No description available.

Within the frame of global ageing and its perceived potential for social and economic generational conflict, relationships between age groups are of interest. Research has been mainly driven from within social gerontology and family studies and focused on the evaluation of intergenerational practice which relies on contact between generations to promote solidarity. This research addressed a gap by focussing on a 'natural' setting in the investigation of neighbourhood age relationships, which have received little research attention to date. The case study site is a Protestant public housing estate in Northern Ireland. Using an ethnographic and mixed method approach within a critical frame, the research exposed the highly contextualised social factors which drive age relationships within the neighbourhood. Theoretical analysis of the data views continued ageist stereotypes, social exclusion and the legacy of the Northern Ireland conflict as being packed with ambiguity. This ambiguity is interpreted as ambivalence grounded in the push and pull processes of group categorisations within the broader processes of social identification. The research concludes that age relationships are contextualised in and driven by the highly specific social contexts in this case study. This suggests that attempts to promote solidarity between age groups as a means to tackle the challenges of our ageing society should take account of this context. A focus on contact between generations, in the form of all-age projects, is helpful but only if these localised social conditions are present in the exchange.

No description available.

In recent years, the academic field of gerontology has developed a newfound interest in the body. A curiosity about temporality, in its many manifestations: chronology, generation, rhythmicity, pace, anticipation, and history, to name a few, is growing in the social sciences. To date, no one has tackled ageing bodies embedded and embodied in time. This thesis explores time, embodiment, and identity as people come to know, experience and conceive of the bodily ageing process. The cohort, coming of age in the sixties timescape were in the centre of a social rupture. That era starkly exemplifies the importance of time and identity but is, by no means, a stand-alone event. The multiple aspects of the temporal dimension profoundly influence our expression and experience of ageing embodiment and meaning as expressed through identity. Yet, ageing is also a universal human experience. The collective experience of the postwar generation including the Bomb and Cold War, Earthrise, music and dance, the Pill, and the liberation movements have influenced expressions of physicality throughout the lifetime of this cohort. For this cohort, the experience of these events is now influencing the meaning of embodied ageing and identity. Body, time and the times of the postwar cohort are explored in this thesis. The inclusion of the intersection of time and body adds to our understanding of ageing. Employing a systemic perspective and constructivist grounded theory methodology, this study reflects research that included rich interview data from a cross-class study of thirty adults born between 1945 – 1955. The study makes an original contribution to the field of social/cultural gerontology in its exploration of embodiment, time, and identity and the findings that result from that investigation. The concepts of deep time, relative time, and dynamic legacy in relationship to older people are illuminated as a result of this study.

Statistics from the 2011 UK Census revealed that one sixth of the population were over the age of 65, which is the highest recorded ratio in any census history. Although there are discrepancies in the physical, mental and social wellbeing of the older adult population, huge strains have been placed upon the National Health Service, care system and subject population. Previous scholarship has revealed that technology use in various formats can reduce these pressures, however, published work on older adults and technology often focusses on attitudes and intentions rather than motivations of actual use. This thesis addresses this gap in the literature by examining the Motivating Operations (MOs) on post-purchase technology use of older adults. By adopting a radical behaviourist perspective, the present research attempts to introduce the Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) term, Motivating Operation, to consumer behaviour by incorporating the proposed MOs into the already established Behavioural Perspective Model (BPM). This approach encourages the measurement of actual technology use as an operant behaviour alongside the MOs, as independent variables, impacting upon the rate-of-response. Consequently, a longitudinal quantitative and qualitative empirical strategy has been devised to produce a rich and complex set of data to explain older adult technology use. Overall, by using principles of behaviourism to interpret the technology use of older adults within a post-purchase environment, this thesis intends to break the dominant trend within technology acceptance and adoption literature of relying on either the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) or Diffusion of Innovation (DIT) to explain behaviours related to technology use. Alternatively, it produces an imaginative but logical analysis of the subject behaviour, which is not in contention with previous models but intends to enhance and expand the consumer behaviour, technology acceptance and adoption literature.

The thesis investigates the responses of older audiences to representations of lesbian, gay, and bisexual sexualities and transgender identities in British prime time television soap operas between1986 and 2002. It combines cultural research, in relation to theories of soap opera and audience engagement and social research into the responses and views of older audiences to such representations and the life experiences of the participants which inform their views. The thesis recognises that the voices of older people are underrepresented in socio-cultural research, especially when investigating sexuality. Soap opera constitutes a genre which functions as a vehicle for social issues, including sexualities. Soap operas draw large audiences across generations and gender; they have high profile publicity and intertextual material to engage viewers' interests, and broadly accessible scheduling. They therefore provide an accessible means of engagement with these issues with older people. Chapter 1 outlines the social context of the research and reviews selected discourses and research, noting that much recent research is directed to issues of care and therefore tends to address the needs and preferences of older people rather than their active engagement with, and potential contribution, to popular culture and issues of sexualities and gender identity. Chapter 2 identifies and evaluates cultural theories and issues around textual analysis. The relevance and validity of these general themes are examined in Chapter 3 by means of 'close readings' of two selected episodes with relevant narratives and representations through textual analysis and in relation to everyday social interaction. Chapter 4 addresses the epistemological issues involved in combining cultural research into the meanings and significance of these representations and narratives with social research into the meanings, associations and value derived from them by older audiences. The methodological framework for social research and the qualitative research methods are discussed and evaluated. The research focuses upon five groups of older people, two from an Inner London Drop- in Centre and an Outer London Day Centre and three from Campaign groups who identify as members of a London based Older Lesbian Group, Older Gay Men's Group and Male to Female Transgender Group. More self-conscious readings of the narratives and representations could be expected from groups with a campaigning history or trans-gender identity than the other two groups. Differences and commonalities between and within groups are noted and analysed in Chapter 5 and the analysis of the data is structured by the theories and themes identified and demonstrated in Chapters 2 and 3. The thesis supports and develops recent research which recognises that older people are diverse and demonstrate strong opinions. It also shows that as television audiences and in conversation older people actively engage with issues of non-normative sexualities which are too frequently regarded as peripheral for older people, if not taboo. This could usefully be further investigated.

The work presented in this thesis examines experiences of ageing amongst 21 male and female Veteran elite runners. Experiences of ageing continue to be understood within a discourse of decline. The body plays a central role in this process but primarily in its biological manifestations. Sociology has neglected ageing bodies and little is as yet known about the phenomenological dimension of growing older. The ageing literature is beginning to give some attention to the place of the body in experiences of ageing and some theoretical development has been in progress since the pioneering conceptualisation of the modern experience of bodily ageing within the Mask of Ageing perspective. However we need to specify the interaction between bodily experiences and the social location of people as they age. I am proposing to bring to light the complexity of ageing experiences by reconceptualising it within a theoretical framework influenced by the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. This requires paying heed to the phenomenological dimension of bodily use and bodily change but also to the wider cultural and structural landscape of late modernity in which bodily use is embedded. To this end I have chosen to locate my investigation amongst a group of people whose everyday experiences take place in the context of athletics and who thus appear to challenge traditional age-appropriate expectations about appropriate bodily use and dispositions. The findings will reveal the claims for bodily competence made by agers themselves and the self-conscious engagements with the struggle for social and symbolic distinction which this involves. I will propose broadening the concept of habitus proposed by Bourdieu to include age, in order to access the changing nature of embodiment but also the potential for social change made possible by modalities of embodiment which are based on the reconstruction of ageing as ambiguity.

This thesis investigates gender inequalities in healthy ageing among the older English population, using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. The research aims were achieved by completing the following steps: (i) healthy ageing was intended as advancing to the later stages of the life course without disability; where disability was first theoretically conceptualized and then measured using severity levels that were identified empirically; (ii) gender inequalities in healthy ageing were assessed by studying whether the association between disability and mortality observed over the course of a decade differed between men and women; and (iii) disability and mortality were combined into a summary measure of population health -disability-free life expectancy- in order to estimate how expectancies of healthy life have changed over a decade across the two genders. The work is structured in four papers, denoted Research Paper I-IV. Research Paper I, a systematic literature review of studies analysing inequalities in health expectancy among the older population, inspired the direction taken by this thesis, as it identified gaps and open questions to be addressed to aid the understanding of the dynamics of healthy ageing. Research Paper II attempted to develop an approach to answer some of these questions. First, a solid and theoretically grounded definition of disability was proposed, based on the WHO's International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health (ICF), and in contrast to the data-dependent (and therefore heterogeneous) measures used in the literature. Then, using this definition, explanations of the gender paradox in health and mortality were attempted by analysing whether the association of disability with mortality differed between women and men over the period for which data were available (2002-2012). In Research Paper III the definition of disability elaborated in Research Paper II was used to foster and advance the debate on the usefulness and relevance of adopting a finer categorization of disability, and discuss why it is important to go beyond a binary classification, and to identify the appropriate number of disability levels that is most useful for research purposes. Based on these conclusions, the final aim of this thesis was accomplished in Research Paper IV, which studied the trends in disability-free life expectancy in England over the last decade, comparing the changes experienced by men and women at each severity level of disability. The collective findings of this thesis highlight the importance of defining disability in a consistent and comprehensive way as well as considering different severity levels. This work provides robust empirical evidence for theories of population health change over a decade in the English setting, with gender differences in healthy ageing, and directions of population health changes, found to vary across disability levels.

The principles of user involvement have developed strongly in parts of UK social policy over the past fifty years. However despite the apparent commitment of governments to creating and establishing 'spaces' for user voices, and academic comment on the need for involvement, only a limited amount of research has concentrated on the meanings and understandings of user involvement as portrayed in official documents and as perceived by users and practitioners. This thesis builds on three main elements: first a literature review in two parts (one on the user involvement academic literature, and the other on key trends and issues associated with ageing and old age). The second strand is a review of official strategies, policies and practices, to outline the development of involvement initiatives and programmes directed by government over time. Complementing these, the thesis also reports a local empirical case study into the practice of user involvement in a metropolitan borough in northern England. Within that study interviews were conducted both with Key Informants and local older people, to gather practitioner and user perceptions and perspectives on involvement and their observations as to its impact on them. Conclusions are drawn about the development of user involvement in the UK, trends in recent practices in the fields of social care and health services and about the perceptions of real people - variously the beneficiaries and victims of user involvement - as to its meaning and value.

No description available.