3509 - Life After Formal Retirement

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Description

The theme for this panel evolved from a pioneering volume, Journeys in Sociology: From First Encounters to Fulfilling Retirements, under the editorship of Rosalyn Benjamin Darling and Peter J. Stein, was published in 2017 by Temple U. Press and copyrighted by the Am. Sociological Association (ASA). The volume highlights twenty retired sociologists’ summaries of their life courses with special attention to their transitions into and during retirement. The panelists will share their life story in terms of aims and purposes during major life transitions, especially the transition to “retirement” and any post-retirement transitions. The focus will be on the challenges of constructing or reconstructing meanings (goals, directions, expectations) at different phases in formal retirement from an academic position. Presenters might answer such questions as: What new emotions, if any, did you experience when formally retiring? How did you see retirement as changing, if at all, specific aspects of your life and relations with colleagues and non-colleagues? What really happened? Were expectations met or did you have to adjust them? Did you continue doing what you always have done when working in academia, or did you alter your course—significantly or just a bit? How have any health problems or other traumas, if any, affected your courses of action in retirement? How did you deal with anticipate and unanticipated changes that came with formal retirement? What would tell young scholars just beginning their careers? Audience participants will be able to raise questions of the panelists.

Sub Unit

• Opportunities in Retirement Network

Session Organizers

• Jonathan H. Turner, University of California-Santa Barbara

• Ronald E. Anderson, University of Minnesota

Panelists

• Jonathan H. Turner, University of California-Santa Barbara

• Glen H. Elder, University of North Carolina

• Amitai Etzioni, George Washington University

• Cora B. Marrett, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Edward J. Lawler, Cornell University