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Establishing a critical and interdisciplinary dialogue, this text engages with the typically disparate fields of social gerontology and disability studies. It investigates the subjective experiences of two groups rarely considered together in research – people ageing with long-standing disability and people first experiencing disability with ageing.
This book challenges assumptions about impairment in later life and the residual nature of the ‘fourth age’. It proposes that the experience of ‘disability’ in older age reaches beyond the bodily context and can involve not only a challenge to a sense of value and meaning in life, but also ongoing efforts in response.
Introduction Disability is often understood within models that define it, shape self-identities and determine which professions engage (Smart, 2009 ). With a view to clarifying concepts at the outset, I discuss in this chapter how disability is understood. The chapter expands on one of the paradoxes identified in Chapter 1: how separate models are used to understand what disability is generally and to understand what it is in older age. First, I consider understandings within approaches to disability generally – involving two key models: social and
This is the first book to address the issue of ageing after a long life with disability. It breaks new ground through its particular life course perspective, examining what it means to age with a physical or mental disability and what the implications are of ‘becoming old’ for people who have had extensive disabilities for many years. These people may have had to leave the labour market early, and the book looks at available care resources, both formal and informal. Ageing with disability challenges set ideas about successful ageing, as well as some of those about disabilities. The life course approach that is used unfolds important insights about the impact of multiple disabilities over time and on the phases of life. The book highlights the meaning of care in unexplored contexts, such as where ageing parents are caregivers or regarding mutual care in disabled couples. These are areas of knowledge which have, to date, been totally neglected.
Introduction This chapter expands on the engagement with scholarship started in the previous two chapters. It engages with one of the paradoxes highlighted in Chapter 1: that there are only separate theories on ageing and on disability, impacting on our ability to conceptualise relationships between the two (Murphy et al, 2007 ). I compare key theoretical perspectives on disability and on ageing, engaging especially with critical or cultural studies, and also consider other areas of scholarship where theorising on disability and ageing could meet. The
medical processes) of first experiencing disability with ageing differ from those of ageing with disability?’ I start by briefly considering heterogeneity in the AwithD group and then introduce approaches to comparison between these two experiences. The main part of this chapter uses as subheadings the subjects of each of the three previous chapters – disabling bodies, disabling or enabling contexts, and responding to challenges – and, of necessity, repeats some of the discussion of those chapters. Both groups could perceive themselves as disabled by their bodies and
Introduction Public policies frame how societies provide care and support in practice, influence a sense of identity, and shape perceptions of what categories we belong to as individuals. They offer a window on how society conceives of disability for younger and older persons (Kahana and Kahana, 2017 : 181). In this chapter, I engage with the separation of public policy frameworks on ageing and disability, and the consequences for older people, focusing on social care. I first introduce how public policies traditionally underscore difference between people
35 THREE disability, identity and ageing Lotta Holme ‘In contrast to previous living conditions, we now gain access to normal ageing.’ (oscar, 62 years old) introduction In this chapter I explore from a lifecourse perspective how important leading activists of the modern Swedish disability movement regard their ageing and later life. More specifically, I focus on how a special group of disabled people experience ageing and later life in light of the modern history of disability and disability politics in which they have actively participated (see also
27 TWO Dementia as a disability Introduction In Chapter One, the topic of human rights and dementia was introduced, and it was shown that dementia is a human rights issue since the individual diagnosed can experience injustice, inequality and marginalization. As I argue in later chapters, once diagnosed a person may encounter discrimination, segregation and social exclusion (Cantley and Bowes, 2004), their autonomy can be compromised (Boyle, 2008), and opportunities to exercise choice and control in decisions directly relevant to their lives may be denied
SeVen Ageing, disability and participation Janet Fast and Jenny de Jong Gierveld Meaningful participation and social integration in society have been shown to contribute to ageing well. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal research have linked social participation to positive outcomes including quality of life (Silverstein and Parker, 2002), emotional well-being (Lee and Russell, 2003), functional independence (Unger et al, 1997) and lower morbidity and mortality rates (Menec, 2003). Importantly, social participation is seen to lead to social embededdness
, disability and infirmity form rather more contingent sources of social division in part because of the temporal flux within which they emerge. There is a distinction, for example, between the predictable status of becoming aged and the less predictable status of becoming disabled, ill or infirm. Most people see bodily change as constituting the ‘authentic’ basis of age and ageing; reminders of the inevitable temporality that is attached to identity, location and status. Those changes that are evidenced by the ageing body, which do not reflect illness or impairment, best
