Analysing the practice of pension sharing, this article looks at social and cultural dimensions of ageing in an urban African residential area, Cape Town's Khayelitsha. First, the paper discusses pension sharing as a future-oriented security strategy. Many older Africans in Khayelitsha believe that if they do not share their pensions with their kin, they do not have much chance of being helped in times of need. Pension sharing as an instrumental act is rooted in the perceived underdevelopment of the state social security system on the one hand, and in the very character of African kinship and the fluidity of today's urban domestic units on the other. Partly triggered by poverty and mass unemployment, African pensioners are under severe normative pressure to share their grants within their families. Taking into account African notions of old age and of personhood, and considering the widespread devaluation of older Africans in social constructions, pension sharing provides older Africans with an (easily available) means by which they can earn (self-)respect. Further, state policies indirectly enhance the normative pressure on pensioners to share their old-age pensions. On a symbolic plane the practice may be construed as a political model that conceptualises duty as the inner bond of the social world. In conclusion, it is propounded that the concept of (intergenerational) reciprocity is inadequate to account for pension sharing or practical provision of old-age care.

The nursing home has become a paramount site for the care and custody of old people, but it also affects how we think and talk about the ageing body. In this article, narrative and ethnographic material drawn from a variety of care-related settings is used to illustrate how and where the nursing home serves as a discursive anchor for embodiment. Circumstantial, local cultural, and organisational mediations are considered, featuring institutionalisation to be as much a descriptive phenomenon, as it is a residential relocation.

This paper investigates the modalities of the government of old people in contemporary society by looking critically at current social gerontological discourse and the claims to truth it makes about the experience of growing and being old, and its impact on the cultural economy of old age. Recent theoretical developments in sociology have problematised dominant cultural, social and academic constructions of ageing and the ways in which old people make sense of their ageing selves against these normalising processes. The impact of structural processes on the experience of old age has been highlighted, dominant discursive practices in relation, for instance, to the care of old people have been deconstructed and spaces of resistance have been identified. At the same time, social gerontology has turned its attention to positive or successful ageing and its payback for individual old people and policy-makers. However, because it is embedded in a broader discourse which gives primacy to lifestyles, social and economic opportunities and moral responsibility, successful ageing is an ambiguous project caught between resisting the mask of ageing and reaffirming the continued cultural repression of the declining body and, by extension, of the ageing self. Recent findings from an on-going life history project involving old people who have moved to ‘age-appropriate’ housing will be used to illustrate the extent to which people who are now old have appropriated new forms of regulation.

The number and relative proportion of older Native people in Canada are both increasing rapidly. So also is a social problems discourse asserting that informal care of older Native people by family and kin is traditional, and highly appropriate today. However, neither this discourse nor previous research satisfactorily address the informal care requirements of older Native people nor the gendered implications that high levels of informal care provision may have for Native caregivers. Informal care is provided to Canada's non-Native elderly people primarily by resident wives and non-resident daughters, and secondarily by husbands and sons. Data from the pan-provincial Alberta Native Seniors Study demonstrate that Native people aged 50 or more have comparatively high overall care requirements. Older Native Albertans are poor, and make extensive use of some government income support programmes. They also make moderate use of medical services. Extensive dependence on informal care, institutional barriers and local service unavailability lead Native seniors to under-utilise other formal programmes aimed generically at the older provincial population. Native seniors are much more likely to live with kin than are other Canadians. Informal care appears equally available to older women and men, and is provided chiefly by resident daughters, sons and spouses, and by non-resident daughters, sisters and sons. Extensive elderly caregiving requirements may impose a growing, double burden on many, who are also providing care for dependent children. Without further support, current and future requirements may significantly limit the options of caregiving women and men.

This article draws on material from the Bangor Longitudinal Study of Ageing. The survivors, now all 80 plus, were interviewed first in 1979 and for the last time in 1995. This paper concentrates on friendship over that period. Answers to questions about the presence or absence of ‘real friends’ and about satisfaction with the status quo are related to personal strategies for managing change in the friendship network. Four types of response to current levels of friendship are identified: contented, dissatisfied, needy and resigned. Examples are given from each category, drawing on qualitative data.

Findings suggest three types of movement over the 16 years in the relationships of these very old respondents: contraction in the friendship network, expansion, and the replacement of departed friends or fading friendships. New friendships were unusual in departing from same-sex, same age and reciprocal norms of adult friendship. The findings indicate that older adult friendships might breach several of the norms of friendship common in earlier adulthood; the distinctiveness of close relationships in advanced old age calls for its treatment as a separate life stage.

A review of the research literature shows that research on the effects of male retirement on the relationship between husbands and wives is largely based on US populations. Moreover, there is a lack of recent empirical evidence on the marital relationship in middle-class, middle-aged couples living in the UK. A study of anticipatory thoughts about retirement voiced by 306 retiring senior managers and their wives is described. The most frequent focus of their hopes and fears was potential change in the marital relationship after retirement. Three times as many wives as husbands referred to their marriages as they speculated about retirement. A content analysis revealed four major themes. The most frequent was change in the emotional quality of the relationship followed by the conflict between spending time together and the loss of personal space. There was less emphasis on the implications for household management and the possibility of widow(er)hood. The verbatim comments also illustrate some other facets of marriage among middle-aged, middle-class UK couples in the 1990s.

In this article I critically examine the biology/culture dualism in the context of old age. Regarding the contextualisation of the interrelationship between biology and culture, previous studies have not adequately explored the interaction between the physiological process of ageing, the physical and social surroundings of the body and the body's intentionality. I suggest ways in which anthropological and feminist advances in deconstructions and reconstructions of the body can be deployed in the study of old age. In particular I draw upon Margaret Lock's concept of ‘local biology’. This offers an opportunity for the development of gerontological theory that focuses upon the interactions between the ageing body, its experience and its locality.

One of the main reasons older people give for their reluctance to consider residential care as a way of meeting their support needs is the fear of losing their independence. Research has confirmed that such anxiety is well-founded. This paper explores how far two different approaches to residential care enable older people who become residents to maintain their autonomy and independence. It traces the historical development of residential care and of hotels, using a case study of a private residential home run by former hoteliers to compare its approach to ‘the residential task’ with that adopted in local authority homes. Attention is focused on the translation of the core values of independence, privacy, dignity, choice and rights into a daily reality for residents. It is suggested that there are both structural and individual factors which account for the differences observed.

The paper draws tentative conclusions as to why a ‘service’ rather than a ‘social care’ approach may be more successful in enabling older people to preserve their autonomy and privacy after moving into a care home.

Comparable networks surveys identified the informal relationships which provide social support to older people in urban Japan, provincial Japan, and urban Australia. Spouses, daughters, and sons were major providers of expressive support in all areas. Older Australians had more expressive support from friends while older Japanese had more instrumental support from daughters-in-law. The gender of the older people and their close ties were highly significant in all areas. The many similarities in the social support patterns contrast sharply with East and West differences in cultural prescripts and living arrangements. In these two advanced countries with long life expectancies and high living standards, older people's interpersonal relationships may be converging on the basis of selective affection and choice, rather than obligation, with individuals in and beyond the household and family.

This paper examines, through discourse analysis at a micro level, how age identities become interactionally constructed through talk. After a brief overview of the constructivist arguments, the focus is on a single-case interaction between an older client couple and three travel agency assistants. The various means by which age is made salient by the participants and the ensuing age identities that are created for and by the couple in particular are investigated. The images of the ‘elderly’ as portrayed in holiday brochures, providing one dimension of the context of this encounter and being significant in older travellers' self-identity construction, are also looked at. It is argued that discourse analysis has a useful contribution to make in social gerontology in that it can illuminate the interactive processes through which ageing and old age can be defined.

In spite of the many studies conducted over the past decades, the field of inquiry known as cross-cultural gerontology remains atheoretical. This is because of its shortcomings in generating culturally-relevant theoretical frameworks of its own. In this article, I address this failure and adapt Kluckhohn's model of value orientations for use in the study of ageing-related concepts. I discuss possible applications of the adapted model and, in particular, its application to one of the most frequently debated concepts in gerontology, successful ageing. In the light of this discussion, I conclude that the culturally-relevant theoretical framework hereby proposed could lead to the rectification of the current atheoretical predicament of cross-cultural gerontology.

In recent years, many researchers in the study of ageing have adopted a terminology of ‘agelessness’. They argue that old age is nothing more than a social construct and that until it is eliminated as a conceptual category, ageism will continue to flourish. This article challenges this view, stating that the current tendency towards ‘agelessness’ is itself a form of ageism, depriving the old of one of their most hard-earned resources: their age. Specific theories of ageing (successful ageing, mask of ageing, continuity theory) are assessed in this light, and original data are presented as evidence of old age as a unique phase of the lifecycle replete with continued developmental possibilities.

A central concern of many theorists of later life has been to elucidate the processes which shape the marginalisation and relative disadvantage of older people in contemporary society. This concern parallels a current argument within sociological theorising: that life course stage and generational location constitute increasingly important dimensions of social difference and inequality. It is an argument of the paper that many current approaches operate with metaphors of society which ultimately locate those in later life at the margins by virtue of the theoretical terms being used. Too much has been claimed for life course-based divisions and too little has been claimed in respect of life course-related processes. The paper develops an alternative, moral economy, perspective with the aim of furthering analysis of the social organisation of life course-related rights, claims and obligations and their relationship to lifetime inequalities across the population. Such an approach offers a resourceful framework both for interrogating the diverse circumstances and experiences of those in later life, and for conceptualising social inequality and its reproduction.

A minority of older people who move into long-term institutional care are married and have spouses who continue living in the community. The financial complexities and consequences for a couple in this situation deserve to be more widely recognised. Data from the Family Expenditure Survey on the incomes of older married couples are used to examine the financial implications for couples of one spouse entering residential or nursing home care, taking into account local authority procedures for assessing residents' contributions to charges and Income Support rules as they apply to both spouses. We look in particular at the consequences of alternative ways couples might share their incomes, and alternative treatments of such sharing by local authorities and the Department of Social Security. We demonstrate that wives remaining at home are more likely to have low incomes and have recourse to means-tested state benefits if their husbands enter residential care than husbands who remain at home when their wives enter care. Local authorities are likely to be able to require larger contributions to their care costs from husbands than wives. On average, wives whose husbands enter residential care are best off financially when their combined income and savings are shared equally, but this leaves husbands with the least money to contribute to their care costs. If it is the wife who enters care the situation is reversed.

This longitudinal study aims to explain loneliness in newly bereaved older adults, taking into account personal and circumstantial conditions surrounding the partner's death. A distinction is made between emotional and social loneliness. Data were gathered both before and after partner loss. Results were interpreted within the framework of the Theory of Mental Incongruity. The findings reveal that being unable to anticipate the partner's death is related to higher levels of emotional loneliness. Standards of instrumental support, measured indirectly by poor physical condition, lead to stronger emotional as well as social loneliness. Standards measured directly by importance attached to support or contacts result in higher emotional loneliness but, unexpectedly, in lower social loneliness. Furthermore, difficulties with establishing personal contacts, caused, for instance, by social anxiety, add to loneliness. It is concluded that circumstances related to the partner's illness may contribute to emotional loneliness after bereavement. Moreover, the results highlight the importance of taking coping attitudes into consideration for a better understanding of how newly bereaved older adults adapt to the loss of a partner.

Reform of welfare in Britain has sought to shift the balance of pension provision towards the private sector, with consequences for older people's sources of income. The paper uses data from the General Household Survey to examine changes in older people's income from the state and from private pensions from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, focusing on gender and class inequalities.

Although state pensions and other benefits remained the major source of income, especially for women, the relative contribution of private pensions to total income had increased substantially for men. Receipt of private pensions had become more widespread, with narrowing gender and class differences in coverage among older people. However, gender inequality in the amount received had widened and the relative advantage of different occupational groups had changed. Personal pensions had had little impact on the distribution of income among older people, and provided much smaller amounts of income than occupational pensions.

Survey evidence on the living conditions of older people has a long and creditable history in Britain. Booth's work alerted policy makers to the often dire circumstances of older people, and accounts of their housing, diet, domestic arrangements and general quality of life stiffened resolve to ensure an adequate minimum standard of living in old age. At the start of what has been termed the welfare state, there were two important studies of old age in the works of Rowntree and Sheldon. In their depiction of the lives of independent elderly people, they provided a useful mid-century benchmark on progress.

The question of income and support infrastructure recurs over the decades and, in many ways, these concerns are central to the question of adequate diets with implications for health and wellbeing. The possibility, or otherwise, of being able to afford, buy and prepare food which is of appropriate nutritional and social quality, is fundamental to an independent life in old age. Using food as a focus for review, this article maps what has been said about the circumstances of independent elderly people and what has been done to support them in the community. It is concluded that while considerable progress has been made over the century, their relative position remains problematic. This is especially the case for those living on their own in old age and with a reliance on the basic state pension.

With the development of possible therapeutic interventions for people with dementia there is an increasing realisation among clinical and health service researchers of the paucity of appropriate outcome measures for people with dementia and their informal caregivers. The different perspectives on dementia within the biomedical, psychological and social models of disability lead to radically different meanings of the concept ‘quality of life’ and approaches to its assessment. This paper examines these different approaches and proposes a broad research agenda which is underpinned by two key principles. First, people with dementia and their informal caregivers should be involved in the development of usable outcome measures relevant to their needs and circumstances. Second, the scientific community in partnership with those directly affected should develop a pluralistic approach to the assessment of outcome taking account of both the meaning of the condition to people with dementia and their informal caregivers and cost utility from a societal perspective.

This paper presents findings from a qualitative study of social isolation in the context of service provision to older people. It draws on in-depth interviews with 18 Australian aged care practitioners about their perceptions of social isolation among their clients. The findings show that service providers experience significant levels of concern and frustration and a sense of powerlessness in meeting the needs of such clients. In analysing these accounts, the identification and management of isolation is conceptualised as a social practice which occurs in specific relational settings. The provision of care to lonely, isolated old people is structurally constrained in two ways. First, because of inadequate public resource allocation, the relationship between practitioners and older clients is dominated by time pressure and instrumentality. Secondly, the organisational and professional rules which service providers are required to follow shape the interpersonal relations between practitioner and client in ways which negatively impact on the outcomes of care for both.

Belief that the extended family is in terminal decline has proved to be a remarkably persistent myth. It is currently being revived as a result of recent statistical trends. The belief has been closely connected to sociological enquiries undertaken over the course of the century. The validity of the belief, and in particular the significance of grandparents within the extended family, is explored in two sets of life story interviews recently undertaken with adults in Britain; one set are people in their thirties who had become step-children, and the second set participants in a multi-generational study of social mobility. The analysis addresses questions of contact after parental loss, sources of support within the family, the involvement of grandparents, the importance of co-residence, conflict, emotional closeness and communication within a family.