. The book offers suggestions for promoting change, and an exciting set of visions and perspectives for the renewal and development of critical gerontology in the years ahead.

This book adopts a fresh approach by exploring dementia from a human rights perspective, thereby expanding the dementia debate. The main aim is to challenge thinking by interrogating policy and practice through a human rights lens. Dementia as an illness and a social construction lends itself well to critical analysis from this perspective, as people with dementia are probably one of the most marginalized and stigmatized social groups in the world. Yet careful consideration of their basic human rights is seldom undertaken, integrated into public policy on dementia and embedded in practice manuals/guidelines. Bringing together concepts such as human rights, disability, social inclusion, personhood, equality, participation, empowerment, autonomy and solidarity and applying a social constructionist lens, the book points to some of the gaps that exist between the rhetoric of public policy on dementia and the reality of peoples’ everyday lives and argues for the need to reframe policy and to reform practice. It provides a coherent and evidence based overview of the challenges dementia poses in primary care, in the community care sector and in long term residential care.

There is no shortage of political and moral commentary on family life. Frequently the underlying theme of these commentaries is the decline of contemporary family commitment, particularly when older people's family experiences are the focus. This book challenges many common stereotypes about the nature of family involvement as people age. The book explores diversity and change in the family relationships older people maintain, looking at how family relationships are constructed and organised in later life. It recognises that the emerging patterns are a consequence of the choices and decisions negotiated within family networks, emphasising older people's agency in the construction of their family practices. In exploring such themes as long-term marriage, sibling ties in later life and grandparenthood, the book highlights the continued significance of family connection and solidarity in later life, while recognizing that family relationships are inevitably modified over time as people's social and material circumstances alter.