Interrogating Place in Aging for Sociological Inquiry

• In Event: 349 - Section on Aging and the Life Course Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 07. Social Networks and Social Isolation

Abstract

The twin forces of population aging and urbanization have been identified as among the most significant social trends affecting life in the 21st century. These unprecedented changes have profound impacts on a broad range of health, social, political, and economic conditions. Place-based efforts, such as “aging-in-place” and “age-friendly cities,” have entered the gerontological lexicon and many disciplines have been urged to respond to the call for a “lifespan-oriented, universal design in a society-for-all,” motivating a better understanding of how space and place alter and broaden the ways health and social care are provided. This paper illustrated how built environments are important to health, and how the role of place affects older people and those involved in programs, policymaking, and care. In this paper, I interrogated how the social organization and arrangements of urbanized spaces create humans as subjects and how humans, as subjects, adapt to or resist these modes of subjugation. A theoretical concern was, how the changing situations of space on populations wrought by the advance of capitalism and the rise of urbanization with postmodern perspectives emphasizing the construction of personal identity in the face of cultural and biomedical representations of aging, creates tensions at the “micro-macro” intersection. This paper concluded with a set of questions to help consider the degree to which individual personal identities and experiences of aging in their relation to the concept of place can be intertwined with methodological ways to address some of the theoretical concerns raised.

Author

• Jarmin Yeh, University of California-San Francisco