The Ideas Bazaar

"Up" as a gerontological gem

 

One doesn't often find reviews of films in the British Medical Journal, and certainly not of those from the Pixar/Disney stable. But geriatric consultant Prof Des O'Neil has written a fantastic review of this film which, he argues, represents "an extraordinary insight into the reality of ageing that can easily displace any number of worthy lectures on ageism". 

He writes:

"...although older people have figured in lead roles in increasing numbers of films over the past decade—About Schmidt and The Straight Story, for example—none has combined the hero role in quite the same way with the pains of ageing, bereavement, intergenerational solidarity, and grappling with stairlifts and quad canes", which allows the film to grapple with the ageism prevalent in wider society".  

Unwittingly, no doubt, Pixar/Disney have spoken to most of the wider themes of ageing: "wisdom, altruism, negotiation, and that combination of “tough but frail” that increasingly characterises older people in the 21st century". 

Given my own personal interest in things and 'special things' in later life, I was tickled to see this reference to the film's lead protagonist, Carl's house:

"The house and mementoes,as well as the plot, act as a vivid enactment of the Robert N Butler’s seminal “life course” theory of ageing, which sees ageing in later life as a time of review of one’s life course. Carl’s attachment to his house and mementoes is an effective rejoinder to adult children who are concerned that their parent is “not stimulated” by “looking at the four walls” at home: imbued with memories and palimpsests of relationships, this is a very rich environment indeed.

Again, I don't suppose Pixar read their gerontology beforehand but they got something right, at least in O'Neil's eyes. 

As my young children get into cinema, and the idea of sitting still for long enough to take in a whole film I look forward to going to see this film. As O'Neil says in conclusion:

"...children seem to have an intuitive ability to see and value older people for what they are. It is we, the adults, who undergo a coarsening of our sensibility, perhaps born of a fear of disability and death that we took more calmly in our stride as children, who have the most to learn from this marvellous film".

Rebeginment

We recently ran a small workshop, or gathering, to discuss 're-inventing retirement'. One of the attendees mentioned a poem that Brendan Kennelly  had written on the subject of retirement as a new beginning. It's worth quoting at length....

Begin again to the summoning birds

to the sight of light at the window,

begin to the roar of morning traffic

all along Pembroke Road.

Every beginning is a promise

born in light and dying in dark

determination and exaltation of springtime

flowering the way to work.

Begin to the pageant of queuing girls

the arrogant loneliness of swans on the canal

bridges linking the past and future

old friends passing through with us still.

Begin to the loneliness that cannot end

since it perhaps is what makes us begin,

begin to wonder at unknown faces

at crying birds in the sudden rain

at branches stark in the willing sunlight

at seagulls foraging for bread

at couples sharing a sunny secret

alone together while making good.

Though we live in a world that dreams of ending

that always seems about to give in

Something that will not acknowledge conclusion

insists that we forever begin.

Brendan Kennelly

Professor of Modern Literature

Dublin University

On completing one of our [RCP] Retirement Planning courses in May 2005.

Ageing in Ireland

I've got a book review forthcoming in Ageing and Society - people interested in Ireland, ageing and multi-method social research might be interested in it. 

Carmel Gallagher, The Community Life of Older People in Ireland, Peter Lang AG, Bern, Switzerland, 2008, 383pp., pbk £44.00, ISBN 13: 978 3 03911 386 6.

As one older person interviewed in this book notes ‘they [older people] kept the country ticking over until the Celtic Tiger arrived’ (184). Ireland’s recent rapid economic growth has stalled but it wrought huge social changes which impacted directly on older people. In the process the lives of older people have become central to debates about the social fabric of a changed country. Older people are at the heart of debates about issues such as rural isolation, declining cohesion and the role of the Church. 

Early on in this book, the author quotes  anthropologists Arensberg and Kimball ,who noted that rural Ireland in the 1930s had become 'in some ways an old person's country’. However, they suggested that ‘they live long because they have so much to live for’ (Arensberg and Kimball 1968: 162). Gallagher’s book examines the lives of older people, in a rural (Rathbeg, County Donegal) and urban (Rathmore, Dublin) context, and explores what it is that older people in these two pseudonymous field sites live for. 

Using both ethnographic and survey methods, Gallagher's account focuses squarely on the idea and reality of community in a rapidly changing society. She views community as a ‘pattern of social organisation and culturally defined way of life’ and stresses the importance of seeing it through the lens of geographic localities in which layers of multiple social networks (for example friends, families, neighbours and fellow Church goers) are bounded by everyday routines and interactions. The author’s avowed intent is to provide a humanistic account of ageing in Ireland and to focus on the meaning of life for older people. 

Gallagher is careful not to lift her two fieldsites out of context. The policy frameworks which shape the ageing experience are rendered in sufficient detail for the reader to understand the development of policy relevant to older people in Ireland during the last half century, and to grasp how this relates to the nature of communal provision of care and support that involve voluntary activity. Her aim is not to catalogue what care and support is provided, but rather to describe what people gain from involving themselves in its provision. However, in a context where, to quote the 1988 report The Years Ahead, ‘as much as half of the home help services, almost all of the meals-on-wheels and laundry service, and a sizeable proportion of day care centres...are run by voluntary organisations’ this contribution is not unimportant (1988: 25). 

The author structures much of her material around the survey data – moving from an overview of the contexts of ageing and old age in Ireland, and social policy, to provide an account of leisure and social activities, the meaning of place, and significant communal settings. The existence of ethnographic and survey data allows the author to restore to apparently mundane activities such as bingo, a sense of their positive unintended benefits in terms of social connectedness and shared social experience. The author is at pains to stress that all such activities have a value beyond the purely instrumental. She mobilises survey data to demonstrate that in both communities studied there is a strong relationship between older people maintaining interests and involvement in community, and their enjoyment of life. However, the broader exploration of place and relationships promises more than it delivers and the reader is left with tantalising glimpses of how the account and argument might be more fully developed. 

Those expecting a richly ethnographic account may be disappointed by this volume. Despite the praiseworthy attention to detail and the rigorous, sensitive and sophisticated analysis of multiple data types, the voice of older people themselves somehow fail to break through. Those unfamiliar with urban or rural Ireland might feel hard pressed to visualise the world Gallagher is portraying. The book contains no images and there are no case studies or cameos to help break the author's third person narrative grip. Many of the themes therefore feel underdeveloped, especially in relation to the author’s focus on meaning making. However, there is much to commend this book and readers will learn how older people in two very different parts of Ireland reside in, and create communities, through their involvements in local life. Students of Irish culture and society, and of ageing in Europe, will find this book indispensible in developing an understanding of the ageing process in modern day Ireland. This book is a welcome addition to the literature on social connectedness and social activities and their role in creating meaningful and positive experiences in later life. 

[1.] Arensberg, C. and Kimball, S. 1968. Family and Community in Ireland. Clasp Press: Ennis, Ireland. 

[2.] Department of Health. 1988. The Years Ahead: A Policy for the Elderly. Stationary Office: Dublin. 

A shadow of our former selves?

I was given this postcard yesterday by some lovely people from Nas na Riogh Housing Association who are doing some great work in a Naas, county town of Co. Kildare. The donor of the card had picked it up on a holiday in Portugal and was captivated by what she felt it said about the social invisibility of people as they age. 

Excluded

I'm not able to attend Include 2009, which starts today in London at the Royal College of Art, but the paper I wrote with Nina Warburton from The Alloy is included and she's presenting it on behalf of us both. 

You can download it here.

It's about the limits of Web 2.0 in the design of online collaborative, social environments for older people.

Oldr

I've got a piece just out in the latest edition of User Experience Magazine (Volume 8, Issue 1, 2009) entitled  "Web 2.0 for an Older Population: Exploring the Limits". The article grew out of my sense that whilst everything Web 2.0 is taking the interweb by storm, and that it (?) represents great opportunities for tackling some of the challenges older people face, many of the concepts embedded within Web 2.0 type executions are pretty foreign to older people with little technology savvy - and if something is conceptually difficult to grasp then questions of usability are rather secondary.

Here's the abstract -  

The personal computer is in many ways a rather inaptly named device. From the earliest days computers have been about sociality and community. The staples of everyday computer use, email and internet, are intimately social. As the internet evolves its uses become ever more implicated in relationships between people. Indeed, one of the most widely used piece of web jargon at present – Web 2.0 – refers to designing the web for, and developing with, intensively social uses in mind. In recent years socially oriented websites have become hot properties attracting both significant user communities and venture capital. Facebook, MySpace and many others have become must visit destinations on the information superhighway. For many younger users these sites define what an internet experience is all about. At the same tine the populations of the developed world have begun to experience the rapid ageing of their populations. Can an online world increasingly focused on supporting rich social experience provide realistic avenues for dealing with some of the threats and opportunities that an ageing world presents? How can we use Web 2.0 to support the sort of experiences that older people want to have on- and off-line?

It's not available for non-members but if you ask nicely I might send you a copy of it. I submitted a similar, but slighty fuller and more specific paper on the topic to the Include 2009 conference based on some work we did during 2007, written with Nina Warburton from The Alloy. Hope you find it useful/relevant/thought-provoking 

Look closer

Via Nicolas Nova's blog, pasta and vinegar, a picture (flickr url) of a supermarket trolley with built in magnifying glass to assist shoppers who have trouble reading labels etc. This seems particularly useful as looking at ingredient lists and nutrition infographics becomes a key part of the discriminatory process of food shopping. Nice to see something lo-tech too. Good, low-cost inclusive design.

The only question is where is the implement to help arthritic hands open the jam jar or peel back the wrapping on the processed meat container when you get it home?

Skilled Practitioners and Concrete Cabbages

It is always nice to see something come to fruition. This is especially true of a Ph.D thesis, the production of which I often liken, in terms of its experience quotient, to the excretion of a concrete cabbage. 

So I was happy to be contacted by Kyle Kilbourn, the first intern at Digital Health's labs in Europe in 2006, shortly after we set up the social science and design teams. He made a stirling contribution to a wonderful project we did exploring the material culture of ageing in Ireland. It was our first opportunity to conduct fieldwork in the country, so acted as a first 'blooding' and we learned lots about ageing, health and independent living which for many of us was a new area of investigation. 

Kyle has just completed his PhD defence, successfully, although he is now working at IDEO in Boston. His thesis:"The patient as skilled practitioner – A design anthropology approach to enskilment in health and technology" draws on some of that work in Ireland, and seems influenced by the time he spent with Tim Ingold and others at Aberdeen, 

Kyle may, on the recommendation of the examiners, publish the thesis so he's not widely circulating it at this time but very smartly he's making it available, all nicely printed and bound via Lulu. What a great idea. Here's the link - a bargain at about $8. 

And the abstract:

 

The location of healthcare has oscillated between home and hospital over the centuries.  In each movement aspects of a particular practice carry over into the next.  This dissertation looks at the current shift towards care at the hands of “patients” and challenges the hidden work such a concept enforces.  The patient as skilled practitioner refers to the ways these people become skilled in self-care through the use of medical devices in their everyday life.  Introducing empirical material from medical areas as diverse as hemodialysis, diabetes and aging, this thesis argues for a design anthropology approach to enskilment.  Design experiments span along with anthropological theory of skilled practice, aesthetics of everyday life and perception, woven into multi-sited research project.

 

Theoretical contributions include a design-orientated knowledge of enskilment in which environment structuring, meaning-making and situated bodily learning form the foundation.  In designing for enskilment, the potential strategies of spectrum for cooperating, gaps for growing, and platforms for performativity are introduced.  The dissertation provides a contextually nuanced understanding of interaction in healthcare and crafts future research potentials in which technology may respect the skilled practice of self-care practitioners.

The Rising Cost of (not) Living

Spotted in a pub in Newcastle, County Down.

Warning

WARNING by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me,
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.