Bev Said "No": Learning From Nursing Home Residents About Care Politics in Our Aging Society

How do nursing home residents decide when, whether, or how to respond to their own and others' care needs when the need to do is constant? What can we learn from them about care politics in our aging society? Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in three long-term residential care homes in Ontario Canada, this article weaves approaches from the arts, humanities, and interpretive sociology to respond to these questions. Contextualizing nursing home residents' stories of care within broader sociocultural and political contexts, I consider how they develop critical and creative insights, not only about direct care or nursing home life but about moral, philosophical, and culturally significant questions relevant to care provision. As political actors engaged in a "politics of responsibility," they put work into navigating, negotiating, and making sense of their own and others' care needs in under-resourced contexts and in relation to circulating narratives about care, aging, and disability. Exposed to constant demands to care for others, residents' stories highlight the importance of expanding cultural narratives to embrace embodied differences or care needs, to help people to talk about their own needs or limits, and to organize care as a shared, collective responsibility.

Gerontology, Art, and Activism: Can the Intersection of Art, Social Research, and Community Power Lead to Lasting Change?

This paper seeks to address the question of what gerontologists and humanities scholars can learn from how their respective fields engage with critical issues of age-based intersectional disadvantage, inequality, colonialism, and exclusion. The paper considers the Uncertain Futures Project, a participatory arts-led social research study based in Manchester, United Kingdom. The project explores the inequalities of women over 50 regarding issues of work using an intersectional lens. This work has produced a complex entanglement of methodological ideas that underpin performance art, community activism, and gerontological research. The paper will consider if this model can lead to a lasting impact beyond the scope of the project and beyond the individuals involved. First, we outline the work undertaken from the conception of the project. We consider the relationship between these activities and the ongoing nature of qualitative data analysis within the complexity of academic workloads and competing priorities. We raise questions and considerations of how the elements of the work have connected, collaborated, and intertwined. We also explore the challenges within interdisciplinary and collaborative work. Finally, we address the kind of legacy and impact created by work of this nature.

"Live Gerontology": Understanding and Representing Aging, Loneliness, and Long-Term Care Through Science and Art

This article proposes an expansive conceptualization of gerontological research by engaging with a "live gerontology" that combines sciences and arts to better understand and represent aging and its diverse meanings and contexts. Borrowing the sociological concept of "live methods," we argue that gerontology can benefit from a "live" approach-not only methodologically, but also conceptually. To guide pathways between artistic and gerontological fields and frame its practices and outcomes, we suggest four propositions for a live gerontology: (1) using multiple genres to artfully connect the whole-interweaving micro-, meso-, and macrolevels to contextualize aging within various sociocultural milieus; (2) fostering the use of the senses to capture more than just what people say-what they do, display, and feel; (3) enabling a critical inventiveness by relying on arts' playfulness to design/refine instruments; and (4) ensuring a constant reflection on ethics of representation and public responsibility. To apply and experiment with a live gerontological approach, we describe collaborations with an award-winning writer and an illustrator. The collaborations drew on qualitative data from a study on lived experiences of loneliness in long-term care through ethnography and interviews with residents of 2 Australian facilities. The writer explored participants' accounts as creative stories, which were then illustrated. Motivated by an ethics of representation, we aimed to represent findings without othering or further marginalizing participants. The creative materials offered more than appealing representations, shining new light on the intricate nature of aging, loneliness, institutionalization, and gerontology research and practice.

The Humanities and Arts in The Gerontological Society of America

Perspectives from the humanities and arts (H&A) on old age have deep roots in history; they emerged over the centuries along with concurrent scientific investigations. Provisionally invited into the scientific ranks of The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) during the late 1970s, H&A prospered, but grew amid tensions. During 75th-anniversary celebrations, Society members will assess H&A's role in GSA. How can H&A continue to enrich scientific research? How can H&A further advance its own meaningful contributions? Or, should H&A and GSA reconfigure its partnership?

Dementia and detectives: Alzheimer's disease in crime fiction

Fictional representations of dementia have burgeoned in recent years, and scholars have amply explored their double-edged capacity to promote tragic perspectives or normalising images of ‘living well’ with the condition. Yet to date, there has been only sparse consideration of the treatment afforded dementia within the genre of crime fiction. Focusing on two novels, Emma Healey’s Elizabeth is Missing and Alice LaPlante’s Turn of Mind, this article considers what it means in relation to the ethics of representation that these authors choose to cast as their amateur detective narrators women who have dementia. Analysing how their narrative portrayals frame the experience of living with dementia, it becomes apparent that features of the crime genre inflect the meanings conveyed. While aspects of the novels may reinforce problem-based discourses around dementia, in other respects they may spur meaningful reflection about it among the large readership of this genre.

The promise of documentary theatre to counter ageism in age-friendly communities

This paper discusses an innovative theatre-arts collaboration that was created to provoke public discourse about aging in a community located in the Southeastern United States in which more than one-half of residents are age 50 or older. The development and execution of the documentary theatre production are explicated and the post-performance talk-backs with the audience are shared to illustrate how it facilitated insight and dialogue among its largely older audiences. Experience with this production suggests that academics can collaborate with professional artists to promote the subjective experience of aging as a positive appreciation of self. Consequently, the play holds promise to counter deeply ingrained negative self-beliefs about aging and foster greater acceptance about the experience of others. In addition, the play represents a unique community-based effort to enhance respect and social inclusion, a core domain of livability in the age-friendly community movement.

Qualitative Research in the CJA/RCV: An 18-Year Analysis (1995-2012)

Some researchers have suggested that qualitative research is increasing in the gerontology field, but little systematic analysis has tested this assertion. Using the Canadian Journal on Aging/La Revue canadienne du vieillissement as a case study, we analysed articles reporting on original research from 1995 to 2012. One in four articles were qualitative, and results in three-year intervals show a clear increase in qualitative research findings during this 18-year time frame: (a) 1995-1997: 10 per cent; (b) 1998-2000: 19 per cent; (c) 2001-2003: 25 per cent; (d) 2004-2006: 25 per cent; (e) 2007-2009: 29 per cent; and (f) 2010-2012: 43 per cent. In all time intervals (with the exception of 2004-2006), French language articles were more likely to use a qualitative research design compared to English language articles. Topics, methodologies, and data collection strategies are also discussed.

"There's No Correspondence Between Me and My Age": Old Age in Theresia Walser's King Kong's Daughters

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

Against the context of a rapidly aging population, the theme of senescence has been figuring increasingly prominently in contemporary German theater. This paper discusses the depiction of old age in one notable example, Theresia Walser's King Kong's Daughters, a hugely successful black comedy set in a nursing home.

DESIGN AND METHODS

This paper takes an interdisciplinary approach in its analysis of Walser's play, drawing not just on drama and theater studies, but also on performance, film, and cultural studies as well as the sociology and psychology of aging.

RESULTS

King Kong's Daughters might seem to be pervaded with negative ageist stereotypes. It is argued here, however, that Walser skillfully exploits the special formal qualities of theatrical performance--in particular, its liveness, corporeality, and communality--to illuminate both what it is like to be old and what it is like to care for the elderly in today's world.

IMPLICATIONS

Given demographic developments, senescence seems set to increasingly inform the themes, motifs, and characters of theater in Germany and beyond. Paying closer attention to how old age is invoked on the contemporary stage can generate insights that are not only of interest to theater scholars, but are also of value to gerontologists and age scholars more generally.

Untapped richness in Erik H. Erikson's rootstock

Erik H. Erikson published his groundbreaking theory of 8 stages of lifelong psychosocial development in 1950. His theory expanded psychoanalytic concepts of psychosexual development to include the importance of social dynamics; it transcended then-current thinking that psychological development culminated in early adulthood, acknowledging that systematic human development continues throughout the entire life cycle. The theory made Erikson a pioneer in developmental psychology. His last authored book, Vital Involvement in Old Age, rearticulated and elaborated 3 principles that, in different words, are rooted in his original theory of healthy life cycle development: (1) Dynamic Balance of Opposites; (2) Vital Involvement; and (3) Life in Time. Using a lens informed by knowledge gained over the past 30 years and by reflections of one of the original researchers on that project, the current manuscript seeks to spark new interest in Erikson's late-life contribution. It explains the principles in new detail, links them to relevant research, and suggests ways they could enable Erikson's ideas to further enrich gerontological practice and research.