- Email: [email protected]
Authoring aging: Personal and social constructions
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Journal of Aging Studies 22 (2008) 163 – 168 www.elsevier.com/locate/jaging
Authoring aging: Personal and social constructions Chris Phillipson Centre for Social Gerontology, Keele University, Keele, Staffs, STB 5BG, England, United Kingdom Received 8 August 2007; received in revised form 11 October 2007; accepted 12 December 2007
Abstract The aim of this paper is to set out some of the context for the journey I have taken as a gerontologist, reflecting both on some of the decisive “turning points” and the links between personal and social constructions of aging. Along the way, the paper examines some questions about the relationship between analytical and biographical themes. The article reviews the various influences affecting my approach to issues about aging, and the contribution of these to my own thinking about critical gerontology. The latter I see as having a long gestation within my own maturing as a gerontologist, following engagement with debates in sociology and social policy. The article identifies a number of important actors and institutions that have shaped my understanding of the social, economic and political relationships underpinning old age. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Social gerontology; Marxism; Political economy; Aging and capitalism
Introduction Involvement in thinking about and writing about aging has taken-up much of the last 35 years of my life. My undergraduate thesis in sociology focused on the theme of old age, drawing on observations from voluntary work undertaken in a number of wards in a geriatric hospital (in Birmingham, England). My PhD examined the transition to retirement from a sociological perspective. For a brief period after my doctoral work, I did some data analysis arising from a national (United Kingdom) study of the psychology of twins. Thereafter, it was researching aging in some form or another for the next two or more decades. Indeed, looking back at my undergraduate thesis, many of the arguments rehearsed then are still echoing around in my head and have re-appeared in different ways over the course of a variety of projects. Thinking about aging has been a preoccupation for a E-mail address: [email protected]. 0890-4065/$ - see front matter © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jaging.2007.12.007
substantial portion of my life course. That presumably must be true for most dedicated gerontologists; indeed, for anyone attached to a research topic, the nature of the enquiry will almost certainly get under the person's skin for a major portion of his or her life. But reflecting on the “authoring” of my own aging has been a less insistent aspect, though it has become more apparent as my life course matures and enters new points of transition. My aim in this paper is to set out some of the context for the journey I have taken as a gerontologist, reflecting both on the decisive “turning points” and the links between personal and social constructions of aging. Along the way, and in the conclusion, I would like to explore questions about the relationship between analytical and biographical themes. In particular, does a “reflexive” turn become inevitable with the maturing of social gerontology as a “discipline” running together with that of the individual gerontologist? To what extent does this influence assumptions made about the discipline? In the context of critical gerontology, are clearer
164
C. Phillipson / Journal of Aging Studies 22 (2008) 163–168
links identified between political economy, humanistic and life course perspectives? The paper will examine these questions in the context of the major influences behind the construction of my own approaches to understanding later life. Political radicalism and aging My own entry into the field (as an undergraduate student), coming as it did in the early 1970s, was profoundly influenced by a political climate of Marxism and feminism. In the UK at least, these perspectives were rarely applied to the field of aging, although they were a major influence on the broad field of social policy. A considerable part of my time as an undergraduate was spent pursuing two main interests: Trotsky-inspired politics on the one side, and voluntary work in a geriatric hospital on the other. The influence of the former was to shape a perspective about the marginalisation or, as I termed it for my undergraduate thesis, the “warehousing” of elderly people until their eventual death. The origin of this early interest in aging is difficult to trace: older parents were certainly one possible factor — and the impact of my own father's fraught transition through retirement was certainly important. At the adolescent end of the life course, my own transition had its uncertainties as I drifted out of school before I was sixteen, spending a period of around three years as a farm worker in my native Cornwall. This activity had attractions but limited career prospects, although long periods of working alone ultimately proved good preparation for extended periods in the more comfortable surroundings of university libraries. Frustrated with rural activity, I returned to college and, in an intense period of study, gained sufficient exams to allow progression towards a degree. What kind of degree, though, still seemed unclear at this point. This was though the late 1960's, and the spirit of the times penetrated even the isolation of rural Cornwall. People — young people especially — seemed to be stirring and reinventing themselves in different ways. I became interested in the idea of voluntary work and applied to work for a London-based organisation called Community Service Volunteers (CSV). CSV sent people to various locations (hospitals, inner city communities, etc.) where they were given coordinating roles of various descriptions. I was sent (reflecting my interests at the time) to work in a large (around 900-bed) psychiatric hospital set in the countryside. The task, as I recall, was to encourage the local community to undertake voluntary work in the hospital and support its various activities. The hospital was styled on classic Goffman lines, with
relatively attractive “front” wards for patients with acute illnesses and much less desirable “back” wards to which long-stay patients (residents in many cases of twenty or thirty or more years) were consigned. These wards could only be reached after walking down long corridors, these still painted in the lime green that Victorians viewed as an appropriate colour for pacifying the insane. The timing (c.1968) of my arrival was perhaps unfortunate given my task. Psychiatry in the UK was undergoing radical challenge in the 1960s from the likes of R.D. Laing (The Divided Self, 1960) and David Cooper (The Death of the Family, 1971). Rather than seeing the disturbed patient as in the grip of an organically-based illness, radicals such as Laing and Cooper focused on what they viewed as a “diseased society,” which scapegoated certain individuals, assigning labels such “schizoprehenic.” This thesis had started to filter through even very isolated institutions, such as the one in which I worked. Indeed, my own first acquaintance with this approach was from an outpatient in the hospital who wandered up to me one day clutching The Dialectics of Liberation (1968), Cooper's edited collection of essays from the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation held in London in 1967. Given, as he noted, the arguments about the “victimisation” of people such as schizophrenics (of which he was apparently one), what exactly was my role as volunteer in the hospital? The question was a good one: if the “community” outside was having such a repressive role, what exactly was the argument for bringing it “inside” to help those it had punished in the first place? These were not dilemmas which someone rising twenty years of age could resolve. However, having discovered sociology (as with many others in the late 1960s and early 1970s), it did seem to me that there was the possibility of some insight into the issues. In 1970, I embarked on an undergraduate degree in sociology, with a year out in the middle to undertake community action to apply some of the insights from social research. In those four years, I probably crammed in more activity — reading, writing and arguing — than I had in the preceding sixteen. Along with intense academic study, it was a period of heavy political engagement, notably through a Trotskyist organisation called the International Marxist Group (IMG). The early 1970s was a time of major political struggle: internationally, the Vietnam war dominated (most weekends were taken up with demonstrations in London); domestically, there were significant industrial disputes such as the 1972 Miners' strike (where a major picket line was located close to Birmingham, where I was studying, and where the IMG had a continuous presence for a period of time). My degree was dominated by various shades of Marxist teaching
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(from Maoism to Leninism to Trotyskism). There was a lone functionalist on the staff who was tolerated but had little influence. Alongside the political activity, however, I resumed voluntary work, this time inside the local geriatric hospital. Again, the conditions inside were little better than those in the psychiatric hospital. Summerfield Hospital, as it was called, was a former Poor Law institution which had been serving the deserving and undeserving poor of Birmingham for 150 years or more. The social stigma attached to patients in a “geriatric hospital” seemed barely less than those experienced in the psychiatric hospital, and the conditions experienced by both reflected their lowly status. With the completion of my undergraduate thesis, entitled Old Age in Capitalist Society, I became attracted to the idea of further study focusing on aging. Here, I was fortunate with an application to Durham University for a postgraduate studentship for three years to support study for a PhD, with my research topic focusing on the transition to retirement. Researching aging Durham University had a Department of Sociology and Social Policy which I joined as a postgraduate student in 1974. Few members of staff had any particular interest in, or knowledge about aging; it was, however, an exciting place in which to develop my own work. I immediately joined a strong team of doctoral students, among which was a small group applying radical perspectives to social policy issues. Two of these — Chris Jones and Tony Novack — quickly became close friends, and we started producing a cyclostyled Bulletin of Social Policy, which contained our own early writings, as well as papers from other students. I also joined the Political Economy Group within the University led by the redoubtable (and brilliant) Gavin Williams (who later moved to St. Peter's College, Oxford), delivering my first paper on the “Political Economy of Old Age” in 1976. The Political Economy Group was an exciting forum, introducing me in particular to issues in the field of development studies, which was a particular concern for many in the group. Durham had a strong affiliation to work in southern Africa, with a number of its staff part of the exodus of intellectuals from the apartheid regime in South Africa. More generally, sociology at Durham reflected the changes affecting the discipline in the 1970s, with a range of theoretical orientations present among the staff, these stretching from Marxism to symbolic interactionism. The head of department, Philip Abrams, had a particular interest in historical sociology, but his work also covered an interest in the social structure of com-
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munity life, notably in relation to neighbouring and informal social ties. The combination of sociology and social policy was to prove important to me, with my own thesis spanning both disciplines in its approach to retirement. The study also reflected interests in the department, both in respect of the sociology of occupations (through the work of the industrial sociologist Richard Brown) and work in the community studies tradition (represented in Abrams' work on neighbouring and other research on mining communities in the North East of England) (Bulmer, 1986). My eventual thesis — The Experience of Retirement: A Sociological Analysis (1978) — was based upon nearly 100 interviews with four groups of retirees: residents of an inner-city community, miners, architects, and car workers. The thesis aimed to get a closer understanding of how the role of community and occupation influenced daily life and experiences in the move from work to retirement. Despite a highly supportive academic environment, the thesis was prepared in relative isolation from individuals or groups with a specialist interest in aging. It did, however, draw extensively on the North American literature, notably the work of Robert Atchley (The Sociology of Retirement, 1976); George Maddox (in particular his 1966 essay “Retirement as a Social Event”); Irving Rosow (The Social Integration of the Aged, 1967); and Streib and Schneider (Retirement in American Society, 1971). These works provided a theoretical basis for understanding retirement, one which was rather awkwardly linked in the thesis to ideas about alienated work and labour under capitalism. Completing the thesis was one thing, transposing it into book form (which I became intent on doing) quite another. My initial hope was that the 100 or so interviews could form the basis for a substantial monograph. This project did not get off the ground, although sections of the thesis and interviews were published in various truncated forms through the medium of book chapters. Instead, I was invited by Peter Leonard (then at Warwick University, subsequently to move to McGill University) to contribute a book on old age in his series Critical Texts in Social Work and the Social State. Peter proved a highly supportive editor, and writing the book was an opportunity to re-engage with thinking about aging in a way that seemed to have got lost in my thesis. One or two of the chapters of the book reflected work from the thesis, and I also plundered sections from the various interviews. But the aim of the book — written at a time of extensive cuts to the welfare state — was to demonstrate that a radical approach to issues relating to aging was important to consider — as important as those being adopted in relationship to feminism, ethnicity and
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social class more generally. Having completed the book in 1981, I was completely stuck for a title. Fortunately, help was at hand from the senior editor (a fellowTrotskyist) at Macmillan who published the series and helpfully suggested Capitalism and the Construction of Old Age. Although part of a debate on critical social welfare, Capitalism and the Construction of Old Age (1982) was somewhat detached from social gerontology itself and was again somewhat isolated from debates which were underway in North America. Two factors were to change this situation: first, sometime in 1981, almost certainly while my own book was in production, I was passed a copy of The Aging Enterprise (Estes, 1979). Peter Laslett, who had received a copy and had brought it to a committee meeting of the British Society of Gerontology, thought I would benefit from reading it. He was certainly correct on this score, and the book made a huge impression, not least for the way in which it combined a clear political analysis with a vision of social policy alternatives for older people. Second, I was invited, by Anne-Marie Guillemard, to a Round Table on Public Social Policies and Aging in Industrialized Countries, organised in Paris in July 1981. This proved to be a huge stroke of luck, with speakers including John Myles, Carroll Estes and Alan Walker. The purpose of the Round Table was to develop work around the “political economy of old age” and to examine “relationships between sociopolitical structures and the social organization of old age” (Guillemard, 1983:2). The resulting essays in the book from the Round Table (Old Age and the Welfare State, 1983), grouped together some of the writers who would contribute to the development of critical perspectives in gerontology. I was especially fortunate in meeting with Carroll Estes, who proved hugely enthusiastic and supportive. The link was revived just two years later at the 1985 Annual Conference of the British Society of Gerontology, held at Keele University. The organisers (which included myself, Frank Glendenning, Miriam Bernard and Patricia Strang) decided on an ambitious approach by inviting some major speakers from North America. Carroll, Maggie Kuhn and Gunnhild Hagestad were approached and, rather to our astonishment, all agreed to come. The resulting plenaries were highly significant in taking forward the British Society of Gerontology; more specifically, the joint session from Carroll and Maggie (to a packed auditorium comprising older people, volunteers and academics) proved a turning point for introducing critical perspectives about aging into the UK. Maggie herself contributed a Prologue — “Social and Political Goals for an Ageing Society,” and Carroll a major
chapter, “The Politics of Ageing in America” in the resulting book (Dependency and Interdependency in Old Age: Theoretical Perspectives and Policy Alternatives, 1986). Developing a research base Much of my work up to the early 1980s had been carried out somewhat on the margins of gerontological networks (as was probably the case for most UK researchers around that time). By 1980 I had been appointed to Keele as a contract researcher on a project evaluating the impact of pre-retirement education. During this research, which included some follow-on projects that stretched out for a good portion of the 80s, I started to develop stronger collaborative ties. The fruits of these included an edited collection of essays with Alan Walker, Ageing and Social Policy (1986). This volume, following on from the work of Carroll Estes in the Aging Enterprise, explored the extent to which dependency in later life could be seen as a socially rather than a biologically constructed status. We argued that aging may be seen as “primarily the product of a particular social division of labour rather than a natural concomitant of the ageing process…This is not to say that people do not grow old and suffer from disabilities, some of which might entail dependency, but rather, what we regard as old age is manufactured socially and [is] not a function of the biological process” (11–12). Although mainly comprising UK contributors, Ageing and Social Policy also included an essay by Joe Hendricks and Toni Calasanti on “Social Policy and Ageing in the United States” and one by Anne-Marie Guillemard on social policy for older people in France. Up to the end of the 1980s, it is probably fair to say that my own thinking about “critical gerontology” was still struggling to emerge. Much of my work remained in a fairly conventional sociological medium, and I was still trying to work out how to apply radical perspectives to the field of aging. The political context in the 80s was very difficult in the UK for undertaking research. The Conservative government at the time (with Margaret Thatcher at the helm) was intent on marginalising social research and sociological work in particular. Although it was a fairly productive time in the case of some aspects of my research, in terms of theoretical development, there was certainly a loss of momentum and uncertainty about how to move forward the arguments in earlier work. For a period, at the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s, I was immersed in setting up a new Centre for Social Gerontology (in 1987) and a new Department (of Applied Social Studies) in 1988. Both of these offered
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opportunities for making academic appointments in social gerontology, and the University proved supportive in accepting the case for expansion into this area. I was fortunate here to make appointments of a number of colleagues who have made very significant contributions to critical perspectives, in particular Miriam Bernard, Simon Biggs, Judith Phillips and Tom Scharf. An important external development to “kick-start” my own thinking came with the publication by Meredith Minkler and Carroll Estes Critical Perspectives on Aging: The Political and Moral Economy of Growing Old (1991). This identified, it seemed to me at the time, a framework for re-thinking my own approach to gerontology. What I took from the book was the possibility of underpinning political economy perspectives with a clearer analysis focusing on the role of the state, the influence of biomedicine, and the role of class, gender and race. An additional dimension to the book was the generational equity theme, important in the US during the 1980s, and one which had surfaced at various points in social policy in the UK during the Thatcher administrations. Writing about some of these issues took up some of my time during the 1990s, and an extended sabbatical allowed me to put some arguments together which appeared in Reconstructing Old Age (1998). This book drew upon critical gerontology but also attempted to link debates in this area with sociological theories about changes to modern life. What struck me in writing the book was the way in which critical perspectives had opened-out to embrace a range of different approaches. First, political economy and related strands had continued to develop, notably in areas applied to social policy. Second, research from the humanities was clearly a major stream in critical perspectives, reflected in work from Andrew Achenbaum, Thomas Cole and Harry Moody. Third, a further strand could be identified in respect to biographical and narrative perspectives on aging (reviewed in a 1986 essay by Ruth and Kenyon). The thesis of Reconstructing Old Age concerned the way in which this work was operating in a very different context, in particular with the move from what Lash and Urry (1987) viewed as the shift from “organized” to “disorganised” capitalism. This argument was linked to ideas about how aging was being transformed in the context of what Giddens (1991) referred to as the “crisisprone nature of late modernity.” The key element here was seen as the construction of later life as a period of potential choice on the one hand but also of risk and danger on the other. At an earlier phase of modernity, the institutions of the welfare state had attempted to “bracket out” some of the fundamental anxieties associated with aging. In late modernity, however, it had become less
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easy to place these to one side. Decisions, for example, about coping with particular forms of dependency are now individual decisions (part of the new politics of consumerism). The choices may indeed be limited, but increasingly they are thrust upon individuals and/or their informal carers. With the reconstruction of the welfare state, people are forced into making difficult choices and trade-offs in relation to questions such as the financing of their personal care in old age; where this takes place; and the nature of the person providing the service. Again, in relation to retirement as a whole, the scope for decisionmaking has been drastically widened, with a greater focus on individual responsibility around pensions. These developments, it was argued, suggest that older age has simultaneously become a major source of “risk” but also a potential source of “liberation.” Old age does or can threaten disaster in the form of poverty or severe illness, but it may also bring freedom from restrictive work and domestic roles. Riding the “juggernaut of old age” can now be seen as a central issue for individuals, society and the state. Developing critical gerontology Viewing my own work from a “critical” perspective, I would probably say that it is only until the mid/late1990s that I really started to develop a clear line of thinking about where my own perspective about critical gerontology was going. I was helped enormously in this by sessions at the annual conference of the Gerontology Society of America (GSA), where I had started to become a regular visitor (roughly from around the mid1990s). These stimulated me to work on aging as a global process (a theme which had started to emerge at the GSA), and to apply some of the research on globalisation which had developed in sociology and political science through the 1990s. This strand of work was to become a significant area of my research, both in respect to empirical work around transnational families and policy research around the role of International Governmental Organisations in shaping national agendas in social policy and aging. I had certainly begun to appreciate the evolution of a strong community of researchers working on very diverse themes within critical gerontology, notably areas such as self and identity in old age (e.g. in the work of Biggs and Hendricks); the construction of the life course (e.g. Dannefer); feminism and the state (Estes); aging and the body (Katz), and political economy and globalization (Vincent and Walker). The “critical gerontology” agenda seems to me wide open for further development, with new questions raised by the pressures associated with globalisation
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(Baars, Dannefer, Phillipson, & Walker, 2006). From my own perspective, the issues raised by a critical approach can be addressed in different ways. The framework offered by Marxism and related perspectives still has much to offer, notably in respect to providing a fuller understanding of the basis of inequality in old age and the impoverishment of daily life for many in the period known as retirement. On the other hand, critical gerontology has still some way to go before achieving the kind of social and political change advocated by Maggie Kuhn. Indeed, an “emancipatory gerontology,” which identifies issues of social transformation at the core of its work, is some distance from being achieved. Looking to the future, I am struck with the rather bleak thought that many of the broader aspirations among those driving the development of critical gerontology remain unfulfilled. Politically, the last two decades have been years of frustration and disappointment. Of course, the research enterprise studying aging has gathered speed, even though the resources — moral, cultural and economic — supporting older people have become ever more fragile (Minkler and Estes, 1999). At the same time, the cohort of researchers that elaborated critical gerontology is recognising more directly its own aging and potential frailties. All this underlines the case for a collective response to the economic, cultural and ethical issues raised by aging societies. In a world where rights have become fragmented and individualized, critical perspectives retain a vital role in challenging the numerous forms of exploitation and discrimination facing older people. The stakes are high, given the rise of powerful global actors. The case for developing critical gerontology continues to be strong, with the range of issues for analysis developing in new and unpredictable ways. References Atchley, R. (1976). The sociology of retirement. New York: John Wiley. Baars, J., Dannefer, D., Phillipson, C., & Walker, A. (Eds.) (2006). Aging, Globalization and Inequality. The new critical gerontology. New York: Baywood Publishing.
Bulmer, M. (1986). Neighbours: The work of Philip Abrams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cooper, D. (Ed.). (1968). The Dialects of Liberation. London: Penguin Books. Cooper, D. (1971). The death of the family. London: Allen Lane. Estes, C. (1979). The Aging Enterprise: A critical examination of social policies and services for the aged. San Fransisco: JoseyBass. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity. Cambridge: Policy Press. Guillemard, A. -M. (1983). Introduction. In A. -M. Guillemard (Ed.), Old Age and the Welfare State (pp. 3−18). London: Sage Books. Laing, R. D. (1960). The divided self. London: Tavistock Press. Lash, S., & Urry, J. (1987). The end of organised capitalism. Cambridge: Policy Press. Maddox, G. (1966). Retirements as a social event. In J. C. McKinney F.T. deVyver (Eds.), Aging and Social Policy. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Minkler, M., & Estes, C. (Eds.) (1991). Critical perspectives on aging: The political and moral economy of growing old. New York: Baywood Publishing Company. Minkler, M. & Estes, C. (Eds.). (1999). Critical gerontology: Perspectives from political and moral economy. New York: Baywood Publishing. Phillipson, C. 1978. The Experience of Retirement: A Sociological Analysis. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis. University of Durham. Phillipson, C. (1982). Capitalism and the construction of old age. London: Macmillan Press. Phillipson, C. (1998). Reconstructing old age. London: Sage Books. Phillipson, C., Bernard, M., & Strang, P. (1986). Dependency and interdependencies in old age: Theoretical perspectives and policy alternatives. London: Croom Helm. Phillipson, C. & Walker, A. (Eds.). (1986). Ageing and Social Policy. Aldershot: Gower. Rosow, I. (1967). The social interaction of the aged. New York: Free Press. Ruth, J. -E., & Kenyon, G. (1986). Introduction to special issue on ageing, biography and practice. Ageing and Society, 16, 653−658. Streib, G., & Schneider, C. J. (1971). Retirement in American Society. Cornell: Cornell University Press.
Journal of Aging Studies 22 (2008) 163 – 168 www.elsevier.com/locate/jaging
Authoring aging: Personal and social constructions Chris Phillipson Centre for Social Gerontology, Keele University, Keele, Staffs, STB 5BG, England, United Kingdom Received 8 August 2007; received in revised form 11 October 2007; accepted 12 December 2007
Abstract The aim of this paper is to set out some of the context for the journey I have taken as a gerontologist, reflecting both on some of the decisive “turning points” and the links between personal and social constructions of aging. Along the way, the paper examines some questions about the relationship between analytical and biographical themes. The article reviews the various influences affecting my approach to issues about aging, and the contribution of these to my own thinking about critical gerontology. The latter I see as having a long gestation within my own maturing as a gerontologist, following engagement with debates in sociology and social policy. The article identifies a number of important actors and institutions that have shaped my understanding of the social, economic and political relationships underpinning old age. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Social gerontology; Marxism; Political economy; Aging and capitalism
Introduction Involvement in thinking about and writing about aging has taken-up much of the last 35 years of my life. My undergraduate thesis in sociology focused on the theme of old age, drawing on observations from voluntary work undertaken in a number of wards in a geriatric hospital (in Birmingham, England). My PhD examined the transition to retirement from a sociological perspective. For a brief period after my doctoral work, I did some data analysis arising from a national (United Kingdom) study of the psychology of twins. Thereafter, it was researching aging in some form or another for the next two or more decades. Indeed, looking back at my undergraduate thesis, many of the arguments rehearsed then are still echoing around in my head and have re-appeared in different ways over the course of a variety of projects. Thinking about aging has been a preoccupation for a E-mail address: [email protected]. 0890-4065/$ - see front matter © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jaging.2007.12.007
substantial portion of my life course. That presumably must be true for most dedicated gerontologists; indeed, for anyone attached to a research topic, the nature of the enquiry will almost certainly get under the person's skin for a major portion of his or her life. But reflecting on the “authoring” of my own aging has been a less insistent aspect, though it has become more apparent as my life course matures and enters new points of transition. My aim in this paper is to set out some of the context for the journey I have taken as a gerontologist, reflecting both on the decisive “turning points” and the links between personal and social constructions of aging. Along the way, and in the conclusion, I would like to explore questions about the relationship between analytical and biographical themes. In particular, does a “reflexive” turn become inevitable with the maturing of social gerontology as a “discipline” running together with that of the individual gerontologist? To what extent does this influence assumptions made about the discipline? In the context of critical gerontology, are clearer
164
C. Phillipson / Journal of Aging Studies 22 (2008) 163–168
links identified between political economy, humanistic and life course perspectives? The paper will examine these questions in the context of the major influences behind the construction of my own approaches to understanding later life. Political radicalism and aging My own entry into the field (as an undergraduate student), coming as it did in the early 1970s, was profoundly influenced by a political climate of Marxism and feminism. In the UK at least, these perspectives were rarely applied to the field of aging, although they were a major influence on the broad field of social policy. A considerable part of my time as an undergraduate was spent pursuing two main interests: Trotsky-inspired politics on the one side, and voluntary work in a geriatric hospital on the other. The influence of the former was to shape a perspective about the marginalisation or, as I termed it for my undergraduate thesis, the “warehousing” of elderly people until their eventual death. The origin of this early interest in aging is difficult to trace: older parents were certainly one possible factor — and the impact of my own father's fraught transition through retirement was certainly important. At the adolescent end of the life course, my own transition had its uncertainties as I drifted out of school before I was sixteen, spending a period of around three years as a farm worker in my native Cornwall. This activity had attractions but limited career prospects, although long periods of working alone ultimately proved good preparation for extended periods in the more comfortable surroundings of university libraries. Frustrated with rural activity, I returned to college and, in an intense period of study, gained sufficient exams to allow progression towards a degree. What kind of degree, though, still seemed unclear at this point. This was though the late 1960's, and the spirit of the times penetrated even the isolation of rural Cornwall. People — young people especially — seemed to be stirring and reinventing themselves in different ways. I became interested in the idea of voluntary work and applied to work for a London-based organisation called Community Service Volunteers (CSV). CSV sent people to various locations (hospitals, inner city communities, etc.) where they were given coordinating roles of various descriptions. I was sent (reflecting my interests at the time) to work in a large (around 900-bed) psychiatric hospital set in the countryside. The task, as I recall, was to encourage the local community to undertake voluntary work in the hospital and support its various activities. The hospital was styled on classic Goffman lines, with
relatively attractive “front” wards for patients with acute illnesses and much less desirable “back” wards to which long-stay patients (residents in many cases of twenty or thirty or more years) were consigned. These wards could only be reached after walking down long corridors, these still painted in the lime green that Victorians viewed as an appropriate colour for pacifying the insane. The timing (c.1968) of my arrival was perhaps unfortunate given my task. Psychiatry in the UK was undergoing radical challenge in the 1960s from the likes of R.D. Laing (The Divided Self, 1960) and David Cooper (The Death of the Family, 1971). Rather than seeing the disturbed patient as in the grip of an organically-based illness, radicals such as Laing and Cooper focused on what they viewed as a “diseased society,” which scapegoated certain individuals, assigning labels such “schizoprehenic.” This thesis had started to filter through even very isolated institutions, such as the one in which I worked. Indeed, my own first acquaintance with this approach was from an outpatient in the hospital who wandered up to me one day clutching The Dialectics of Liberation (1968), Cooper's edited collection of essays from the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation held in London in 1967. Given, as he noted, the arguments about the “victimisation” of people such as schizophrenics (of which he was apparently one), what exactly was my role as volunteer in the hospital? The question was a good one: if the “community” outside was having such a repressive role, what exactly was the argument for bringing it “inside” to help those it had punished in the first place? These were not dilemmas which someone rising twenty years of age could resolve. However, having discovered sociology (as with many others in the late 1960s and early 1970s), it did seem to me that there was the possibility of some insight into the issues. In 1970, I embarked on an undergraduate degree in sociology, with a year out in the middle to undertake community action to apply some of the insights from social research. In those four years, I probably crammed in more activity — reading, writing and arguing — than I had in the preceding sixteen. Along with intense academic study, it was a period of heavy political engagement, notably through a Trotskyist organisation called the International Marxist Group (IMG). The early 1970s was a time of major political struggle: internationally, the Vietnam war dominated (most weekends were taken up with demonstrations in London); domestically, there were significant industrial disputes such as the 1972 Miners' strike (where a major picket line was located close to Birmingham, where I was studying, and where the IMG had a continuous presence for a period of time). My degree was dominated by various shades of Marxist teaching
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(from Maoism to Leninism to Trotyskism). There was a lone functionalist on the staff who was tolerated but had little influence. Alongside the political activity, however, I resumed voluntary work, this time inside the local geriatric hospital. Again, the conditions inside were little better than those in the psychiatric hospital. Summerfield Hospital, as it was called, was a former Poor Law institution which had been serving the deserving and undeserving poor of Birmingham for 150 years or more. The social stigma attached to patients in a “geriatric hospital” seemed barely less than those experienced in the psychiatric hospital, and the conditions experienced by both reflected their lowly status. With the completion of my undergraduate thesis, entitled Old Age in Capitalist Society, I became attracted to the idea of further study focusing on aging. Here, I was fortunate with an application to Durham University for a postgraduate studentship for three years to support study for a PhD, with my research topic focusing on the transition to retirement. Researching aging Durham University had a Department of Sociology and Social Policy which I joined as a postgraduate student in 1974. Few members of staff had any particular interest in, or knowledge about aging; it was, however, an exciting place in which to develop my own work. I immediately joined a strong team of doctoral students, among which was a small group applying radical perspectives to social policy issues. Two of these — Chris Jones and Tony Novack — quickly became close friends, and we started producing a cyclostyled Bulletin of Social Policy, which contained our own early writings, as well as papers from other students. I also joined the Political Economy Group within the University led by the redoubtable (and brilliant) Gavin Williams (who later moved to St. Peter's College, Oxford), delivering my first paper on the “Political Economy of Old Age” in 1976. The Political Economy Group was an exciting forum, introducing me in particular to issues in the field of development studies, which was a particular concern for many in the group. Durham had a strong affiliation to work in southern Africa, with a number of its staff part of the exodus of intellectuals from the apartheid regime in South Africa. More generally, sociology at Durham reflected the changes affecting the discipline in the 1970s, with a range of theoretical orientations present among the staff, these stretching from Marxism to symbolic interactionism. The head of department, Philip Abrams, had a particular interest in historical sociology, but his work also covered an interest in the social structure of com-
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munity life, notably in relation to neighbouring and informal social ties. The combination of sociology and social policy was to prove important to me, with my own thesis spanning both disciplines in its approach to retirement. The study also reflected interests in the department, both in respect of the sociology of occupations (through the work of the industrial sociologist Richard Brown) and work in the community studies tradition (represented in Abrams' work on neighbouring and other research on mining communities in the North East of England) (Bulmer, 1986). My eventual thesis — The Experience of Retirement: A Sociological Analysis (1978) — was based upon nearly 100 interviews with four groups of retirees: residents of an inner-city community, miners, architects, and car workers. The thesis aimed to get a closer understanding of how the role of community and occupation influenced daily life and experiences in the move from work to retirement. Despite a highly supportive academic environment, the thesis was prepared in relative isolation from individuals or groups with a specialist interest in aging. It did, however, draw extensively on the North American literature, notably the work of Robert Atchley (The Sociology of Retirement, 1976); George Maddox (in particular his 1966 essay “Retirement as a Social Event”); Irving Rosow (The Social Integration of the Aged, 1967); and Streib and Schneider (Retirement in American Society, 1971). These works provided a theoretical basis for understanding retirement, one which was rather awkwardly linked in the thesis to ideas about alienated work and labour under capitalism. Completing the thesis was one thing, transposing it into book form (which I became intent on doing) quite another. My initial hope was that the 100 or so interviews could form the basis for a substantial monograph. This project did not get off the ground, although sections of the thesis and interviews were published in various truncated forms through the medium of book chapters. Instead, I was invited by Peter Leonard (then at Warwick University, subsequently to move to McGill University) to contribute a book on old age in his series Critical Texts in Social Work and the Social State. Peter proved a highly supportive editor, and writing the book was an opportunity to re-engage with thinking about aging in a way that seemed to have got lost in my thesis. One or two of the chapters of the book reflected work from the thesis, and I also plundered sections from the various interviews. But the aim of the book — written at a time of extensive cuts to the welfare state — was to demonstrate that a radical approach to issues relating to aging was important to consider — as important as those being adopted in relationship to feminism, ethnicity and
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social class more generally. Having completed the book in 1981, I was completely stuck for a title. Fortunately, help was at hand from the senior editor (a fellowTrotskyist) at Macmillan who published the series and helpfully suggested Capitalism and the Construction of Old Age. Although part of a debate on critical social welfare, Capitalism and the Construction of Old Age (1982) was somewhat detached from social gerontology itself and was again somewhat isolated from debates which were underway in North America. Two factors were to change this situation: first, sometime in 1981, almost certainly while my own book was in production, I was passed a copy of The Aging Enterprise (Estes, 1979). Peter Laslett, who had received a copy and had brought it to a committee meeting of the British Society of Gerontology, thought I would benefit from reading it. He was certainly correct on this score, and the book made a huge impression, not least for the way in which it combined a clear political analysis with a vision of social policy alternatives for older people. Second, I was invited, by Anne-Marie Guillemard, to a Round Table on Public Social Policies and Aging in Industrialized Countries, organised in Paris in July 1981. This proved to be a huge stroke of luck, with speakers including John Myles, Carroll Estes and Alan Walker. The purpose of the Round Table was to develop work around the “political economy of old age” and to examine “relationships between sociopolitical structures and the social organization of old age” (Guillemard, 1983:2). The resulting essays in the book from the Round Table (Old Age and the Welfare State, 1983), grouped together some of the writers who would contribute to the development of critical perspectives in gerontology. I was especially fortunate in meeting with Carroll Estes, who proved hugely enthusiastic and supportive. The link was revived just two years later at the 1985 Annual Conference of the British Society of Gerontology, held at Keele University. The organisers (which included myself, Frank Glendenning, Miriam Bernard and Patricia Strang) decided on an ambitious approach by inviting some major speakers from North America. Carroll, Maggie Kuhn and Gunnhild Hagestad were approached and, rather to our astonishment, all agreed to come. The resulting plenaries were highly significant in taking forward the British Society of Gerontology; more specifically, the joint session from Carroll and Maggie (to a packed auditorium comprising older people, volunteers and academics) proved a turning point for introducing critical perspectives about aging into the UK. Maggie herself contributed a Prologue — “Social and Political Goals for an Ageing Society,” and Carroll a major
chapter, “The Politics of Ageing in America” in the resulting book (Dependency and Interdependency in Old Age: Theoretical Perspectives and Policy Alternatives, 1986). Developing a research base Much of my work up to the early 1980s had been carried out somewhat on the margins of gerontological networks (as was probably the case for most UK researchers around that time). By 1980 I had been appointed to Keele as a contract researcher on a project evaluating the impact of pre-retirement education. During this research, which included some follow-on projects that stretched out for a good portion of the 80s, I started to develop stronger collaborative ties. The fruits of these included an edited collection of essays with Alan Walker, Ageing and Social Policy (1986). This volume, following on from the work of Carroll Estes in the Aging Enterprise, explored the extent to which dependency in later life could be seen as a socially rather than a biologically constructed status. We argued that aging may be seen as “primarily the product of a particular social division of labour rather than a natural concomitant of the ageing process…This is not to say that people do not grow old and suffer from disabilities, some of which might entail dependency, but rather, what we regard as old age is manufactured socially and [is] not a function of the biological process” (11–12). Although mainly comprising UK contributors, Ageing and Social Policy also included an essay by Joe Hendricks and Toni Calasanti on “Social Policy and Ageing in the United States” and one by Anne-Marie Guillemard on social policy for older people in France. Up to the end of the 1980s, it is probably fair to say that my own thinking about “critical gerontology” was still struggling to emerge. Much of my work remained in a fairly conventional sociological medium, and I was still trying to work out how to apply radical perspectives to the field of aging. The political context in the 80s was very difficult in the UK for undertaking research. The Conservative government at the time (with Margaret Thatcher at the helm) was intent on marginalising social research and sociological work in particular. Although it was a fairly productive time in the case of some aspects of my research, in terms of theoretical development, there was certainly a loss of momentum and uncertainty about how to move forward the arguments in earlier work. For a period, at the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s, I was immersed in setting up a new Centre for Social Gerontology (in 1987) and a new Department (of Applied Social Studies) in 1988. Both of these offered
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opportunities for making academic appointments in social gerontology, and the University proved supportive in accepting the case for expansion into this area. I was fortunate here to make appointments of a number of colleagues who have made very significant contributions to critical perspectives, in particular Miriam Bernard, Simon Biggs, Judith Phillips and Tom Scharf. An important external development to “kick-start” my own thinking came with the publication by Meredith Minkler and Carroll Estes Critical Perspectives on Aging: The Political and Moral Economy of Growing Old (1991). This identified, it seemed to me at the time, a framework for re-thinking my own approach to gerontology. What I took from the book was the possibility of underpinning political economy perspectives with a clearer analysis focusing on the role of the state, the influence of biomedicine, and the role of class, gender and race. An additional dimension to the book was the generational equity theme, important in the US during the 1980s, and one which had surfaced at various points in social policy in the UK during the Thatcher administrations. Writing about some of these issues took up some of my time during the 1990s, and an extended sabbatical allowed me to put some arguments together which appeared in Reconstructing Old Age (1998). This book drew upon critical gerontology but also attempted to link debates in this area with sociological theories about changes to modern life. What struck me in writing the book was the way in which critical perspectives had opened-out to embrace a range of different approaches. First, political economy and related strands had continued to develop, notably in areas applied to social policy. Second, research from the humanities was clearly a major stream in critical perspectives, reflected in work from Andrew Achenbaum, Thomas Cole and Harry Moody. Third, a further strand could be identified in respect to biographical and narrative perspectives on aging (reviewed in a 1986 essay by Ruth and Kenyon). The thesis of Reconstructing Old Age concerned the way in which this work was operating in a very different context, in particular with the move from what Lash and Urry (1987) viewed as the shift from “organized” to “disorganised” capitalism. This argument was linked to ideas about how aging was being transformed in the context of what Giddens (1991) referred to as the “crisisprone nature of late modernity.” The key element here was seen as the construction of later life as a period of potential choice on the one hand but also of risk and danger on the other. At an earlier phase of modernity, the institutions of the welfare state had attempted to “bracket out” some of the fundamental anxieties associated with aging. In late modernity, however, it had become less
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easy to place these to one side. Decisions, for example, about coping with particular forms of dependency are now individual decisions (part of the new politics of consumerism). The choices may indeed be limited, but increasingly they are thrust upon individuals and/or their informal carers. With the reconstruction of the welfare state, people are forced into making difficult choices and trade-offs in relation to questions such as the financing of their personal care in old age; where this takes place; and the nature of the person providing the service. Again, in relation to retirement as a whole, the scope for decisionmaking has been drastically widened, with a greater focus on individual responsibility around pensions. These developments, it was argued, suggest that older age has simultaneously become a major source of “risk” but also a potential source of “liberation.” Old age does or can threaten disaster in the form of poverty or severe illness, but it may also bring freedom from restrictive work and domestic roles. Riding the “juggernaut of old age” can now be seen as a central issue for individuals, society and the state. Developing critical gerontology Viewing my own work from a “critical” perspective, I would probably say that it is only until the mid/late1990s that I really started to develop a clear line of thinking about where my own perspective about critical gerontology was going. I was helped enormously in this by sessions at the annual conference of the Gerontology Society of America (GSA), where I had started to become a regular visitor (roughly from around the mid1990s). These stimulated me to work on aging as a global process (a theme which had started to emerge at the GSA), and to apply some of the research on globalisation which had developed in sociology and political science through the 1990s. This strand of work was to become a significant area of my research, both in respect to empirical work around transnational families and policy research around the role of International Governmental Organisations in shaping national agendas in social policy and aging. I had certainly begun to appreciate the evolution of a strong community of researchers working on very diverse themes within critical gerontology, notably areas such as self and identity in old age (e.g. in the work of Biggs and Hendricks); the construction of the life course (e.g. Dannefer); feminism and the state (Estes); aging and the body (Katz), and political economy and globalization (Vincent and Walker). The “critical gerontology” agenda seems to me wide open for further development, with new questions raised by the pressures associated with globalisation
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(Baars, Dannefer, Phillipson, & Walker, 2006). From my own perspective, the issues raised by a critical approach can be addressed in different ways. The framework offered by Marxism and related perspectives still has much to offer, notably in respect to providing a fuller understanding of the basis of inequality in old age and the impoverishment of daily life for many in the period known as retirement. On the other hand, critical gerontology has still some way to go before achieving the kind of social and political change advocated by Maggie Kuhn. Indeed, an “emancipatory gerontology,” which identifies issues of social transformation at the core of its work, is some distance from being achieved. Looking to the future, I am struck with the rather bleak thought that many of the broader aspirations among those driving the development of critical gerontology remain unfulfilled. Politically, the last two decades have been years of frustration and disappointment. Of course, the research enterprise studying aging has gathered speed, even though the resources — moral, cultural and economic — supporting older people have become ever more fragile (Minkler and Estes, 1999). At the same time, the cohort of researchers that elaborated critical gerontology is recognising more directly its own aging and potential frailties. All this underlines the case for a collective response to the economic, cultural and ethical issues raised by aging societies. In a world where rights have become fragmented and individualized, critical perspectives retain a vital role in challenging the numerous forms of exploitation and discrimination facing older people. The stakes are high, given the rise of powerful global actors. The case for developing critical gerontology continues to be strong, with the range of issues for analysis developing in new and unpredictable ways. References Atchley, R. (1976). The sociology of retirement. New York: John Wiley. Baars, J., Dannefer, D., Phillipson, C., & Walker, A. (Eds.) (2006). Aging, Globalization and Inequality. The new critical gerontology. New York: Baywood Publishing.
Bulmer, M. (1986). Neighbours: The work of Philip Abrams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cooper, D. (Ed.). (1968). The Dialects of Liberation. London: Penguin Books. Cooper, D. (1971). The death of the family. London: Allen Lane. Estes, C. (1979). The Aging Enterprise: A critical examination of social policies and services for the aged. San Fransisco: JoseyBass. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity. Cambridge: Policy Press. Guillemard, A. -M. (1983). Introduction. In A. -M. Guillemard (Ed.), Old Age and the Welfare State (pp. 3−18). London: Sage Books. Laing, R. D. (1960). The divided self. London: Tavistock Press. Lash, S., & Urry, J. (1987). The end of organised capitalism. Cambridge: Policy Press. Maddox, G. (1966). Retirements as a social event. In J. C. McKinney F.T. deVyver (Eds.), Aging and Social Policy. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Minkler, M., & Estes, C. (Eds.) (1991). Critical perspectives on aging: The political and moral economy of growing old. New York: Baywood Publishing Company. Minkler, M. & Estes, C. (Eds.). (1999). Critical gerontology: Perspectives from political and moral economy. New York: Baywood Publishing. Phillipson, C. 1978. The Experience of Retirement: A Sociological Analysis. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis. University of Durham. Phillipson, C. (1982). Capitalism and the construction of old age. London: Macmillan Press. Phillipson, C. (1998). Reconstructing old age. London: Sage Books. Phillipson, C., Bernard, M., & Strang, P. (1986). Dependency and interdependencies in old age: Theoretical perspectives and policy alternatives. London: Croom Helm. Phillipson, C. & Walker, A. (Eds.). (1986). Ageing and Social Policy. Aldershot: Gower. Rosow, I. (1967). The social interaction of the aged. New York: Free Press. Ruth, J. -E., & Kenyon, G. (1986). Introduction to special issue on ageing, biography and practice. Ageing and Society, 16, 653−658. Streib, G., & Schneider, C. J. (1971). Retirement in American Society. Cornell: Cornell University Press.