{"title":"''Equally mixed'': artistic representations of old love","authors":"A. Cohen-Shalev, E. Marcus","doi":"10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.15281","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.15281","url":null,"abstract":"Michael Haneke’s (2012) film Amour is used as a point of departure for discussing a spectrum of artistic representations of ‘‘old love,’’ a phenomenon that is still little understood. While most critics have focused on euthanasia when referring to the film’s dramatic climax, its late-life perspective of love has been marginalized. Analyzing Amour, as well as other recent cinematic and poetic texts, we challenge the widespread midlife and ageist perception of ‘‘April love,’’ contrasting it with different views from within old love. Our reading of Amour illustrates the effects of intense, all-encompassing, and sealed intimacy in advanced old age and sheds light on potential consequences it may have on the decisions and lives of the people involved. We conclude by discussing how certain forms of love, seen from within, unfold in tandem with age or life phases that affect the pace, emotional, and interpersonal nature of the partnership.","PeriodicalId":39906,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Ageing and Later Life","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69505773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jason Danely (2014). Aging and Loss: Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 246 pp. ISBN 978 0 8135 6516 3 (paperback)","authors":"E. Anbäcken","doi":"10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.10_2A","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.10_2A","url":null,"abstract":"REVIEWED by ELS-MARIE ANBACKEN* Ih ave read a lot of literature on Japanese society and aging since the early 1990s. A recurring theme is the issue of care and filial duty in a changing society: Who cares, who should care, and where? Danely has composed a unique tapestry which tells the (hi)story of aging, care and intergenera- tional relations by using aesthetics and spirituality as tools for analysis. In doing so, new aspects of the experience of aging as experiences of loss are dealt with, in the intersections of aging studies, religion and, perhaps, gerontological social work. The ethnography unfolds, starting out from the choice of site and informants to careful interpretations of conversations and participant observations. The in-depth stories and analyses of this interweave with theoretical reflections resulted in a rich ''story,'' which is both an academic study and a piece of fine art. Throughout the ethnography, Danely uses the cultural reference of Ubasuteyama, the mountain where old grannies were taken by their eldest son to die. Danely draws on this tale in a deeply creative way across time to show that it continues to influence the ways old age care is dispensed till this day. Even though eldercare is available, the view of filial duty as an ideal for care appears to linger on, but interwoven with individual","PeriodicalId":39906,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Ageing and Later Life","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69505171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dress and age: the intersection of life and work","authors":"J. Twigg","doi":"10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.15-55","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.15-55","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I outline the influences, intellectual and personal, that have led me to the subject of dress and age, a topic that I have explored with great enjoyment over the last decade. These have their roots in earlier academic and personal interests, and one of the aims of the article is to show how these different spheres of life and work intersect. I discuss this under three broad headings: intellectual and academic influences; longterm personal interests, particularly in history and the aesthetics of dress; and the impact of becoming an older woman.","PeriodicalId":39906,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Ageing and Later Life","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69505783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Aging worlds in contradiction: gerontological observations in the Mediterranean region","authors":"H. Kondratowitz","doi":"10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.1510135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.1510135","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses the existing and developing aging regimes in the Northern and Southern rim countries of the whole Mediterranean region which are all undergoing considerable social and political transformation processes. It is argued that several eye-opening theoretical interventions for such a gerontological project may lead to some methodological problems and pitfalls, which have to be dealt with productively. Central collective concepts of such an analysis (as the change-oriented ‘‘modernization effects’’ of societal aging and the continuity-oriented gaze at the ‘‘unity of the region’’) have to be reconsidered and ought to be more differentiated in order to allow smaller social entities (such as kinship and community systems and their connectivity) to be central orientations for analyzing poverty and care management in old age in the Mediterranean region. How to reconnect such a rather micro-political agenda with large processes and big structures of aging policies in the region however still remains an open question.","PeriodicalId":39906,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Ageing and Later Life","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69505682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spatial pattern of structural ageing in eastern Croatia: evolution and explanations","authors":"Marijan Jukic, H. Khan","doi":"10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.2015_159253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.2015_159253","url":null,"abstract":"The article aims to examine the ageing situation and social policy issues in the Osijek-Baranja County of Eastern Croatia. Using historical evidence from Census data, the research suggests that the evolution of the ageing pattern has been mainly determined by such factors as development of the transport system; changes in political-territorial organisation; supply of jobs in the cities; deagrarianisation and a domestic war in the 1990s. The increased importance of urban centres, through planned industrialisation and administrative centralisation, has accelerated and intensified rural-to-urban migration. Consequently, the spatial pattern of structural ageing has been substantially affected. A significant variation was found in urban and rural areas and also within sub-regional units. The findings suggest that the evolution of spatial disparities in the ageing pattern has been due to unplanned migration; also to spatial differences in the level of socio-economic development; the influence of tradition, such as higher fertility rates historically in some areas and suburbanisation, notably around the city of Osijek. The article concludes that ageing is affecting the country’s economic growth and the formal and informal social support systems including the provision of resources for older citizens in the endangered areas.","PeriodicalId":39906,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Ageing and Later Life","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69505397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Theorising ageing and the question of a long life: eye openings","authors":"S. Biggs","doi":"10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.15279","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.15279","url":null,"abstract":"A life course perspective, drawing on historical and personal experiences, is used to identify eye-opening concepts that can be used to make sense of the world in terms of personal and social ageing, in the context of intergenerational relationships. Two issues have been identified that characterise a challenge to cultural adaptation: that of generations increasingly becoming approximately the same size as they move from demographic triangles to columns, and that of finding an age-specific purpose for a long life. An analysis of contemporary problems facing gerontology and social policy is given, drawing on the need for complementary life priorities and enhanced generational intelligence. Implications for work, generational rivalry and precarity are examined along with some conclusions on the role of eyeopening conceptual development.","PeriodicalId":39906,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Ageing and Later Life","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69505761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Material inheritances: an affective story in the history of elderly persons","authors":"Liliana X. Sousa, Marta Patrão, Á. Mendes","doi":"10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.15266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.15266","url":null,"abstract":"Material inheritance is an important theme in old age, tied up to the life story and with shaping the manner in which one will be remembered. This study adopts the self-confrontation method to explore the meanings and affects that elderly persons attach to the material inheritance, taking into consideration their experiences both as heirs and donors. The sample comprises five participants (80-95 years). Main findings suggest a process of transmitting material inheritance characterized by the creation of a material legacy throughout life and from both positions (donor and heir); resolution related to receiving inheritances (heir position); and transferral as a donor later on in life. This process seems to play an affective role at individual (self-autonomy vs. lost love) and familial (union vs. isolation) levels. The transmission of material inheritance represents a lifelong task that connects past, present, and future and links generations.","PeriodicalId":39906,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Ageing and Later Life","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69505703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Five eye-openers in my life of critical gerontology","authors":"S. Katz","doi":"10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.15276","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.15276","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is a personal account of five ‘‘eye-opening’’ career experiences in the author’s life that illustrate how biographical events shape opportunities and inspire knowledge-making in critical gerontology. Borrowing from Pierre Bourdieu’s methodological concept of ‘‘fieldwork in philosophy,’’ this account suggests that critical thinking only becomes meaningful in the lived contexts in which it is grounded, negotiated, transformed, and shared. Thus theoretical ideas about ageing, despite their abstract nature, have historical and unpredictable stories of their own that are worthy of a ‘‘fieldwork’’ approach. The paper also emphasises that the ‘‘critical’’ in critical gerontology includes a strong reflexive and self-critical dimension about the subjective conditions of doing gerontological research, especially in the face of gerontology’s claim to be an objective science.","PeriodicalId":39906,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Ageing and Later Life","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69505712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond health and well-being: transformation, memory and the virtual in older people’s music and dance","authors":"K. Wakeling, Jonathan Owen Clark","doi":"10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.15262","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.15262","url":null,"abstract":"Research exploring older people and the participatory arts has tended to focus on notions of biomedical impact, often coupled with appeals to evasive notions of “well-being.” Rather than suggesting such approaches are invalid, this article proposes the need for their extension and proposes an alternative, critical approach to analysing older people’s experience of arts participation. Based on ethnographic participant observation and intensive consultation with a cohort of older people engaged in a programme of creative music and dance, we explore the complex processes and possibilities of transformation that the participatory arts can initiate, examining how performance can create intriguing linkages between past, present and future experiences. Taking a phenomenological approach to the study of memory, recollection, reminiscence and future anticipation, we discuss how arts participation can “actualise” potential memories in older participants, examining how and why this kind of expressive activity animates the idea of “virtual” selves (after Bergson).","PeriodicalId":39906,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Ageing and Later Life","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69505691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Julia Twigg (2013). Fashion and Age. Dress, the Body and Later Life. London: Bloomsbury, 174 pp. ISBN 978 1 8748 8696 5 (paperback)","authors":"Maricel Oró Piqueras","doi":"10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.2015_1A","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3384/IJAL.1652-8670.2015_1A","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39906,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Ageing and Later Life","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69505449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}