Journal of Aging Studies最新文献

{"title":"Autobiographical accounts of living with dementia: Life story narration as self-care","authors":"Valerie Keller,&nbsp;Malte Völk","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101375","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101375","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Based on statements from people with dementia on the positive impact of reflecting on one's own biography, this study examines the ways in which life story narration can help those affected make sense of a disrupted present and a fragmented life characterised by forgetfulness. In this paper we analyse both oral and written accounts of everyday life as told by people living with dementia. In doing so we apply a heuristic based on the notion of key (auto)biographical strands in order to make clear how the individuals in question link their current experience of dementia with previous experiences and thereby revise the way they see themselves. Whether this occurs in an erratic, associative manner or in a more structured and connected fashion, there are varied ways in which people with dementia come to an emotional and cognitive appreciation of their life. The main aim of the analysis is not to establish biographical accuracy but rather to identify elements of self-care: a creative act of appropriating one's own life story, and the communicative presentation of a self-image.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101375"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145219194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘I don't like old women’: A longitudinal analysis of older adults' portrayals on the Belgian silver screen (1945–2022)","authors":"Femke De Sutter","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101374","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101374","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Cinema provides a flow of images of older adults, showing us how aging and older adults are constructed in a certain place and time. This study addresses two significant gaps in existing literature on the representation of older adults by (I) focusing on a longitudinal perspective, and (II) examining a small national film context. Using a quantitative content analysis, we examined 133 Belgian fiction films released between 1945 and 2022. The analysis revealed that 13 % of the characters were aged 65 years and above. However, this indicates an underrepresentation of older adults, as they made up an average of 15 % of the general Belgian population over the same period. Findings from our study indicate several key patterns. First, our study revealed an unexpected gender bias, with women aged 65 and above being statistically overrepresented in comparison to men of the same age cohort. Second, this overrepresentation was multifaceted, as older women were frequently typecast into negative stereotypes, routinely portrayed as shrews or cranky older adults. Third, we found a notable lack of diversity in the representations of older adults overall, with characters being predominantly “young-old”, Caucasian, middle-class, non-disabled and heterosexual (if sexuality was addressed at all). Finally, we observed that 64.8 % of the older adults were portrayed according to at least one positive stereotype. The most prevalent positive stereotypes were the golden ager, John Wayne conservative, perfect grandparent, and the sage. Although our analysis spans 77 years, marked by considerable demographic and socio-economic changes, older adults continue to be underrepresented and misrepresented in Belgian fiction films.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101374"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145219193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Aging, place, and the life course of societies","authors":"Graham D. Rowles ,&nbsp;Malcolm Cutchin","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101373","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101373","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article presents a novel perspective from which to study aging and place. Adopting a Deweyan pragmatist perspective, aging and place are viewed through the lens of ongoing situations. Each situation is the dynamic expression of a co-constituted relationship between the aging person and place, a relationship shaped by processes of place integration in a quest for a sense of being in place. Habit and constant adaptation to changing circumstances are key elements of maintaining person/place harmony. In a world of constant uncertainty, change resulting in disharmony becomes problematic, provoking a need to act in response on an individual, community, or societal level. We illustrate how contemporary mega-trends, including accelerating technological advance (especially artificial intelligence), climate change, and evolving 21st century neoliberal and populist political economies, threaten the places where older adults reside as they shape the life course of societies, with the potential for a dystopian future. The threat is increasingly acute in places where changes are exacerbating longstanding generational, ethnic, economic, social, cultural, and regional disparities and generating new ones. An alternative path is possible. Adopting a progressive pragmatist approach to social inquiry and problem solution on the level of the community, we suggest the possibility of a more positive future. Engaging older adults, an important source of social capital, in this endeavor will be critical. Significant change in the current situation, with the objective of enhancing person/place harmony with equity and social justice for all, may not be rapid. It may take generations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101373"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145099060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Tinkering with good care: Professional judgment and innovations in Danish nursing homes","authors":"Hanne Marlene Dahl ,&nbsp;Morten Balle Hansen ,&nbsp;Andrej Christian Lindholst","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101362","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101362","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article examines the COVID-19 pandemic as a large-scale natural experiment, presenting unique opportunities for reflection and insights into what constitutes ‘good care’ for front-line managers in Danish nursing homes. Using care and institutional theory, this exploratory study delves into how professional judgment and innovation redefine practices in nursing homes to provide quality care based upon qualitative questions in a national quantitative survey. Our analysis complements prevalent negative lessons on infections, high mortality, and moral distress by highlighting positive lessons about achieving intimacy and tranquillity during an extraordinary period. The article offers insights into the emergence of new care logics in a situation of rupture, as well as insights into the values and tensions inherent in good care work that are worth considering far beyond the pandemic. We offer lessons that relate to the role of professional judgment, the value of ‘active life’ in relation to a diversity of needs, as well as sufficient time and continuity of care logics.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101362"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145010049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Intergenerational co-relations and resistance: Gendered aging in Ruth Ozeki's All Over Creation (2002)","authors":"Nicole Haring","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101353","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101353","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101353"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145007706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Queer temporality in Tony Kushner's angels in America","authors":"Lea Pešec","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101354","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101354","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Tony Kushner's <em>Angels in America</em>, written in two parts during the early 1990s, vividly depicts the experiences of queer individuals confronting the AIDS crisis. Examined through the framework of anocriticism and queer temporality, the play challenges traditional life trajectories focused on reproduction, aging, and progress. Drawing on the work of theorists such as Roberta Maierhofer, Jack Halberstam, and Elizabeth Freeman, this analysis investigates how the play's fragmented narrative and interplay of supernatural and historical elements blur the boundaries between past, present, and future. Characters like Prior Walter and the Angel illustrate the tensions of queer aging and temporality. Prior's illness and his encounters with the Angel destabilize linear notions of life and death, creating a suspended sense of time where aging becomes unpredictable. The Angel's portrayal of time as cyclical and fractured disrupts assumptions that aging must follow a structured, linear path. By engaging with these temporal disruptions, <em>Angels in America</em> critiques socially constructed ideals of aging tied to health, productivity, and heteronormative family models. The play instead imagines futures shaped by resilience, interpersonal connection, and the transformative possibilities of queer existence beyond fixed life scripts. This critical reading positions Kushner's work as a vital contribution to critical conversations on aging, queerness, and temporality.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101354"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145007789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Secondary mediation of children's media use: An exploration of mothers-grandmothers' mediation dynamic","authors":"Galit Nimrod ,&nbsp;Nelly Elias ,&nbsp;Dafna Lemish","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101357","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101357","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Attempts to shape children's media use by affecting other caregivers' mediation practices, defined here as “secondary mediation,” are a significant yet relatively undiscussed family dynamic. By investigating 267 dyads of the two primary caregivers in intergenerational families—mothers and grandmothers—the study presented in this article sheds light on the prevalence of secondary mediation, the factors predicting it, and its consequences. Our findings point to a considerable gap between the mothers and the grandmothers in reporting the existence of secondary mediation. Yet, they suggest that secondary mediation within these dyads depends on the relationship between the two generations, their level of education, their experience and comfort with the media used by the children, and the time the grandmothers spend caregiving for the grandchildren. These findings are interpreted in light of Maierhofer's ‘anocriticism’ approach, pointing to the need for further research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101357"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145007786","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring the epic of older women's lives: Alexander Zeldin's The Confessions and Jan Vilanova's The Most Beautiful Thing We Can Do as intergenerational dramaturgies of the female life course","authors":"Núria Casado-Gual","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101359","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101359","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Five decades after the term ‘herstory’ (Morgan 1970) was proposed, stories which have vindicated the social and historical role of anonymous women have proliferated in different biographical genres. More recently, the devastating effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on older people has also generated the need to generate or examine narratives of ageing (Jewusiak 2023) and to strengthen generational relationships (Ayalon et al. 2020). Despite the technical (and sometimes ethical) challenges posed by the act of representing the lives of others in the ageist and sexist cultures of the so-called advanced world (Friedan 1993; Gullette 2004; Sontag 1972; Woodward 1999), writing about or representing the lives of older women in particular can help restore constructive meanings of female old age from which all generations can benefit.</div><div>Drawing on the interdisciplinary framework of ageing studies in its intersections with gender and theatre studies, this paper examines two plays which, in London's and Barcelona's theatrical scenes, have recently placed the lives of anonymous older women in the spotlight: Jan Vilanova's <em>The Most Beautiful Thing We Can Do</em> (produced by Sixto Paz in 2022) and Alexander Zeldin's <em>The Confessions</em> (co-produced by the National Theatre in 2023). While Vilanova's text recreates the life of the author's grandmother, an anonymous Spanish woman who survived two wars and lived as an exile for most of her life, Zeldin's presents the personal journey of the writer and director's own mother, who was born in Australia and found a new life for herself as a divorcée and abuse survivor in London in the 1970s. Through a close reading of the two texts that builds on Roberta Maierhofer's (1999) pivotal concept of “anocriticism,” and in the light of Elinor Fuchs' age-focused interpretation of Brechtian theatre, the article observes the dramatic strategies whereby these two intergenerational ‘herstories’ for the stage can be considered ‘epic’ narratives of the female life course.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101359"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145007787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction: Age and gender in the humanities and social sciences: contemporary and historical perspectives dedicated to roberta maierhofer","authors":"Nicole Haring,&nbsp;Heike Hartung,&nbsp;Barbara Zach","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101360","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101360","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this Special Issue of the Journal of Aging Studies, we endeavour to honor Roberta Maierhofer's inspiring scholarship by original research that addresses the intersections of age and gender in cultural Age/ing Studies and Critical Gerontology. From the perspective of feminist literary studies, Roberta Maierhofer introduced the term “anocriticism” in the late 1990s to analyze literature concerned with female aging processes. The contributions in this Special Issue bring together many different perspectives on the intersecting categories of age and gender, linking sociological perspectives to those of film and literary scholarship. In this way our collection of articles hopes to continue the tradition of interdisciplinarity that characterizes not only critical gerontology, but is also the hallmark of Roberta's oeuvre as a literature scholar whose interests and approaches have been versatile, wide-ranging and truly humanistic.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101360"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145007783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mapping female ageing in the twenty-first century in Deborah Moggach's last novels","authors":"Maricel Oró-Piqueras","doi":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101351","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jaging.2025.101351","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite having published seventeen novels, a good number of short stories, and scripts since she started her writing career at the end of the 1970s, academic work on Moggach's literary career has mainly dealt with her novel <em>These Foolish Things</em> (2004) and its film version <em>The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel</em> (2011). This paper will focus on Moggach's last three novels in which the reader is guided by the voice of three women in their late sixties and seventies, namely <em>Something to Hide</em> (2015), <em>The Carer</em> (2019), and <em>The Black Dress</em> (2021). Following an already well-established body of criticism on representations of female ageing in fiction, this paper will argue that Moggach's last novels add nuance and richness to the representation of female ageing in the twenty-first century. With her particular use of narrative humour, Moggach allows the reader into the minds of female characters who, on the one hand, are still affected by Sontag's “double standard of ageing” (1972) which makes them feel utterly lonely, both at an individual and social level, whereas, on the other hand, they are hungry to establish meaningful relationships, especially in their path to old age and death. By fostering new romantic and sexual relationships, and probably without being aware of it, Moggach's female characters escape the pressures of agelessness and embrace their ageing bodies as well as those of their lovers, even if only for a while.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47935,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aging Studies","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101351"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145007785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}