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BOOK REVIEW |
Assistant Professor of Gerontology and Sociology The Gerontology Institute Georgia State University P.O. Box 3984 Atlanta, GA 30302-3984
Cultural Aging: Life Course, Lifestyle, and Senior Worlds, by Stephen Katz, Broadview Press, Peterborough, Canada, 2005, 272 pp., $22.95 (paper).
A Different Shade of Gray: Midlife and Beyond in the Inner City, by Katherine S. Newman, The New Press, New York, NY, (new release, 2006), 306 pp., $19.95 (paper).
At first glance, the two contributions under consideration could not be more different. One takes readers on an intellectual journey that travels across disciplines and is concerned with the problem of cultural aging. The other presents readers with a vivid and complex portrait of aging in place in inner city neighborhoods. On closer inspection, these works—both penned by sociologists—have common themes. In their own way, each author deals with issues of structure and agency, risk and responsibility and power relations. Both place contextual factors at the fore and draw attention to cultural contradictions and structural arrangements. Together, these books generate powerful messages about aging in contemporary times.
Cultural Contradictions, Structural Arrangements and Aging Experiences
Cultural obsessions with what Katz (p. 17) refers to as "arrested aging," replete with messages about defying age by overcoming sexual "dysfunction," covering gray hair, battling wrinkles, and fighting inactivity, symbolize an all-out transformation of aging in present-day capitalist societies. In conjunction with this transformation which is driven by, but by no means limited to the influence of the billion-dollar pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, later life is often packaged, promoted and sold as a time of leisurely pursuits and high activity with little room for signs of age, aging, illness or dependence on others. Add dominant cultural/political assumptions about individual responsibility and accountability for social, financial and physical well-being into the mix, and the stage is set for moral judgments of those who cannot or do not measure up.
Messages about "ageless aging" and a well-planned later life stand in sharp contrast to the realities of those who are growing old in other ways, either by choice, circumstance, or both. This contrast is particularly apparent among those who find themselves living at, below, or near the poverty level. A disproportionate number of these individuals belong to racial or ethnic minority groups and are women and those who live alone (Administration on Aging, 2008). For them, aging appears anything but ageless and, like their earlier lives, their later lives are not typically characterized by leisurely pursuits or financial security. Rather, research confirms that over the life course, disadvantages are cumulative and result in being less healthy, experiencing the onset of disease at earlier ages, and having more unmet needs with fewer resources and higher mortality rates (National Research Council, 2004). Katherine Newman illustrates that this is particularly true for many African Americans and native- and foreign-born Latinos who are aging in place in America's inner cities with little support. It is also true of other, less-privileged groups, such as American Indians and Alaskan Natives, for whom staggering mortality and morbidity rates mean that some researchers define elderhood as beginning ten to twenty years earlier for them compared to others (e.g., Fuller-Thomson & Minkler, 2005; Okoro et al., 2007).
Although change is underway, gerontological research continues to lag behind in understanding what it is (i.e., meanings and everyday life experiences) to grow old in contemporary times, and this is especially true for structurally disadvantaged groups. We know that aging experiences are shaped by enveloping contexts and as such are marked by extreme plurality, but the extent and sources of variation as they are experienced in everyday life remain somewhat elusive in research on aging and the life course. In their own ways, using very divergent approaches and areas of inquiry, Stephen Katz and Katherine Newman address some of this elusiveness. Directly and indirectly, their contributions make statements about social gerontology and its role in influencing understandings of aging, noting taken-for-granted assumptions and omissions, posing challenges and raising important questions for further research.
Rethinking Gerontological Knowledge and Ways of Growing Old
Cultural Aging: Life Course, Lifestyle and Senior Worlds represents Stephen Katz's most recent reflections on gerontological knowledge and contemporary meanings of aging. Those familiar with his earlier work, "Disciplining Old Age: The Formation of Gerontological Knowledge," will recognize his imaginative and critical approach. Creatively, and leaving few intellectual stones unturned, he draws inspiration from a range of sources, including, but not limited to, cultural studies, the humanities, feminist thought, and sociology of the body.
The book consists of eleven essays, including four which are coauthored. Nine essays have been published elsewhere. Some readers might consider this a shortcoming, but the collection of work draws more attention to the problem of cultural aging and makes a stronger case for the importance of critical reflection in gerontological pursuits and of understanding the influence of culture on later life than chapters or articles published in disparate locations might hope to accomplish.
This collection of essays truly runs the gamut of gerontological exploration. The book deals with two broad themes and, accordingly, is divided into two parts. The first part, Aging, Life Course and the Cultural Politics of Expertise and Lifestyle, as the title implies, interrogates gerontological expertise past and present. Katz explores a range of expert knowledge examining historical treatments of longevity in influential medical writings, Charcot's use of women in his clinical research, the application of Foucault's work on governmentality as a critical tool in examining social policies on aging, and narratives on age and creativity in the art world.
One essay, "Reflections on the Gerontological Handbook," examines the history of handbooks and questions the use of such texts as domains of expert knowledge in gerontology. We learn that historically handbooks in general were hand-held and portable, characterized as a "nomadic and public text" and intended as manuals "that linked scholarship with commonsense and wisdom with instruction" (p. 82). Reflecting wider movements towards professionalization and expert knowledge, handbooks, including those on gerontology, have become, according to Katz, "purveyors of newly professionalized knowledge" (p. 70). Inspired by Robert Bellah (1985), Katz advocates for the role of the gerontological handbook in realizing the "promise of gerontology as a kind of ‘public philosophy’" (p. 81). He challenges gerontologists to consider handbooks and the roles they might play in transforming gerontology into a discipline in which scholarship is not as he currently sees it—distanced from public concerns.
In another essay, "Critical Gerontological Theory: Intellectual Fieldwork and the Nomadic Life of Idea," Katz investigates the range of intellectual and disciplinary terrains from which gerontologists might draw theoretical inspiration and challenge mainstream gerontology. He makes the case for "critical gerontological theory," which he characterizes as a "thought-space ... where thought collects, converges, and traverses disciplines and traditions" (p. 88). In other words, he encourages nomadic thinking that involves finding, reconfiguring, borrowing and applying ideas found in other disciplines and traditions outside of the study of aging. Such an approach encourages thinking outside of existing thought-boundaries and is ideal for advancing gerontological knowledge but may not reflect the realities of contemporary research practices or the consequences of discipline-boundary maintenance. As Katz suggests, "The predominance of biomedically driven funding policies, the privatization of health care resources, the priorities of corporate and pharmaceutical research, and the popularity of an alarmist demography that blames growing aging populations for the fiscal collapse of social programs" marginalize this type of thinking (p. 99).
The second half of the book, "Lifestyle and the Fashioning of Senior Worlds," is equally thought-provoking. This set of essays explores aging identities, including the images, meanings and experiences of growing old in contemporary Western societies. Analytic attention is placed on exploring the "new aging" where notions of activity and independence have replaced and ushered out previously dominant images of old age as a time of decrepitude and dependence. Aging is thus idealized. This group of essays considers cultural and medical images of activity throughout the life course and into later life, sexual fitness and the aging male body, culturally available notions of what constitutes desirable retirement identities and lifestyles, the contradictory notion of growing old without aging, and issues of geographic mobility and community in later life.
The final essay, "Spaces of Age, Snowbirds, and the Gerontology of Mobility: The Elderscapes of Charlotte County, Florida," stands out somewhat from the rest as it is based on a field research project investigating increasingly popular destination retirement communities and the spatial dimensions of later life. Using what he refers to as an "experimental methodological weave," (p. 202) Katz draws on an array of data sources including photos, interviews, maps, documents and his own reflections to examine "the cultural aging of spaces" (p. 19). Specifically his interest is in the world of snowbirds—individuals from northern areas who migrate to warmer climates for all or part of the winter— and the communities they develop around their shared amenities-seeking geographic mobility. Writing of one such community, his journal entry reads, "It is so interesting to observe the centrality of golf here, not only as an activity but also as a crystallizing force that bonds the social with the environmental into an accessible, international symbol of retirement life" (p. 224). The migratory groups he observed exerted considerable control in shaping their social environments, organizing and scheduling activities and even controlling the presence of children and their activities. He duly notes that these elderscapes are predominately (if not exclusively) white and partially molded by the privileged status of their inhabitants. This analysis makes an important contribution to scholarly understanding of one of the many life worlds of older adults. These data were collected in the late 1990s, which invites questions about the passage of time. How might social and economic change as well as new cohorts of snowbirds transform these retirement communities?
Throughout the book, Katz investigates the new aging and its underlying messages. In many ways current images of aging have been accompanied by greater freedom in lifestyle choices. However, Katz argues that by emphasizing activity and independence, the new aging is cast in positive terms, while inactivity and dependence are defined as negative. Moral evaluations are embedded in this dichotomy, and individuals are understood as having a personal responsibility for the quality of their aging experiences. Messages from the marketplace, professionals and governments are rendered apparent. Individuals are encouraged to take steps towards minimizing health, social and financial risks and promoting or maintaining each domain through self-care. In the neoliberal context, the life course and later life become an individual rather than collective project and responsibility (Kemp & Denton, 2003).
Implicit in this new standard of aging is the idea of aging without showing the physical signs of growing old. This standard is part of the cultural landscape. Katz raises a key question: "Who benefits and who suffers from a culture that idealizes growing old while denying age?" (p. 193). The sin appears to be physical aging as masking the signs of aging is what allows people to embrace growing older and celebrate old age. This idealization marginalizes those who do not live up to its standards of activity and independence. Katz comments, "Many older people are not the exemplars of senior citizenry idealized in the current imagery and do face tremendous emotional and health problems that require sustainable social support, effective care solutions, and informed public sympathy" (p. 194). Indeed, some older adults face incredible hardships related to poverty or physical or mental decline, which as Katz suggests, are often products of the modern condition. Given these observations, in many ways Stephen Katz's essay ends as Katherine Newman's book begins.
Portraits of Aging and Cumulative Disadvantage
A Different Shade of Gray: Midlife and Beyond in the Inner City examines the experiences of aging in New York's inner cities and in doing so, draws attention to a largely neglected group. In the opening pages, Newman outlines the social, economic and educational progress of the past century and considers how it has positively affected today's cohorts of middle and later-life adults. She explains that, although this good fortune is mostly "concentrated in the hands of whites," minority middle classes also have grown and experienced prosperity and mobility (p. 1). Having fled to suburban areas, these groups are more apt to conform to cultural images of middle and later life as a time of comfort and financial security. Yet many others, as Newman points out, do not. She writes, "Millions of Americans did not reap the benefits of economic expansion and occupational mobility. They did not decamp for the suburbs. Instead, they stayed put .... They aged in place, and in a very troubled place" (p. 2).
We know the basic contours of statistical difference between racial and ethnic groups in poverty rates, educational achievement, life expectancy, morbidity rates, health insurance coverage, and marital and family patterns–information that Newman also provides and refers to as the "big picture" (p. 29). These are important, telling data, but in using interview data from one hundred mid- and later-life inner city dwellers, she makes a point of also finding out what numbers don't show. Her participants' narratives add an oft-missing human element to inequality research and studies of growing old. And, picking up on the contradictions and tensions of everyday life, she allows readers to see the complexity and variability of situations. Although not all alike, as a group, they face incredible misfortunes, setbacks and seemingly insurmountable social, health and financial limitations, but survival, resilience, adaptation and improvisation also characterize their lives.
Newman's book illustrates the value of using multiple lenses in an effort to understand variation in the aging experience and the factors that contribute to inequality in mid- and later-life. She notes, "Context matters a great deal in the aging experience" ( p. 246). Although she does not use the label, her analysis is informed by a life course perspective and takes into account environmental, community and familial contexts as well as wider economic swings and their accompanying opportunities and constraints. Within these contexts, she also considers individual and generational trajectories and transitions pertaining to education, employment, economic, family and health status, as well as geographic mobility (or lack thereof). She makes visible the processes of cumulative disadvantage and its very real consequences in individuals' lives.
Newman's attention to context highlights the life course principle, linked lives. This is an important contribution, for as Hagestad (2003, p. 147) asserts, "We know very little about how decisions regarding the timing of retirement, and where to live during retirement years, are shaped by consideration of needs and resources in younger generations." Although hard work and perseverance as well as social and historical change offered those in her study some opportunity for upward social mobility, the needs and resources of younger generations left a considerable imprint on their lives. Social and economic change altered the landscape for their children who grew up "in enclaves bedeviled by poverty, the raging crack epidemic in the 1980s, and increasing racial and class segregation" (p. 2). We learn that teen and out-of-wedlock pregnancies, drug addiction, criminal activity, illness, and chronic unemployment did not merely happen to the younger, middle generation, they happened to families and resulted in interrupted mobility. Members of the older generations, many of whom are contending with personal health declines and limited resources, have borne and continue to bear the consequences. They have been unable to leave their communities, have become unexpected caregivers to children and grandchildren, and must support other kin. Depending on resources and needs, we can speculate that support obligations such as these very likely induce early retirement or postpone it altogether.
Despite recognizing and acknowledging structural barriers to mobility, participants articulated popular beliefs governing individual accountability, responsibility, and self-determination. They expressed the view that "people cannot be let off the hook" (p. 184), suggesting that some "have themselves to blame" (p. 185). Yet, throughout the book it is confirmed, to borrow terms from sociologist C. Wright Mills (1959, p. 8), that the precarious situations of those aging in place in the inner city are more than "personal troubles of milieu," they are "public issues of social structure." Newman asks of her data, "Does race matter?" As other research has shown, it does, particularly in terms of access to and competition for resources. As one might expect, the surrounding environment matters very much for the aging experience as do class, gender, and marital, parental, and health status.
Despite structural disadvantages, like millions of other disadvantaged Americans, these individuals are surviving, but their lives are delicately balanced and the slightest health or financial setback can have devastating consequences. Their safety nets are thin and in the absence of pensions, savings, health insurance, safe communities, formal assistance, or reliable informal support, the future is not bright. Newman advocates for policy change, recommending for example, Social Security reform, changes to health care and health insurance, remuneration for kin-care, and efforts to make city streets safer. Many of her recommendations are aimed at raising income support levels and increasing health care accessibility and coverage. Without these changes, it is not clear how these individuals and others like them will fare. Readers are left to ponder what will become of these individuals as they continue to age in place.
Concluding Thoughts
In Western societies, the past several decades have borne witness to a fundamental shift away from government spending on social programs aimed at reducing inequality across the life course and into later life. Alongside the notion of individual accountability, the political position that the aging of the population certainly will bankrupt the welfare state underlies part of this shift and has led to the privatization of some services, leaving individuals, their families (often women), and the market, to fill the gaps in support (financial, medical, emotional, social and care) (Gee, 2000). In instances where programs exist, many are predicated on assumptions about family life and family structure that simply do not correspond to current social, demographic and economic realities, ultimately disadvantaging certain groups. As Newman illustrates, structural arrangements can place extraordinary pressures on families (especially those with limited resources), and produce long-term consequences on individual health, social and economic conditions that culminate in later life. For these people, the luxuries of defying age, planning for the future, or wintering in sunny destinations do not reflect their lived realities or popular images of later life.
Arguably, the promotion of an active, productive, and well-planned later life is, in part, politically and economically motivated and generates cultural images of aging, including what later life can, does, and should look like. Yet, echoing messages originally conveyed by Carroll Estes, Katz reminds us that the field of gerontology is a product of its own cultural environment and therefore not entirely above suspicion. For this reason, as gerontologists, we might pause to consider our role in [re]producing gerontological knowledge, reflecting on how assumptions, theories and methods shape research questions and agendas, including what does and does not get investigated. Regardless of whether one chooses to adopt the label of critical gerontology, as Katz does, he makes a strong case for studies of age and aging that are self-critical and reflexive. Such an approach will prove exceedingly important if gerontology is to understand and explain the array of meanings and experiences associated with aging, especially as it pertains to the everyday lives of older adults.
References
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