Abstract
This paper describes a pilot research project aimed at investigating the development of specific cultures in later life. Older people recorded their conversations and group discussions for transcription and analysis over a period of six months. The group was mainly African Caribbean and shared well developed discourses and understandings. The need to guard privacy was accompanied by clearly defined areas of silence and some participants were reluctant to engage in conversation for fear of overstepping cultural limits. Results showed that conversations between peers could produce data unobtainable in other ways. More work is needed to see how far the method could be extended.

Introduction
As life expectancy at 60 or 65 lengthens and the numbers of older men and women rise, it seems reasonable to predict the development of recognisable later life cultures, just as there are age related cultures among younger age groups. Ethnography is the classic way of studying cultures of old age in institutional settings (Hochschild, 1973; Myerhoff, 1994; Keith, 1982; Hazan, 1980; 1992) but ethnography in the community is difficult and expensive (see Keith et al,1994). We therefore set up a project that aimed to offer a partial substitute for ethnography. The method was to pioneer data collection using conversations between older peers. The project also reflected growing recognition by service providers, and by social workers in particular, that obtaining the views of service users and carers should be an integral component in planning, providing services and in professional intervention (See also Miller et al. 2006). For example, collecting views of service users is a professional activity required for the new Bachelor’s degree in social work (Department of Health 2002, Beresford et al. 2006).

Our project was sited in an area of London due to be regenerated under New Deal for Communities. The NDC funded the work for six months as a contribution to its strategy outcomes: widening participation and delivering training in basic skills that give people the confidence to speak out about their needs.

Aims
Our first aim had to be to entertain our 16-20 participants, since there was no reason for them to participate if they did not enjoy themselves. Our second aim was to research cultures of ageing, if they exist, by collecting and analysing transcribed conversation and group discussions, and the third aim was action oriented. The NDCs outcomes depended on maintaining and strengthening the group identity of participants. We cannot be entirely sure of the aims of the participants. For many it was to pass an enjoyable one to two hours between lunch club and keep fit class. Possibly three were interested in the project as research, and others wanted to be helpful and have some fun. Three disapproved to varying degrees but enjoyed the group work.

Method
The main essential was to find older people who would join a project on conversations in later life. A core group of 16 people, most of whom attended at a keep fit class and a lunch club once a week, agreed to take part. Eleven others joined in from time to time. Ages in the core group ranged from 60 to 82 with an average of 72. Most members (12) were African Caribbean women but there were 4 men, two African Caribbean and 2 northern English. All but the youngest were in poor health and all but one were churchgoers. As joiners in organised activities and as actively religious, they were not typical of London elders. Two became too ill to continue, two were admitted to hospital for several months and four went on long term visits across the Atlantic. Only two left the project because they did not agree with its aims, but some others were reluctant to record any conversations on grounds of privacy.

We began with a feed back from a World Café event (www.theworldcafe.com/), which had been designed to give participants an opportunity to share knowledge, to think together in practical and creative ways, and to list ideas for the future. This was followed by training sessions aimed at facilitating their conversational skills and making sure they could use digital recorders. Recordings were downloaded to a central computer, transcribed and analysed using NVivo . Our original aim was to play back excerpts for group discussion and analysis but the poor quality of our sound equipment meant that this was only possible for a few outside conversations recorded in quiet conditions.

Problems
As experienced researchers (two retired and one currently managing voluntary sector services for older people) we found it hard to separate training for conversations (chats) and training for interviews. Our confusion spread to participants and was not helpful, since they mistrusted interviews. All were able to chat and record their talk in pairs during meetings, but most found it hard to use written instructions and to see the buttons on the recorders without their glasses. Another problem, which we should have avoided since it is well known, was our idea of ‘conversations between/with older people’. We perceived the participants as being older people, but this was not how they saw themselves. Our participants immediately assumed that they had to talk to ‘the old’ who from their point of view had to be aged at least 80 and hopefully 90. In simple demographic terms this was very difficult, since there were very few African Caribbeans of that age living locally. More to the point, it was not what we wanted, since our aim was to move away from the usual gerontological interview across generations, and to generate talk within similar age groups and cultures. It also emerged that many participants were concerned about privacy and the boundaries of talk. For a few it meant that recording conversations outside the weekly meeting was out of the question. Group discussion was acceptable, but paired interactions, either free ranging, or focussed on subjects such as going to the doctor, were seen as threatening by those who were not sure that they would be able to stop themselves talking about personal things once they started.

Results
Group discussions followed largely predictable lines. The main discourse was overwhelmingly positive (see for example Becker and Newsom, 2005). Privacy was not a problem because most participants shared a well defined repertory (or public discourse) of topics, words, and silences. The state of the neighbourhood, the world, the health service, and youth could easily be discussed in both positive and negative terms (more often negative for youth). On the other hand family was nearly always a delicate matter. Simple things like number of grandchildren were unproblematic, and those with successful or very helpful children spoke up. The rest remained largely silent, though a role play about an older couple who were being financially abused by their children, showed that the subject, and possible remedies, were well understood.

There were two main exceptions to the orderly nature of group sessions. One or two members of the dominant African Caribbean culture had a tendency to throw in an unexpected comment, or raise a topic avoided by others, most notably the one who said ‘What I want to know is how long is this project going on for, and what do we get out of it?’ Or a white man might tell a story, or provoke a discussion, that came from a different cultural repertoire.

The paired conversations were much less dominated by public discourses and the threat to privacy was clearer. Our requests for stories about their week were mostly seen as intrusive and so avoided by some. Below, we select two short excerpts from conversations about getting older that participants recorded with acquaintances from outside the project group. Unlike research interviews where the interviewer is expected to ‘park’ their subjectivity and be objective, although in reality this can never wholly be the case (Temple 1997; Denzin, 1997), in conversations, the conversation leader brings their subjectivity to the conversation as meanings and understandings are co-produced and explored. In the first case, a conversation between African Caribbean women aged 60+ and 70+, it seems unlikely that such data could have been collected by someone who was not of the same age group and cultural background. In the second, between two men in their 60s, the attitudes might have been recorded by a younger interviewer, but the shared nature of experience would not.

W1: What do you think of old age. How do you find it?
W2: Well ageing is a journey, um, it is turning out to be very interesting. It’s a different place to be in you know from when you’re young. When you are 20 you don’t think about ageing you know because you are in full flight aren’t you. Um but once you turn the corner at 40 and your perspectives begin to change and it can either be frightening or you can embrace it and work with it and let it open up for you . You then use new words, new experiences you know. And having come through an illness, and as you know I was diagnosed with breast cancer a year and a half ago, and having come through that, and just to have had that kind of experience, and having regained my health you know, has given me a whole new perspective. So ageing for me is a wonderful thing because what it means is I have been given some time. So ageing for me is just a whole wonderful new experience My life is going on. Ageing means time. It means new experiences new horizons
W1: New friends
W2: And of course I have made new friends.. My sickness was a joy. Not a joy in itself but it turned out to be a good experience because it brought me new friends.
W1: Lots of new ideas
W2: Yes a whole new way of looking at life and it has taught me that I need to spend more time as I said drinking um in the joys of life, drinking the nectar of life, um smelling the flowers, enjoying taking time just to sit still and enjoy my space and the people that are in my space, so ageing is not a bad thing though I know I would not have said that when I was 20
W1: Let us give thanks
W2: Yes let us give thanks. We have to give thanks. We’re here for a purpose. We did not just come here to eat and sleep and then die. We came here to do something, and if you can find out for yourself what it is we came to do and get on with the job of doing it, then we will have fulfilled our purpose. I don’t know if I’m doing that, but I’m very grateful that I’ve been given some time, and basically that’s what ageing means to me. It means that because I’m getting older instead of having died, it means I’ve got time. It means I’ve been given some extra time, so I’m doing that.
W1Well, we didn’t come here to stay so long, but time has caught up with us. Time has caught up.

M1: If I had to sit at home and watch television in the afternoon, (I stayed home once for an electrician), I think I’d take to drink or go round the twist with the rubbish that’s on, and I think the four walls would close in quite quickly, but because I’m involved in the local area . . .[identifying information]. . I don’t have time. In fact I hate weekends because there’s nothing going on.
M2: Do you think as blokes we’re less fortunate than women because women tend to network more and help each other more on a personal level, whereas for some reasons, as blokes we don’t?
M1: I think we don’t think we need it.
M2: Is it that?
M1: It’s this macho image, I think, I’m all right.
M2: Yes, it could be that, or is it that we feel uncomfortable.
M1: No, you could feel uncomfortable, like me I don’t think I’m old like I said earlier, to walk into an old place, where the people are the same age as you, or older, and you look at them and you think, that’s not me, and I have to get out, like we both did.

Conclusions
At this preliminary stage, with data still to collect and analyse, the project has shown that conversations between peers can generate unique data sets that may be useful for studying late life cultures. So far the emphasis has been on the lived experience of older migrants. Most participants had a common cultural base in the Caribbean that, in the context of group discussions, over rode distinctions based on class, colour and island. They shared strong religious belief, the assumption that an overtly positive attitude to life was essential, the denial of racism at an individual level, and long experience of its social and economic manifestations. They also shared with each other, and with white participants, high level awareness of crime, mistrust of youth and a feeling that things had been better in the past. In methodological terms the project has shown that membership of a relatively close knit community where gossip is both a support and a scourge, places restrictions on what can be said (see Bowling, 1990 for similar findings). Further work is needed to see what sort of data will be generated by conversations between participants who do not know each other.

References
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