‘Older people’ talking as if they are not older people: Positioning theory as an explanation

This paper addresses the question of how we account for ‘older people’ talking as if they are not older people. Membership of an age category is usually conceptualised as having a pre-discursive reality, as is inherent in the concept of ‘denial of ageing’. This paper theorises membership of an age category as a discursive resource and uses positioning theory to examine what is said. Working within the framework of discursive psychology, it demonstrates both the complexity and the fruitfulness of identifying older-age related positions in talk. Data is presented where speakers position themselves as not-older-people or modify positionings of themselves as older. The data comes from interviews about a topic where age status is often treated as pertinent: sexual activity in later life. The analysis demonstrates that how speakers position themselves in relation to older age depends on, and has important consequences for, the particular local business of the interaction.     

Interactional perspectives on the mistreatment of older and vulnerable people in long‐term care settings

This article draws on a study aimed at developing theoretical and methodological understanding of the abuse and neglect (mistreatment) of older people in long‐term care settings such as care homes and hospitals. It presents an interactionist account of mistreatment of older people in such establishments. Starting with an outline of definitional issues surrounding the topic, the allied concept of dignity is also briefly explored, and one important model described; we present dignity as the converse of mistreatment. The article argues for the potential of a positioning theory analysis of mistreatment. Positioning theory proposes that interactions are based on taking of ‘positions’, clusters of rights and duties to act in certain ways and impose particular meanings, which enable or prohibit access to certain storylines. It is argued that ‘malignant’ positioning can contribute to the creation of a climate that allows mistreatment to take place, or fails to prohibit its development. Mistreatment of people with dementia is used as an illustration, and it is argued that this is potentially generated by negative feedback loops of behaviour patterns, interpretations and malignant positioning by staff or family carers and subsequent response to these interpretations by the person with dementia. Positioning theory also allows for an explanation of the importance and impact of organizational cultures and social factors such as ageism. Individual staff members take positions, use meanings and develop storylines imbued with such factors. This understanding therefore overcomes some of the potential confusions created by concepts such as organizational or institutional abuse, removing the need to ascribe intentions and personal responsibility to such constructs. The article concludes with some suggestions for further research to develop an understanding of the kinds of cultures that allow mistreatment and consequently to inform the development of protective measures.     

“The troublesome other and I”: Parallel stories of separated parents in prolonged conflicts

This qualitative study aims to explore how noncohabiting parenting couples in prolonged conflict construct the other parent and themselves. Ten parents from five parent couples were interviewed. A dyadic analytical design was used, where parent's stories of conflict were analyzed in parallel with their co‐parent. Drawing on positioning theory, self‐identity as parents emerged as implicit counter positions in storylines, which construct the co‐parent as “the troublesome other.” Two typologies of conflicted storylines were prominent in the findings: storylines of violations of trust, positioning the co‐parents in relation to traumatic events in the past and, storylines of who is bad, positioning the co‐parent as either a disloyal co‐parent or a dysfunctional parent. The findings indicate that prolonged conflicts made it impossible to find available positions for cooperation. We argue that family therapists should aid each household toward promoting child and family resilience rather than continued efforts to solve chronic conflicts.     

Equal or individual treatment: contesting storylines in needs assessment conversations within Swedish eldercare

This article examines the role of care managers and their work in putting policy into practice in micro-interactions with older people in Swedish eldercare. The care managers assess the individual needs of older people, and decide what type of social care and services will be given. Dilemmas in care management are often related to the gap between needs and resources. The aim was to study the positioning of care managers within different storylines advanced in needs assessment conversations. Positioning theory was applied to study discursive practices and discursive strategies within Swedish eldercare. Audio-recorded needs assessment conversations among care managers, older people and their relatives at care planning meetings in connection with hospital discharge were analyzed. Two overall positions were identified for care managers—as ‘professional experts’ and as ‘organizational representatives’—allowing the care managers to maneuver within two contesting storylines: ‘distribution of scarce eldercare resources based on the principles of eligibility and equal treatment’ and ‘older people entitled to eldercare according to their own perceived individual needs’. For social work, the results showed the importance of discussing how care managers might move towards exercising greater professional autonomy, becoming less dependent on their position in the organization.     

Ageing in the bush: The role of rural places in maintaining identity for long term rural residents and retirement migrants in north-east Victoria,Australia

As a consequence of local population ageing, which is more pronounced in rural areas, the issue of maintaining a positive quality of life for rural older people is attracting significant attention. While environmental psychology theory has advocated the role of place identity in defining the self, there has been little applied research exploring how this occurs in later life. This exploratory, qualitative study (n = 16) utilises 6 and 7 identity process theory to investigate how rural older Australians (retirement migrants and long-term residents) use place to sustain and build a sense of self at a time when many are susceptible to age-related loss. The paper draws on the concepts of distinctiveness, continuity, self-esteem and self-efficacy in order to explore how place identity is supported and maintained. Findings suggest that rural places are beneficial in terms of identity maintenance, with differences between long term and more recent rural residents. Furthermore, findings also highlight that place-related change or growth can potentially threaten older people’s identification as a ‘rural’ person.     

Immunity challenge

As people get older, their immune systems falter. The elderly are more susceptible to infections than youngsters are, and hyperactive inflammatory responses appear to contribute to some age-associated illnesses, including Alzheimer's disease and atherosclerosis. Investigating the effect of aging on the immune system was once a scientific stepchild, but card-carrying immunologists are now tackling the problem head-on. Despite the immune system's complexity, researchers have started to make sense of how its components change with age. As the research progresses, scientists hope to bolster elderly people's response to infectious diseases and quiet the inflammation that can make aging a painful experience.     

Teaching social workers about microaggressions to enhance understanding of subtle racism

Understanding microaggressions can aid learners in exploring the complexity of contemporary racism. The concept of microaggressions refers to subtle acts of discrimination stemming from various individual and societal factors that combine to perpetuate often unintentional and unconscious acts of racism. Although much is known about microaggressions, there are few educational tools on the subject described in the literature, particularly within the field of social work. We have developed a workshop to be used with both social work students and professionals on how to recognize and interrupt microaggressions. The workshop content includes a biopsychosocial framework for understanding subtle racism.     

Visiting borders in education: A creative approach with children in primary education

This study engages with children sharing experiences of belonging at school, of receiving access and of exploring complex relationalities along shifting borders in educational spaces. Their understandings offer a magnifying glass on normativity, difference and social positions in school spaces. Through ‘flattening and folding’ with material and theoretical concepts, the authors map how qualitative data images made by children and theory constitute one another to make sense of complex relationalities discussed by children. The project desires to make sense of blurry borders that exclude children in educational contexts and to push borders in methods and ethics in research with children.     

Minding the gap: The construction of old age and oldness amongst peers

While ‘oldness’ is a state of being that people in Western cultures agree exists, and ‘old age’ is a category which is readily used in daily discourse and upon which decisions are made in daily life, what old age is and who is old nevertheless remain problematic categories. Social scientists have acknowledged such complexity and sought ways of framing old age that are flexible enough to take the heterogeneity of ageing into account. What has not been considered as closely however are intragenerational dynamics in the construction of old age. Based on ethnographic research on the experiences of ageing and selfhood in the north of England, and using a processual and interactive approach to self-making, I explore here criteria that older people employ to monitor and adjudicate on the manifestation of oldness in their peers, as well as the distinctions they make between ‘normal’ ageing and ‘real’ old age.     

The Case of Mitchell's Cube: Interactive and Reflexive Positioning During Collaborative Learning in Mathematics

Using positioning theory as a guiding framework, this qualitative research examined the experiences of students who appeared to be marginalized from collaborative learning in mathematics in a middle school setting. Positioning theory describes the discursive process whereby people are located in conversations as observably and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced story lines. Interactive positioning describes when one or more persons position another individual. Reflexive positioning describes the positioning of oneself. In this research, I examined instances of (mis)alignment between interactive and reflexive positioning during collaborative learning. Factors potentially contributing to (mis)alignment are considered as well as implications for students, learning, and instruction.     

The social construction of crises in governmental and corporate communications: An inter-organizational and inter-systemic analysis

The paper analyzes the interplay between governmental and corporate crisis communications and how this in turn might lead to institutional changes in the specific case of the financial crisis (2008). The theoretical framework and empirical illustration enriches crisis communication theory in three ways: firstly by documenting how political and economic actors make sense of the crisis in their crisis narrations; secondly by analyzing how they attribute responsibilities and define solutions and consequences, which finally lead their actions and institutional processes; thirdly by investigating how they do this in relation to the micro-level (individual), meso-level (organizational) and macro-level (societal). The study demonstrates that the financial crisis is mostly inter-systemically and inter-organizationally co-constructed and points to the need of a more complex Processional Crisis Communication Theory (PCCT).     

Designing ‘older’ rather than denying ageing: Problematizing anti-ageing discourse in relation to cosmetic surgery undertaken by older people

This paper problematizes anti-ageing discourse and interpretations that cosmetic surgery is an ageist practice and older people who undergo cosmetic surgery are denying ageing. It argues that conceptions of cosmetic surgery as anti-ageing are premised on an essentialist conception of the ‘naturally ageing body’. Interview data and media texts are used to demonstrate how, through the notion of “re” suggested by terms such as rejuvenation, reversal and renewal, anti-ageing discourses inscribe ‘ageing’ in the practice of cosmetic surgery by older people. The oppressive interpretation that older people who undergo cosmetic surgery are ‘denying ageing,’ and associated subjection to moral critique, are effects of this discourse. To counter interpretations of cosmetic surgery as ‘anti-ageing’, the paper takes up the idea that cosmetic surgery is undertaken to look better not younger. To advance this argument, the paper suggests that the forms of rationality associated with cosmetic surgery constitute a contemporary regimen of ‘care of the self’ which enable ethical agency and creative self-stylisation. Through this framework cosmetic surgery can be re-imagined as a practice for designing ‘older’ rather than denying ageing.     

Grandparents as childcare providers: An in-depth analysis of the case of Xiamen,China

Dominant research effort on older persons in China has focused on the impact of the fast-graying demography and the impending problem of supporting an ageing population. The ethnographic and survey results from this study show grandparents to be an integral part of the process of raising grandchildren and of family life in urban Xiamen. It is therefore, necessary to have a better knowledge of the lived experience of these grandparents. The choice theory framework posited by Goodfellow in assessing the levels of satisfaction of grandparents as regular childcare providers is used to examine the empirical data. Two out of the four dimensions in this framework have been found to have some relevance to the Chinese experience. It is suggested that future research fine tunes the theory by formulating new dimensions that emerge from indigenous Chinese empirical data.     

Social Work Sense and Sensibility: A Framework for Teaching an Integrated Perspective

The divisions between ‘micro practice’ and ‘macro practice’ are often traced to historical splits between the originating strands of the social work profession. These splits have been reified in social work education and in institutional settings that largely focus on particular aspects of practice. We argue that this split has been overly polarized and, more importantly, disregards the science and ethics of social work—what we call the sense and sensibility of the profession. Science requires that we recognize the complexity of human activity; ethics require that we alleviate individual suffering and work to attack its root causes. Social work sense and sensibility interweave expectations that practice, policy, theory and research understandings must all be informed by, and inform, ethical social work practice. This bridging framework can help educators respond to calls for connecting all levels and types of social work practice.     

Changes in the gender structure: Inequality at the individual,interactional, and macro dimensions

As a society, we've made tremendous progress toward gender equality over the past several decades. Yet there remains significant inequality between women and men. Furthermore, when we look closely at some of the progress made toward gender equality, we find it considerably less impressive than surface appearances. In this article, we review the updated framework of Risman's (2017) gender structure theory and argue that it can help us make sense of the progress we've made as well as analyzing inequality as it persists between women and men. Using gender structure theory, we then show how gender is simultaneously reproduced and contested across the individual, interactional, and macro levels of society within 3 major social domains: work, family, and gender identity.     

Toward a New Understanding of Ethnic‐Racial Settings for Ethnic‐Racial Identity Development

The purpose of this conceptual article is to advance theory and research on one critical aspect of the context of ethnic–racial identity (ERI) development: ethnic–racial settings, or the objective and subjective nature of group representation within an individual's context. We present a new conceptual framework that consists of four dimensions: (1) perspective (that settings can be understood in both objective and subjective terms); (2) differentiation (how groups are defined in a setting); (3) heterogeneity (the range of groups in a setting); and (4) proximity (the distance between the individual and the setting). Clarifying this complexity is crucial for advancing a more coherent understanding of how ethnic–racial settings are related to ERI development.     

Policing Social Media

Social media policing is composed of individual and institutional activity. Instead of supplanting conventional policing, individual users actually enhance its scope, and are often unwillingly enrolled in this process. This produces a visibility that combines the mandate and impunity of police scrutiny with the unique optics of everyday life. After proposing a theoretical framework to make sense of the sociological relevance of social media policing, I consider the response to the 2011 Vancouver riot as an exemplar of how police are adapting to the volume of information on sites such as Facebook.     

Creating SPOTs for Successful Aging: Strengthening the Case for Developing University-Based Retirement Communities Using Social-Physical Place Over Time Theory

Five elements are cited as being critical for a university-based retirement communities’ (UBRCs’) success: proximity to the university, two-directional programming, continuing care, a financial link to the university, and a minimum 10% resident connection to the university. We illustrate these criteria using examples from existing UBRCs. The comparisons are then contextualized in the broader framework of Social-Physical Place Over Time (SPOT) theory. SPOT theory focuses on the interactions between social and physical places among older adults. By analyzing the intersections between SPOT theory and UBRC criteria, we identify additional criteria to improve the definition of a UBRC: transportation support and facilitating activity. UBRCs offer value because they provide the social and physical place where older adults can live when they retire, thereby improving changes in individual agency and belongingness needs, which are key tenets of SPOT theory. The integration of the UBRC criteria and the SPOT theory framework builds on this relatively new meta-theory in environmental gerontology. SPOT theory effectively highlights how UBRCs benefit older adults and the community; UBRCs provide significant benefits not only to older adult residents, but also to the university communities that house them.     

Old age rational suicide

In the societal debate surrounding voluntary euthanasia or physician‐assisted suicide, there is a concern that older people will be left exposed to any legislation, subject to either faint suggestion or outright coercion from familial or professional carers. Whilst it is critical to take account of older people's potential vulnerability to any current or proposed assisted suicide legislation, there is a parallel strand of research exploring another relationship which older people can have with this debate: one of activism. Sociological research has shown that older people make up the “rank and file” of those active within the right‐to‐die movement. One of the stated motivations of some older people requesting hastened death has been that, in spite of an absence of life‐threatening disease, they feel “tired of life” or that they have lived a “completed life” and feel ready to die. The notion of suicide for reasons of longevity and being tired of life are becoming increasingly significant given the fact of global ageing. This article brings together empirical and theoretical research on the phenomenon of old age rational suicide in order to develop an underexplored area in both the sociology of death and the sociology of ageing.     

Advancing careers through ‘merit’: a rationalized-sensemaking narrative in hierarchical organizations

ABSTRACT

This contribution provides an in-context exploration of how middle-managers make sense of their career progress, and particularly focuses on ‘merit’ to understand how careers are driven in a hierarchical organization. The study exposes ‘merit’ as a fragmented and individualized construction that links back to the participants’ broader life ambitions and identity footprint. It also shows a tendency for maintaining trust in ‘merit’ above other circumstantial and opportunity factors, even in face of events which undermine the application of the merit-based principle. ‘Merit’ is hence portrayed to be a rationalized narrative in careers’ trajectory; a marker used by participants to make sense of events in a coherent manner, consequently experiencing self-efficacy and reducing uncertainty. The findings add complexity to the ‘meritocracy’ debate, calling for new critiques which address its underlying inequality dimension while also contemplating the individual psychological purpose driving ‘merit’ beliefs.