Wendy Martin
University of Warwick
The promotion of ‘active’ ageing in later life has been a key
development in recent health policy. These changes not only challenge
the prevalent view of old age as an inevitable process of biological
decline but signify the tendency of lay and expert discourses to
increasingly use the notion of risk. Older people’s social identities
also need to be negotiated in the context of positive
(active/freedom/fluid) and negative (passive/dependence/decline) images
of ageing. This thesis explored older people’s social identities,
meanings about lifestyles, emotions, and bodies; and the salience and
limitations to ‘risk’ and ‘reflexivity’ within everyday life. The
research involved the intersection of in-depth qualitative interviews
with photo-elicitation with 50 men and women aged between 50 and 96
years. Thematic analysis using Atlas.ti was undertaken. Three
interconnected themes emerged:
- Participants experienced their bodies as a
taken for granted aspect of their everyday lives until moments when an
awareness of the body interrupted their daily activities. At these
moments the everyday visibility of the body was heightened and
participants reflected on their own meanings and identities about
ageing.
- Emotions were significant as participants
described their everyday lives and social interactions. There was a
continual tension between inner (private) subjective feelings and
experiences of emotions and the outer (public) bodily and spatial
expression of these emotions.
- Reflexive meanings about risk were
multifaceted as participants drew upon diverse discourses when making
choices about health related lifestyles. A sense of embodied
vulnerability associated with ageing was evident.
Meanings and perspectives associated with ageing
bodies were therefore central to everyday experiences of growing older.
Alternative images of ageing were intertwined within the accounts of the
participants as they fluctuated between a sense of ageing as a time of
possibilities and a heightened awareness of their embodied
vulnerabilities.