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This book examines aspects of aging that are commonly overlooked by dominant conceptual models in gerontology, which focus on the observable, measurable, or “outside” dimensions of aging. Drawing on the emerging field of narrative gerontology, it provides conceptual-theoretical support to scholars of aging who are interested in bringing such topics as reminiscence and life review more into the center of gerontological inquiry. Although aging has often been framed in terms of a narrative of inevitable decline, a more positive portrayal of aging becomes possible as the focus is placed on the intricate psychological dimensions or “inside” of aging, and as the storied nature of human experience is taken explicitly into account. The book looks at aging as, potentially, a process of poeisis: a creative endeavor of fashioning meaning from the ever-accumulating, ever-thickening texts — memories and reflections — that constitute our inner worlds. At its center is the conviction that, although we are constantly reading our lives to some degree anyway, doing so in a mindful manner is critical to our development, or growth, in the second half of life. The book employs a narrative, and thus interdisciplinary, perspective to link together topics that have tended to be of marginal interest within mainstream gerontology, specifically memory, meaning, wisdom, and spirituality. It does this by exploring the convergence of ideas from literary theory regarding reader-response; of advances in neuroscience regarding the narrative basis of consciousness itself; and of thinking about narrative development and narrative identity within psychology, in particular the psychology of aging.

When she started working with the aged more than forty years ago, Ann Burack-Weiss began storing the knowledge and skills she thought would help when she got old herself. It was not until she hit her mid-seventies that she realized she had packed sneakers to climb Mount Everest, not anticipating the crevices and chasms that constitute the rocky terrain of old age. The professional gerontological and social work literature offered little help, so she turned to the late-life works of beloved women authors who had bravely climbed the mountain and sent back news from the summit. Maya Angelou, Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, Joan Didion, Marguerite Duras, M. F. K. Fisher, Doris Lessing, Mary Oliver, Adrienne Rich, May Sarton, and Florida Scott-Maxwell were among the many guides she turned to for inspiration. In The Lioness in Winter, Burack-Weiss blends an analysis of key writings from these and other famed women authors with her own wisdom to create an essential companion for older women and those who care for them. She fearlessly examines issues such as living with loss, finding comfort and joy in unexpected places, and facing disability and death. This book is filled with powerful passages from women who turned their experiences of aging into art, and Burack-Weiss ties their words to her own struggles and epiphanies, framing their collective observations with key insights from social work practice.

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 examines the legal rights and responsibilities of older people. Although the focus is particularly on the legal issues surrounding old age it draws extensively on the gerentological, philosophical, sociological, and medical literature surrounding the subject. The book examines the key issues surrounding ageing and law: ageism and age discrimination; mental capacity; care and older people; elder abuse; pensions and benefits for older people; grandparents; the health care of older people; and inheritance issues. These issues raise complex social and legal issues. The book highlights the many ways our social and legal systems let older people down and makes proposals as to how these could be improved. It argues that the devaluation of ageing and the social exclusion of older people not only impoverishes the lives of older people, but of society generally.

Restorative justice and social work share principles and goals, including the goal of addressing pain and conflict. Many of the processes used by restorative justice practitioners are based on indigenous practices that facilitate peacemaking, victim healing, and reengagement of offenders. As a method for transforming conflict, restorative justice can be viewed as a theory, a principle, and a practice. Each aspect of restorative justice has the ability to inform and strengthen social work practice and restorative practices can be enhanced by the knowledge, evidenced based initiatives, practice modes, and commitment to social justice pioneered by social work. This book examines the intersection of the two disciplines by exploring restorative justice practices in traditional social work environments. The book provides case studies in settings such as school settings, communities, domestic violence, homicide, prisons, child welfare, and gerontology. Social workers and restorative justice practitioners collaborate on each chapter, outlining theoretical orientations, specific intervention approaches and practice principles that integrate the strengths of each approach in ranging from the commonplace contradiction of punishing public school students for behavioral problems by depriving them of the opportunity to learn from their mistakes to the role that both social work and restorative processes have played in the rebuilding of Liberia.

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.

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.

The aging of gay men is as revolutionary as the movements for gay liberation and AIDS. With the aging of the Baby Boomer generation, we are witnessing a new phenomenon: gay men entering old age. This event is transforming our views of old age; the composition of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities; and the field of gerontology. Queer Aging addresses the timely question: What is like to be an older gay man? It brings the stories and the voices of a diverse group of men—black, Latino, and white—to uncover the aging experience and examine how race, AIDS, and age together are shaping the lives of these men.

The fields of health care, aging, and social work are often treated as discrete entities, while all social workers deal with issues of health and aging on a daily basis, regardless of practice specialization. This is the first reference book to address this reality by compiling the most current thinking on these subjects in a single volume. With the population of older adults increasing as rapidly as new possibilities for their care, professionals need an accessible source of specialized information about how best to serve the elderly and their families. The most experienced and prominent gerontological health care scholars provide social workers with up-to-date knowledge of evidence-based practice guidelines for effectively assessing and treating older adults and supporting their families. The contributing authors paint portraits of a variety of populations that social workers serve and arenas in which they practice, followed by detailed recommendations of best practices for an array of physical and mental health conditions.

Social class in Later Life: Power, Identity and Lifestyle advances contemporary debates on class dynamics in later life. Focusing attention on various spheres of class analysis, it provides the most up-to-date collection of emerging research relevant to the relationship between class, culture, and ageing. The book develops an empirical understanding of the interface between social class and later life, with chapters presenting data which demonstrate an inverse relationship between class background and various forms of capital. Social Class in Later Life addresses the paradox that, while many retirees have benefited from the structures and stability of a first modernity, their current circumstances are much more contingent on what Beck calls the ‘side effect principle’, where decisions that affect their situations and opportunities are often the consequences of structures placed well outside their individual agency. Indeed, the coming of late capitalism did not result in the end of traditional forms of inequalities, but only a growth of new inequalities alongside the continuation of traditional social divisions. Chapters highlight how lifelong class dynamics have major implications for ageing policies, and that rather than calling for the class concept to be written off as an artefact of a superseded form of social organisation, it is more sensible that sociologists and gerontologists alike perceive it as a social category in need of considerable re-articulation.

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.

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.

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.