Positive Aging and Precarity

Positive Aging and Precarity PDF Author: Irina Catrinel Crăciun
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030142558
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
This book explores positive aging through the lens of precarity, aiming to ground positive aging theories in current social contexts. In recent years, research on aging has been branded by growing disagreements between supporters of the successful aging model and critical gerontologists who highlight the widening inequalities, disadvantages and precarity that characterize old age. This book comes to fill a gap in knowledge by offering an alternative view on positive aging, informed by precarity and its impact on projections concerning aging. The first part of the book places aging in broader theoretical and empirical context, exploring the complex links between views on aging, successful aging theories, policy and social reality. The second part uses results from a qualitative research conducted in Germany to illustrate the dissonance between successful aging ideals and both negative and positive views on aging as well as aging preparation strategies inspired by precarity. Findings from this section provide a solid starting point for comparisons with countries that are both similar and different from Germany in terms of welfare regimes and aging policies. The final part of the book discusses the psychological implications of these findings within and beyond the German case study and outlines potential solutions for practice. This book provides health psychologists, gerontologists, sociologists, social workers, health professionals as well as students and aging individuals themselves with better understanding of the meaning of aging in precarious times and builds confidence about aging well despite precarity.

Precarity and Ageing

Precarity and Ageing PDF Author: Grenier, Amanda
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 144734085X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
What risks and insecurities do older people face in a time of both increased longevity and widening inequality? This edited collection develops an exciting new approach to understanding the changing cultural, economic and social circumstances facing different groups of older people. Exploring a range of topics, the chapters provide a critical review of the concept of precarity, highlighting the experiences of ageing that occur within the context of societal changes tied to declining social protection. Drawing together insights from leading voices across a range of disciplines, the book underscores the pressing need to address inequality across the life course and into later life.

Shaping Ageing

Shaping Ageing PDF Author: Adriana Teodorescu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000568318
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 181

Book Description
This volume examines the manifold, often contradictory, aspects of ageing, considering the ways in which contemporary social transformations affect the experience, conception, interpretation, and representation of ageing. Thematically arranged, it brings together the latest scholarly work from around the world to consider theories and narratives of ageing and the effects of space and place on identity and the experience of old age. Combining micro and macro perspectives, as well as theoretical and applied research, this interdisciplinary volume offers cross-cultural and comparative studies that resist overgeneralization and reductivism in an effort to shed fresh light on our experience, understanding, and response to ageing in the modern world. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences, particularly sociology, gerontology, demography, social policy, and cultural studies, with interests in ageing and later life.

Precarity and Ageing

Precarity and Ageing PDF Author: Grenier, Amanda
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1447340868
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
This edited collection develops an exciting new approach to understanding the changing cultural, economic and social circumstances facing different groups of older people.

Lives Through the Years

Lives Through the Years PDF Author: Claudine G. Wirths
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135150844X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Book Description
Growing old - what is it like? What are the main problems of the aging? Lack of fulfillment in their work and life? Loneliness? Anxiety about sickness and disability? Fear of death? This well-documented, theoretically systematic, and vivid account of the process of aging provides highly enlightening answers and dispels once and for all many of the myths surrounding the close to 20 million Americans who are over sixty-five. Building upon the results of extensive interviews, the authors have established the existence of six styles and have concluded that a successful transition to old age can be achieved through any of them. They have also developed a definition of success, which has practical implications, since it deals with the extent to which an individual contributes or is a burden to the lives of those around him. The combined analysis of style and success results in a better understanding of individual differences in aging. The reader comes to know and understand the subjects as if he had worked with them in person. The wealth of detail the case histories contain permits scholars and students to judge for themselves the validity of the authors' findings. Derived from this unusually rich body of material, the authors' conclusions and recommendations are invaluable to all concerned with the study, the treatment, and the counseling of the aged. "Lives Through the Years" is a pioneering volume of social inquiry and interpretation, which marks a major scientific advance in its field, opens up new horizons for fruitful research, and offers a stimulating and authoritative portrayal of one of the most important problems of our society.

Fostering Development in Midlife and Older Age

Fostering Development in Midlife and Older Age PDF Author: Irina Catrinel Crăciun
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031244494
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 505

Book Description
This handbook integrates and discusses a growing evidence base concerning individual development across middle and late adulthood. The book includes a comprehensive analysis of what growth implies within midlife and older age and considers how different developmental areas are intertwined (i.e., physical, cognitive, social and emotional development as well as personality growth). As the gap between theory and practice still constitutes an issue in developmental research, the handbook also aims to provide illustrative examples of prevention and intervention from a positive psychology perspective. These were selected to represent a variety of topics, relevant for individual development where research informs practice, ranging from happiness, grandparenthood, love and sexuality to loneliness, depression, anxiety, suicide prevention and coping with death. This handbook is a must-have resource for students and researchers working in developmental psychology, health psychology, gerontology and, public health. It will also be of interest to practitioners such as counsellors, life coaches, psychotherapists, organizational psychologists, health professionals, social workers or public health planners.

Secondary Data in Mixed Methods Research

Secondary Data in Mixed Methods Research PDF Author: Daphne C. Watkins
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1506389562
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
Secondary Data in Mixed Methods Research by Daphne C. Watkins, the latest contribution to the Mixed Methods Research Series, offers unique and necessary instruction in this growing topic. With the increasing amount of secondary data available through journals and repositories, researchers have a trove of sources for new investigations at their fingertips, but few books to guide them. This brief text provides readers with a step-by-step procedure for incorporating secondary data into various mixed methods research designs, as well as identifying key characteristics of existing datasets that make them good candidates for mixed methods projects and giving ideas for new uses of secondary data. Introductory chapters help the reader understand the “what” and “why” of secondary data. Subsequent chapters address the use of secondary data in convergent, exploratory sequential, explanatory sequential, and other complex research designs. The final chapters delve into writing and reporting on projects before, during, and after the project. Quotes throughout the chapter help readers remember key bits of knowledge, while learning objectives and summaries in each chapter structure the reading experience. Application questions at the end of each chapter help readers recall information and apply it to their own research projects. By emphasizing how to use existing qualitative and quantitative datasets in mixed methods research, Secondary Data in Mixed Methods Research will help readers answer new and ongoing questions in social science research.

Inequalities of Aging

Inequalities of Aging PDF Author: Elana D. Buch
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479807176
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Book Description
"Elana D. Buch's "Inequalities of Aging: Paradoxes of Independence in American Home Care" focuses on the topic of American home care and explores various contradictions and points of tension within the industry. It also raises awareness of the problematic inequality that exists in the American home care industry and argues for the creation of a more sustainable system."--

Toward an Integrated Science of Wellbeing

Toward an Integrated Science of Wellbeing PDF Author: Elizabeth Rieger
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197567576
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 553

Book Description
"There has always been interest in understanding what constitutes the good life. Starting with early philosophical writings, sustainable wellbeing at multiple scales - from physical and psychological health, through to the societal and environmental - has been a fundamental goal. Much has been written at each of these scales, from the perspectives of psychology, medicine, economics, social science, ecology, and political science. However, their interconnections have received far less attention, even though the identification of these interdependencies is critical to the comprehensive understanding and advancement of wellbeing"--

Positive Aging

Positive Aging PDF Author: Robert D Hill
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 039370453X
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Human aging has been transformed in the 21st century. Retirement, senility, disability, and death were all notions previously associated with growing old. Today, with the average life span of men and women in the United States exceeding 76 years, the words successful, optimal, and positive dominate the lexicon of scientists and, increasingly, the general public. We not only plan to live longer, but expect to enjoy a superior standard of physical and emotional health for longer than any previous generation. Leading an active and purposeful life no longer stops at the outdated 65-year mark of retirement, but continues well into what was once termed "old age." With these changing attitudes comes the need for new conceptualizations of what it means to grow old. In a groundbreaking book, Robert Hill, a psychologist, professor, and leading researcher in geriatric care, rethinks the traditional ideas we have of aging by offering us a new framework from which to understand the nature of growing old. Positive Aging offers a more innovative model of old age that focuses on achieving and fostering a positive mindset. In doing so, Hill not only explores the social and psychological trends of aging in the 21st century, but offers an illuminating examination of how advances in the science of gerontology influence the phenomenology of growing old. Written for all those concerned about their own course of aging as well as the practitioner who provides mental health services to older adults, Positive Aging begins with a review of the term "aging" itself, its history and its changing meaning. Hill then delves into the many lifestyle choices we can make to improve our happiness as we grow older. Traditional theories of adult development and how Positive Aging plays into them are examined; successful, normal, impaired, and diseased trajectories of age-related decline are defined and explored; and useful strategies are provided for coping with common old-age issues—including cognitive deficits, depression, anxiety, and psychological barriers to happiness. Hill also covers important late-life concerns such as the role Positive Aging plays in physical disability, caregiving, grief, bereavement, death, and spirituality and meaning-based counseling. Along the way, poignant case studies help elucidate and contextualize the arguments, and keep the discussion rooted in very tangible, human terms. Ushering in an era of new understanding of what it means to grow older, Positive Aging is an enlightening guidebook for consumers navigating such uncertain, and often worrisome terrain, as well as an invaluable resource for clinicians working with this growing population. By combining a novel approach to human aging in the contemporary world with specific suggestions and ideas to optimize that process, this book promises to help all of us cope with the vicissitudes of growing older to continue to get the most out of living.