"No Regrets": Qualitative Evidence on Early Claiming of Social Security Retirement
Publication date: September 2018 Source:Journal of Aging Studies, Volume 46 Author(s): Lila Rabinovich, Anya Samek We conducted focus groups (n = 68) to explore how older Americans feel about their past Social Security claiming decisions. Like most older Americans, our focus group participants claimed Social Security early: about 45% claimed Social Security at age 62, and about 65% claimed before Full Retirement Age (ages 65–66). We might expect that older adults may regret early claiming, since this can result in lower financial security in later life. Respondents reported satisfaction with their decisions to cl...
Source: Journal of Aging Studies - June 6, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Participation narratives of Third Age adults: Their activities, motivations and expectations regarding civil society organisations
Publication date: September 2018 Source:Journal of Aging Studies, Volume 46 Author(s): Guido Cuyvers, Fleur Thomése, Theo van Tilburg Third Age adults leaving the labour market are not only armed with broad experience and multiple competencies but also find themselves free of professional obligations while still physically sound. The general theory of Third Age of Laslett sheds a new light on characteristics of ageing adults and their role in society. They are able to engage in society in ways inaccessible to previous generations of older adults. According to Laslett, combining a myriad personal strengths and being f...
Source: Journal of Aging Studies - June 5, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Active ageing in Denmark; shifting institutional landscapes and the intersection of national and local priorities
Publication date: September 2018 Source:Journal of Aging Studies, Volume 46 Author(s): Adam.B. Evans, Anne Nistrup, Gertrud Pfister Studies of governance rarely examine how specific institutional configurations are designed to target specific ‘problem’ groups, including older adults via ‘active ageing’ policies. In Denmark, active ageing policy has been contoured by the Structural Reform of 2007, which drove changes in institutional landscapes at both national and local levels. Rather than representing a ‘hollowing out’ of control from the centre, the Danish Structural Reform comprised a decentralised re-t...
Source: Journal of Aging Studies - May 17, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Tracked and fit: FitBits, brain games, and the quantified aging body
Conclusions suggest that new technologies around aging and quantifiable fitness create an ambiguous image of the aging body and brain as both improvable and ‘plastic’ but also inevitably in decline. (Source: Journal of Aging Studies)
Source: Journal of Aging Studies - May 4, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Envisioning bodies and architectures of care: Reflections on competition designs for older people
This article explores how assumptions about aging bodies are made manifest in architectural plans and designs. By analysing entries for an international student competition Caring for Older People (2009), we illustrate the ways in which aged bodies were conceived by future architectural professionals. Through analysing the architectural plans, we can discern the students' expectations and assumptions about aging bodies and embodiment through their use of and reference to spaces, places and things. We analyse the visual and discursive strategies by which aged bodies were represented variously as frail, dependent, healthy, t...
Source: Journal of Aging Studies - May 4, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Unequal access: Applying Bourdieu's practice theory to illuminate the challenges of ICT use among senior citizens in Singapore
Publication date: Available online 1 May 2018 Source:Journal of Aging Studies Author(s): Kevin S.Y. Tan, Calvin M.L. Chan The following article examines the application of Pierre Bourdieu's Practice Theory in accounting for ongoing disparities in accessing information and communications technology (ICT) in Singapore among senior citizens. As the relevance of Practice Theory is increasingly recognized among both scholars of ICT and ageing studies in modern societies, this article seeks to further contextualize and demonstrate its theoretical relevance and explanatory potential within developed, multicultural and rapidly...
Source: Journal of Aging Studies - May 1, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Imagining the 'baffling geography' of age
This article explores later life as a special moment for the imagination, for persons of all ages. If we were to routinely ask ourselves what is the life we hope to be able to look back on, we would increase the likelihood that our ultimate life review would bring us deeper satisfaction. Why, then, do we not devote more attention to imagining our future lives and inviting that vision to help guide us, without which we deprive ourselves of contemplating a life of other possibilities. The article reviews the limited research which has been done on imagining old age, and relates this to data gathered over a twenty year period...
Source: Journal of Aging Studies - April 11, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Unacknowledged distinctions: Corporeality versus embodiment in later life
Publication date: Available online 12 January 2018 Source:Journal of Aging Studies Author(s): Chris Gilleard, Paul Higgs The focus upon the body in the social sciences has had a growing influence in recent years on aging studies. Various terms have been used to explore the relationship between the body and society, of which ‘corporeality’ and ‘embodiment’ have taken pride of place. In this paper, we present the case for drawing a clear distinction between these two terms and the consequences that follow from it for the study of the body in social and cultural gerontology. Central to this distinction is the plac...
Source: Journal of Aging Studies - April 4, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Dementia and the gender trouble?: Theorising dementia, gendered subjectivity and embodiment
This article discusses how pervasive discourses on a loss of self and dementia as abject are interwoven with a de-gendering of persons with dementia. The cultural anxiety that dementia evokes in terms of loss of bodily and cognitive control could also be linked to a failure to normatively and intelligibly express gender when living with dementia. As a way to sustain personhood for people with dementia and challenge discourses on people with dementia as ‘non-people’, person-centred approaches have emphasised the collaborative work of carers, relatives and persons with dementia. Often implicitly, this also involves a ‘...
Source: Journal of Aging Studies - April 4, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Popular music scenes and aging bodies
Publication date: Available online 17 January 2018 Source:Journal of Aging Studies Author(s): Andy Bennett During the last two decades there has been increasing interest in the phenomenon of the aging popular music audience (Bennett & Hodkinson, 2012). Although the specter of the aging fan is by no means new, the notion of, for example, the aging rocker or the aging punk has attracted significant sociological attention, not least of all because of what this says about the shifting socio-cultural significance of rock and punk and similar genres – which at the time of their emergence were inextricably tied to yo...
Source: Journal of Aging Studies - April 4, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
‘I don't really have any issue with masculinity’: Older Canadian men's perceptions and experiences of embodied masculinity
Publication date: Available online 17 January 2018 Source:Journal of Aging Studies Author(s): Laura Hurd Clarke, Maya Lefkowich The article explores what older Canadian men consider to be the definition of masculinity, how they evaluate their own masculinity relative to their definition, and how and why they use particular forms of body work in response to aging and their understandings of masculinity. Data are presented from qualitative interviews with 29 community-dwelling men aged 65–89. The men in our study defined masculinity relationally with femininity and homosexuality and identified three hallmarks of mascul...
Source: Journal of Aging Studies - April 4, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Rethinking musicality in dementia as embodied and relational
Publication date: Available online 19 January 2018 Source:Journal of Aging Studies Author(s): Pia Kontos, Alisa Grigorovich With the biomedicalisation and the pharmaceuticalisation of dementia, music programs, as with other arts- and leisure-based programs, have primarily been implemented as non-pharmacological means to generate social and behavioural changes. We argue that understanding and fully supporting the musicality of persons living with dementia requires engagement with citizenship discourse. Specifically we draw on a model of relational citizenship that recognizes that corporeality is a fundamental source of ...
Source: Journal of Aging Studies - April 4, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
The dynamic nature of gender and aging bodies
Publication date: Available online 1 February 2018 Source:Journal of Aging Studies Author(s): Toni Calasanti, Neal King To test a popular belief that men and women become more alike with age, we ask whether and how bodily changes that accompany aging might influence the ways that people do gender. Drawing on theories that view both gender and age as ongoing accomplishments, we use interview data gathered from people aged 42–61 years to ask whether masculinity and femininity become less relevant with age, whether people feel themselves to be less gendered. Our analysis shows, first, that respondents see manhood and ...
Source: Journal of Aging Studies - April 4, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Race, embodiment and later life: Re-animating aging bodies of color
This article concludes by exploring how recent methodological innovations – especially the visual and sensory turn – can offer new ways of understanding the lived experiences of aging bodies of color. (Source: Journal of Aging Studies)
Source: Journal of Aging Studies - April 4, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Editorial for special issue Ageing, body and society: Key themes, critical perspectives
Publication date: Available online 23 February 2018 Source:Journal of Aging Studies Author(s): Wendy Martin, Julia Twigg (Source: Journal of Aging Studies)
Source: Journal of Aging Studies - April 4, 2018 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
