[Conditions of life or intersectionality? Gerontology from a critical feminist perspective]. / Lebenslagen oder Intersektionalität? Gerontologie aus kritisch feministischer Perspektive.

Using the conditions-of-life-approach through the lens of social politics and sociology, the categories of age(ing) and gender are viewed as structurally horizontal categories of society depicting socially constructed allocation criteria. Therefore, subjective perceptions of the conditions of life of particularly disadvantaged groups, such as elderly women or elderly women with a migration background, can be recorded as well. This article raises the question, if increasingly preferred concepts of intersectionality are positively contributing to gender research from a gerontological and feminist perspective.

[Doing vulnerability : The social construction of age(ing) during the COVID-19 pandemic]. / Doing Vulnerability : Soziale Konstruktionen des Alter(n)s während der COVID-19 Pandemie.

BACKGROUND: Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic old age has been "vulnerablilized" in the media by characterizing old age as a vulnerable and risky phase of life. Gerontologists have criticized the age-based definition of risk groups for their underlying agism. OBJECTIVE: From a practice-theoretical perspective the article asks through which social practices a vulnerable age is realized during the COVID-19 pandemic. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The article refers to data from six qualitative interviews with people aged 65 and older. The data was analyzed using fine structure analysis followed by a topic analysis. RESULTS: The results show that during the COVID-19 pandemic doing age was characterized by a not doing or the disappearance of routinized everyday practices. For the respondents this not doing age was connected to experiencing vulnerable ageing, in which they felt physically and temporally vulnerable. DISCUSSION: Practices of aging during the COVID-19 pandemic have developed against the backdrop of a societal discourse that has positioned activity as an indicator of good and positive aging. At the same time few opportunities have been created to maintain activity under the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[On the co-constitution of age(ing) and digital technologies : A critical gerontological discussion of the thematic focal point "Commercially available digital technology in the daily routine of older persons: a research update"]. / Zur Ko-Konstitution von Alter(n) und digitalen Technologien : Eine kritisch-gerontologische Diskussion des Themenschwerpunkts "Kommerziell verfügbare digitale Technik im Alltag Älterer: ein Forschungsupdate".

The thematic focus addresses two interwoven megatrends of the 21st century: demographic and technological change. This commentary aims to contextualize and reflect on this update from the perspective of a critical gerontology.

Discussion paper on participation and participatory methods in gerontology.

The concept of "participation" and the use of "participatory methods" in human, healthcare, nursing, and gerontological research, as well as the corresponding fields of practice, represent an expanding field of interest. However, the objectives and organization of "participation" are not always sufficiently explicated. The Critical Gerontology Working Group of the German Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics presents a statement on this phenomenon, and proposes a catalogue of criteria for reflection upon and assessment of participation by older people in research and practice, which can also be considered a stimulus for further discussions.

[Discussion paper on participation and participative methods in gerontology]. / Diskussionspapier Partizipation und partizipative Methoden in der Gerontologie.

The concept of "participation" and the demand for the use of "participative methods" in human, healthcare, nursing and gerontological research as well as the corresponding fields of practice are in great demand; however, the targets and organization of "participation" are not always sufficiently explicated. The working group on critical gerontology of the German Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics uses this phenomenon as an opportunity for positioning and develops a catalogue of criteria for reflection and assessment of participation of elderly people in science and practice, which can also be considered a stimulus for further discussions.

Addressing Equity and Justice in Age-Friendly Communities: Considerations for LGBTQ+ Older Adults of Color.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: This research critically examined the concept of age-friendliness from the perspectives of older Black lesbian women living in New York City (NYC). The primary aim was to extend existing age-friendly frameworks to more inclusively meet the needs of older lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer adults of color, promoting greater equity and justice. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Applying principles from critical participatory action research, we collected and analyzed data from 5 focus groups consisting of 5 older Black lesbian women. Participants shared their daily experiences living in NYC and proposed ideas to enhance the age-friendliness of the city to better accommodate their unique needs and experiences. RESULTS: Participants called for greater attention to the interaction between identities and structures in relation to age-friendly communities. Historic and contemporary experiences of violence and discrimination, as well as the ever-shifting political context were identified as a key factor shaping their aging experiences. The need for affirming spaces with positive representation of their layered identities was emphasized in the context of age-friendly interventions. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: While dominant age-friendly frameworks are universally accepted for improving the health and wellbeing of older adults, the specific challenges of aging with multiple intersecting marginalized identities necessitate a critical perspective. Gerontology needs to take seriously how privilege and oppression operate within society, shaping health and aging trajectories of vulnerable and underserved populations.

Consent and Inclusion of People Living with Dementia (PLWD) in Research: Establishing a Canadian Agenda for Inclusive Rights-Based Practices.

BACKGROUND: People living with dementia (PLWD) may want to participate in research, but the guidelines and processes enacted across various contexts may prohibit this from happening. OBJECTIVE: Understanding the experiences of people with lived experiences of dementia requires meaningful inclusion in research, as is consistent with rights-based perspectives. Currently, the inclusion of PLWD in Canadian research is complex, and guidelines and conceptual frameworks have not been fully developed. METHODS: This research note outlines a three-year proof-of-concept grant on the inclusion and consent of PLWD in research. FINDINGS: It presents a brief report on some of the contradictions and challenges that exist in legislation, research guidelines, and research practices and raises a series of questions as part of an agenda on rights and inclusion of PLWD in research. DISCUSSION: It suggests conceptual, legal, and policy issues that need to be addressed and invites Canadian researchers to re-envision research practices and to advocate for law and policy reform that enables dementia research to align and respect the rights and personhood of PLWD.

Lost in Transition: Community-Dwelling Partners' Stories of Losing a Spouse to Cognitive Decline and Long-Term Care Facilities.

This qualitative narrative study presents three stories told by older community-dwelling partners to spouses moving into long-term care facilities because of cognitive decline. Applying Alvesson and Kärreman's mystery method to these stories reveals that when spouses' caring needs increase, care partners must take on increasing loads of practical work and responsibilities. These partners become lost in the transitions between care work, extended family, and attending to their couplehood. When their spouses move into long-term care, living apart presents new challenges of care and couplehood, each day presenting new and unforeseen tasks to manage. Our findings suggest that if couplehood is to be maintained, well-established habits and work division between the spousal partners are both drivers and barriers. It necessitates agency, creativity from the community-dwelling partner, as well as a supportive extended family and sufficient economic resources. More knowledge is required regarding the interdependent expectations between the next-of-kin, long-term care residents, and caregiving staff members.

The qualitative embedded case study method: Exploring and refining gerontological concepts via qualitative research with older people.

This article argues that a tailored version of the qualitative embedded case study method can be used to build strong conceptual and inclusive insights from qualitative research with older people, and, in doing so, advance theoretical scholarship in social and critical gerontology. Gerontology has often been described as "data-rich and theory-poor" (Birren & Bengtson, 1988). It is a field which draws heavily on post-positivist traditions of quantitative research and notions of prediction, generalization, and statistical significance. While critical qualitative approaches have gained ground through interdisciplinary scholarship in the social sciences and humanities, few attempts have been made to articulate the relationship between research questions designed to understand older people's experiences and concept- or theory-building in gerontology. This piece makes a case for engaging with the theoretical/methodological interface by drawing on an evolving approach entitled the qualitative embedded case study, as it was used in three qualitative studies on the concepts of frailty, (im)mobility, and precarity. It suggests this is an evolving approach with the potential to develop conceptually sound, meaningful research from older people's experiences, including diverse, underrepresented, and marginalized groups, and to draw on these insights to direct change.

Aging Successfully in the Changing Norwegian Welfare State: A Policy Analysis Framed by Critical Gerontology.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: In the 21st century, the future of the Norwegian welfare state is broadly debated. In Norway, as in other countries, concerns regarding the sustainability and affordability of the welfare state in light of the projected population development have been voiced in public and academic discourse, and not least in governmental statements and documents. Because we consider texts, such as government white papers, as both products and producers of discursively based understandings of the social world, a close examination of policy documents can provide insight into the predominant understanding of a distinct phenomenon in a specific society at a particular point in time. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: The article is based on a critical discourse analysis of 3 recent Norwegian government policy documents addressing the older adult population. RESULTS: We demonstrate that prominent ideas from the widely contested successful aging paradigm are embedded and forwarded in current Norwegian policies, where ideas about successful and healthy aging produced and reproduced in the documents frame and shape expectations toward older adults. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: We argue that the ideas and ideals of successful aging and neoliberalism in parallel pave the way for changes in the historically generous and comprehensive Norwegian social democratic welfare state. For decision makers, the rhetoric of successful aging that emphasizes activity, productivity, self-reliance, and freedom of choice is undoubtedly more convenient to communicate to the public than explicit arguments for the necessity of downscaling public services.

Emancipatory Visions: Using Visual Methods to Coconstruct Knowledge with Older Adults.

This article calls for gerontologists to engage with visual methods in qualitative research as an innovative tool for community-engaged research that has potential to advance social justice in gerontology. Reflections about using visual methods from the intersectional standpoint of the authors, 3 younger women of color, are presented. In Working the Hyphen, J. Yeh shows how interpersonal dynamics are fundamental to visual methods and that attention to identity can provide new insights into aging while also reconstituting existing power dynamics that researchers must carefully consider. In Employing Elicitation Techniques With Experts, L. Reyes discusses how a colonial lens limits understandings of civic participation and erases contributions of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) older adults, proposing that elicitation techniques offer opportunities for BIPOC older adults to contribute their expertise to the research process and dissemination of findings beyond an academic audience. In Pedagogy and Practicality, H. S. Versey describes promises and complexities of scaling visual methods on multiple levels-teaching future generations of researchers the philosophy and practice of photovoice; negotiating university and community relationships through a service-learning project; and navigating identity between herself, her students, and research participants. In sharing our self-narratives, we integrate reflexivity into the research process and challenge power dynamics in knowledge construction.

Age-Friendly for Whom? An Aperture to the Lived Experiences of Older San Franciscans.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Spatial practices and changing urban environments affecting identity, experiences, and everyday life were examined among a diverse sample of older adults as they negotiated and navigated an age-friendly city. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Ethnographic interviews, observations, and visual methods were used to understand spatial practices and lived experiences of 4 older adults, who chronicled their lives using disposable cameras. RESULTS: Informant identities emerged in their everyday practices, reflecting varied positionalities that fundamentally shaped their notions of "age-friendly." Informants sought to sustain or improve their lives while attempting to negotiate socioenvironmental forms and forces that often threatened their identity and increased their precarity. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Contrast exists between "invariant" macro/meso issues all older adults face as they age and "multivariant" ways in which age is accomplished based on place, biography, and intersectionality. Age-friendly environments may simultaneously maintain the status quo and exacerbate inequalities. Gerontology must take seriously how stratified life chances can undermine seemingly universal potential benefits of age-friendly environments.

"I'm definitely not socially excluded!"- Perceptions of social exclusion among Australian government housing residents aged 80 and older who live alone.

The oldest old - those aged 80 years and over - are the fastest growing sector of the Australian population and are generally assumed to be at risk of social exclusion which impedes healthy aging. The voices of those thought to be vulnerable to social exclusion are seldom heard. Informed by a critical gerontology framework, socio-ecological model of health and life-course perspectives, this research involved semi-structured in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of 13 people aged 80 and older living alone in government housing, in a socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhood in Melbourne, Australia. Interview transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings reveal a positive picture of survival despite hardship, supportive relationships, a sense of autonomy from living independently, and contributing to society. These findings challenge ageist assumptions, which equate advanced age with social exclusion.

Ageism in COVID-Related Newspaper Coverage: The First Month of a Pandemic.

OBJECTIVES: Media sources have consistently described older adults as a medically vulnerable population during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, yet a lack of concern over their health and safety has resulted in dismissal and devaluation. This unprecedented situation highlights ongoing societal ageism and its manifestations in public discourse. This analysis asks how national news sources performed explicit and implicit ageism during the first month of the pandemic. METHOD: Using content and critical discourse analysis methods, we analyzed 287 articles concerning older adults and COVID-19 published between March 11 and April 10, 2020, in 4 major U.S.-based newspapers. RESULTS: Findings indicate that while ageism was rarely discussed explicitly, ageist bias was evident in implicit reporting patterns (e.g., frequent use of the term "elderly," portrayals of older adults as "vulnerable"). Infection and death rates and institutionalized care were among the most commonly reported topics, providing a limited portrait of aging during the pandemic. The older "survivor" narrative offers a positive alternative by suggesting exceptional examples of resilience and grit. However, the survivor narrative may also implicitly place blame on those unable to survive or thrive in later life. DISCUSSION: This study provides insight for policy makers, researchers, and practitioners exploring societal perceptions of older adults and how these perceptions are disseminated and maintained by the media.

Meanings and feelings of (Im)mobility in later life: Case study insights from a 'New Mobilities' perspective.

Understandings of mobility and immobility shape research and responses to late life. Yet, the underlying assumptions about mobility often remain fixed on ideas of function and physical ability. The 'new mobilities' paradigm shifts this analysis by focusing on the importance and experience of mobility as a thing in itself rather than a means to an end, and to the complex enactments that operate across a range of relationships, settings, sites, and contexts. This paper provides insight from an embedded case study method comprised of fifteen exploratory interviews with older people at three social locations, including 5 individuals considered 'frail', 5 people who are aging with a disability, and 5 older people who self-identify as 'active'. Considered together and in contrast, the findings from these three distinct but related embedded case sites, viewed from a 'new mobilities' perspective, can help to understand (im)mobility as an embodied experience that is situated within and across social and political contexts, and can explicate how relations of power enhance the mobility of some, and the immobility of others. We conclude that the 'new mobilities' approach introduces ideas to overcome limitations of distance, movement, and place, and in doing so, serves to redefine what it means to be mobile while aging.

Community Gerontology: A Framework for Research, Policy, and Practice on Communities and Aging.

We introduce "community gerontology" as an area of research, policy, and practice that aims to advance understanding of communities as fundamental contexts for aging and its diversity, and to leverage this understanding for change. We present a foundational framework for community gerontology in three parts. First, we discuss the mesolevel as the unifying construct for community gerontology. Second, we describe community gerontology's focus on pathways of mutual influence between the mesolevel with more micro and macro contexts over time. Third, we put forth community gerontology's emphasis on gerontologists' participation in community change processes to facilitate more optimal experiences of aging among diverse population subgroups. We conclude by describing the integrative nature of community gerontology and the ways that this framework can advance research on particular substantive areas, as well as gerontology as a whole.

Thinking about Later Life: Insights from the Capability Approach.

A major criticism of mainstream gerontological frameworks is the inability of such frameworks to appreciate and incorporate issues of diversity and difference in engaging with experiences of aging. Given the prevailing socially structured nature of inequalities, such differences matter greatly in shaping experiences, as well as social constructions, of aging. I argue that Amartya Sen's capability approach (2009) potentially offers gerontological scholars a broad conceptual framework that places at its core consideration of human beings (their values) and centrality of human diversity. As well as identifying these key features of the capability approach, I discuss and demonstrate their relevance to thinking about old age and aging. I maintain that in the context of complex and emerging identities in later life that shape and are shaped by shifting people-place and people-people relationships, Sen's capability approach offers significant possibilities for gerontological research.

Social Isolation in Later Life: Extending the Conversation.

As Canada's population continues to age, social isolation among older people is a growing concern and national-level priority. Although much is known about individual-level risks and negative health outcomes associated with social isolation in later life, the impact of life course trajectories and the more collective experiences are seldom considered. Current definitions and program responses tend to rely on individualized approaches to social isolation. Here, we argue that the conversation be extended to consider the social and cultural aspects of social isolation among older people. Specifically, we suggest that definitions and approaches consider three particular dimensions: temporal factors, spatial factors, and the relationship between social isolation and exclusion. Doing so, we argue, would result in a more inclusive approach to social isolation in late life, and the development of capacity to address social isolation among a wide range of older people, particularly the needs of vulnerable or marginalized groups.

Understanding the experiences of racialized older people through an intersectional life course perspective.

This article proposes the development of an intersectional life course perspective that is capable of exploring the links between structural inequalities and the lived experience of aging among racialized older people. Merging key concepts from intersectionality and life course perspectives, the authors suggest an analytic approach to better account for the connections between individual narratives and systems of domination that impinge upon the everyday lives of racialized older people. Our proposed intersectional life course perspective includes four dimensions: 1) identifying key events and their timing, 2) examining locally and globally linked lives, 3) exploring categories of difference and how they shape identities, 4) and assessing how processes of differentiation, and systems of domination shape the lives, agency and resistance among older people. Although applicable to various forms of marginalization, we examine the interplay of racialization, immigration, labour and care in later life to highlight relationships between systems, events, trajectories, and linked lives. The illustrative case example used in this paper emerged from a larger critical ethnographic study of aging in the Filipino community in Montreal, Canada. We suggest that an intersectional life course perspective has the potential to facilitate a deeper understanding of the nexus of structural, personal and relational processes that are experienced by diverse groups of older people across the life course and into late life.

Living in your own home and being socially connected at 95 years and beyond: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: Being socially connected is linked to positively influencing older people's ability to remain living in their own homes and has shown to support independence and enhance well-being. AIM: To explore how individuals aged 95 years and older living in their own home remain socially connected. METHODS: Informed by a critical gerontological approach, semi-structured interviews with eight women and two men aged between 96 and 100 years were undertaken. Following transcription, data were thematically analysed. RESULTS: Three main themes illuminating social connectedness were identified: "Keeping company: staying connected with family and friends", "Doing things together: engaging with paid and unpaid helpers" and "Having pride and enjoyment: continuing with hobbies and interests". CONCLUSION: It is important that health professionals and social service providers recognise the importance of social connectedness, and provide a range of options to support continuing social connectedness and community engagement for older people.