Person, People, Planet: Eco-Systematic Analysis of Older Adults' Experiences of Engagement with Nature and Discourse About Nature.

This study combined ecological, environmental, nature-based, and epistemic interpretations of older adulthood to gain a previously unresearched look at how older adults feel that their relations with nature are treated by others. Sixty older adults were interviewed in-depth, and data was analyzed using the Eco-Appreciation framework and Thematic Content Analysis. The results indicate the concurrence of processes of withdrawal of older adults from spaces of nature and discourse about nature. These processes obstruct older adults' wellbeing; entail the infliction of existential epistemic injustices and "eco-ageism" toward them; and emphasize the crucial role social work can play in responding thereto.

The Nature of Social Work: An Ecocentered Analysis of Key Social Work Statements.

This article addresses references to people's natural environments in some of the central declarative statements that shape social work worldwide. Four types of documents were analyzed, including statements associated with the Global Definition of Social Work, the Global Standards for Social Work Education and Training, the Global Social Work Statement of Ethical Principles, and the Grand Challenges for Social Work initiative. The analysis was driven by a critical-interpretive approach, seeking explicit and possibly implied references to nature and the environment across documents, with special attention to themes concerning the relationship between micro and macro perspectives, disciplinarity and inter- or transdisciplinarity, and relations between humankind and nature. In general, direct references to social work's possible intersections with issues related to nature and the natural environment were scarce in the materials examined. That having been said, our analysis did find that ecocentered interpretations enable locating prospective "bridges" for the incorporation of deeper ecological perceptions of social work into statements. Such findings constitute a call to action, and the possible implications of continuing to broadly disregard ecological aspects of social work in core materials published by influential professional institutions are discussed.