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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Active and non-active agents
— residents' agency in assisted living | | Author(s) | Jari Pirhonen, Ileka Pietela |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 38, no 1, January 2018 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, January 2018 |
| Pages | pp 19-36 |
| Source | http://www.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Residents [care homes] ; Sheltered housing ; Consumer choice ; Quality of life ; Participant observation ; Qualitative Studies ; Finland. |
| Annotation | Culturally, institutional care has been seen to strip older people of their status as full adult members of society and turn them into 'have nots' in terms of agency. The substantial emphasis in gerontology of measuring older people's activity and functional ability has unintentionally fostered these stereotypes, as have traditional definitions of agency that emphasise individuals' choices and capacities. The aim of this paper is to discover what kind of opportunities to feel agentic exist for people who have reduced functional abilities and therefore reside in assisted living. In this paper, agency is approached empirically from the viewpoint of Finnish sheltered housing residents. The data were gathered using participant observation and thematic interviews. This study suggests that even people with substantial declines in their functional abilities may feel more or less agentic depending on their functional and material surroundings and the support they receive from the staff, relatives and other residents. The perception that residents' agency in assisted living cannot be reduced to measurable activity has methodological implications for gerontological research on agency. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-180105002 A |
| Classmark | KX: KLA: WYC: F:59: 3DB: 3DP: 76L |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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