“In the good old days”: Insidious nostalgia and the constitution of old age identity

Journal of Aging Studies 24 (2010) 248–256

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Journal of Aging Studies j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / j a g i n g

“In the good old days”: Insidious nostalgia and the constitution of old age identity Anna Sofia Lundgren ⁎ Centre for Population Studies/Ageing and Living Conditions Programme (ALC), Department of Culture and Media Studies, Umeå University, 901 87 Umeå, Sweden

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 19 August 2008 Received in revised form 6 March 2009 Accepted 6 April 2009

Keywords: Ageing Identity Constructions of old age Nostalgia Sweden

a b s t r a c t In this paper older people are studied through qualitative in-depth interviews regarding the constitution of identity. This is based on their participation in specific projects where they take part in schoolwork. The point of departure is that these more or less organised projects provide older people with a physical as well as a social space in which such a constitution can take place. Specific attention is not only directed toward the productive use of nostalgia, but also at the rhetorical use of already established subject positions drawn from the fields of production and reproduction, and from discourses on productive ageing and participation. The intersection of these discourses was not only found to be normative and excluding, but also liberating and a necessity. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction It has often been pointed out that the social category of “old age” is “a remarkably broad term” (Degnen, 2007:69), clustering together groups of people who have, perhaps until reaching the mysterious “old age,” even been categorised as antagonistic. One effect of this is that people designated as elderly do not always self-identify as old (Itzin, 1990; Lin, Hummert, & Harwood, 2004; Thompson, 1992). Although the need for more differentiated terms has led to several new terms that aim to distinguish between different categories of oldness (see Townsend, Godfrey, & Denby, 2006), many who are socially categorised as old still experience a need to articulate and negotiate the meanings of the ascribed identity. This paper is based on interviews with people who are active as class-grandparents where they are helping out in schools in numerous ways with children aged 6 to 12 years. My argument is that the class-grandparent practice, as well as telling about the experience, may be viewed as active attempts at creating and defining old age identities. My aim is to show how such attempts are intersected and conditioned by ⁎ Tel.: + 46 90 786 62 64; fax: + 46 90 786 78 45. E-mail address: annasofi[email protected]. 0890-4065/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jaging.2010.05.005

sometimes contrarious discourses (cf. Cole, 1992), and how the participants used different strategies in order to manoeuvre these and display intelligible identities. This is interesting partly because it sheds light on the way we are always both limited and enabled by cultural images and partly because it is important to understand how opposing discourses may intersect and undermine the apparent well-meaning of different articulative strategies. Some of the discourses, which occurred in the interviews, have been described many times before (see, for example, Cole, 1992) as have the problems with vague categorisations (Townsend et al., 2006) and the need to emphasise the agency of “old people” when it comes to constructions of “oldness” (Thompson, 1992). My main point, however, is that the vagueness of the category of “old age” in some respects might still serve a purpose in making possible the inclusion of different and possibly antagonistic identities, and keeping the category open for change while at the same time making it useful as a base for identity politics. Aims and methods The aim of the project has been to examine how people who have taken the position as class-grandparent, and who are ageing in an “active” and in many ways “productive” fashion,

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relate to different discourses on ageing and old age identities. The study employed a qualitative approach using in-depth, face-to-face interviews. Interviewees were selected in a nonrandom manner because the aims of the study did not require representativity. As a first step, schools in the County of Västerbotten, Sweden, were contacted in order to get in touch with interviewees with class-grandparent experiences — both elderly persons as well as teachers. After these interviews were carried out, snowball sampling was used, relying on referrals from initial subjects to generate additional subjects. Fifteen interviews with class-grandparents, ten women and five men, were conducted, and eight complementing interviews with teachers, seven women and one man, who had had classgrandparents working in “their” classes. The interviews lasted between 45 min and 2 h, and were conducted at the interviewees' homes, at the schools where they were active, or via email. All interviewees were, or had recently been, active as class-grandparents. Some of them had been working as teachers before they retired and had now returned to their former workplaces. A few had read about similar projects in the newspaper and then contacted a nearby school on their own initiative. Five of the interviewees were engaged in more organised projects. At the time of the interview, the participants had between 6 months and 7 years of experience. They all agreed to the interview, but while some found class-grandparenting to be an important research topic, others took a more low-key position, “I don't know if I have anything to say, to contribute…” or “I'm sure it's important, but you shouldn't get your hopes up because I don't know if I'm the right person to talk to.” The interviews were semi-structured and conducted within a fairly open framework in order to encourage flexible and conversational two-way communication. The interviewees were asked to relate to a set of themes. For example, they were all asked to describe how they first got in contact with the idea of becoming a class-grandparent, what they recalled their first impressions to be, and what their thoughts were on the broader meaning of the class-grandparent practice. The semi-structured interview technique allowed both interviewer and interviewee flexibility to probe for details or discuss issues that were initially not included in the framework. In order to analyse the material the analytical tools offered by discourse theory have been used, especially as it has been developed by Laclau and Mouffe (1985). This discourse theory, or theorisation of hegemony, contains three axioms about the world: (a) all objects and practices are meaningful, (b) their meaning is contextual and relational, and (c) objects and practices are contingently constructed. The discourse of discourse theory is considered to be an institutionalised way of thinking, affecting our views on all things. A discourse offers an understanding of a phenomenon (and a vocabulary to describe it) at the same time as it defines the limits of how the phenomenon can be understood. One example often referred to is the way guerrilla movements can be described as either “terrorists” or “freedom fighters,” depending on from within what discourse one is speaking. The concept of “subject position” is central to this theoretical perspective. According to Laclau and Mouffe (1985) discourses always specify certain positions for the subject to take and

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identify with. Certain expectations of how to act are attached to these positions. Every subject can take a multitude of different subject positions depending on the discursive context, but the subject can never be the origin of social relations. Nor can the various positions available to any given individual be totally fixed. Sometimes the subject positions that are available in a specific context are constructed as antagonistic, or conflicting, and it happens when different identities or discourses interfere with each other's existence (Laclau, 1990). Such antagonism might hinder, for example, an elderly woman to position herself, or to be positioned, as a leader in an organisation, because the subject position of “leader” is interfering with her subject position as an older woman. I have chosen to use the concept of subject position in order to show how different discourses have direct implications for the constitution of the subject — for what a person can become. Laclau and Mouffe (1985:105) describe how a contingent construction of the world and its subject positions are carried out by constant articulations of different positions or signs into logics of equivalence and difference. Articulation here refers to any practice “establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice.” For example, it is possible to say that there are cultural connections between “elderly,” “weak” and “dependent” (and other things), but also between “elderly,” “experienced” and “wisdom” (and other things). In both cases it is possible to understand “elderly” as a nodal point, a privileged signifier that temporarily fixes the meaning of the signifying chain. Every utterance (spoken, written or otherwise communicated) where such a logic of equivalence is constructed can be viewed as an attempt to “arrest the flow of differences” (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985:112). How such logics are constructed as hegemonic in different contexts is important to examine, because they both delimit and enable possible identifications — in this case, for people defining themselves as old enough to fill the position as “grandparent.” This is important, among other things, because reforms and policies, as well as self-images and self-understandings, always work on the supposition of such identities. The focus on processes that this theoretical framework offers has been combined with the theories of Judith Butler (1990; 1993), who drew attention to the everyday (re) makings of meanings and identities; to the performativity that is to be found as an aspect of all (in her case, specifically gendered) identities. Both these perspectives put power relations at the core of analysis, trying to show how the constitution of subject positions for elders is not only a neverending process that depends on a multitude of discourses, and is constantly being re-negotiated (Coupland & Coupland 1994; Lin, Hummert, & Harwood, 2004). It is also a process that negotiates intelligibility as well as the discursive limits that are imposed in the articulation of a collective identity. The concept of performativity reinforces the three axioms of discourse theory, and puts a focus on the productiveness of language, as well as on the relations between practices and effects. Viewing what was said in the interviews as performative meant that I analysed it as ongoing fixations of meaning and as verbalisations that took part in the constitution of subject positions — not just as attempts to mirror “reality.” Thus, the interviews became in and of themselves important

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arenas of subject-constitution, not just moments of reflecting on a process that went on elsewhere. In praxis, discourse analysis was carried out by listening to the audio-recorded interviews and reading the transcripts in order to identify discourses on old age in the accounts. I then tried to answer questions such as: “What subject positions are being constructed here?,” and “What discourses make these positions comprehensible?” I also tried to identify discourses that were not spoken, but that seemed to constitute some sort of underlying idea. For example, in the interviewees' accounts of experiences as class-grandparents it was almost always possible to detect an underlying discourse on old age equated with decline, withdrawal and loss. This underlying discourse was sometimes present in just a single word, suggesting that things could very well be different: “I'm still fairly active… knock, knock,”1 “Well, I'm actually quite well and alive” or “I don't think that I'm a typical retiree. I'm much more outgoing and interested, I think.” The use of “still,” “knock, knock” and “actually” suggests that there are other, perhaps expected, possibilities, whereas the last quote is quite explicit in stating that being outgoing and interested is atypical. None of the interviewees took this discourse, and the victimised position potentially resulting from it, as a startingpoint for their own identity-constructions. Rather, they all primarily positioned themselves as modern agents, as free individuals, in authority and freely choosing their own ways of life. To distinguish themselves from the identities offered by a discourse on ageing as decline, withdrawal and loss, the interviewees also took up alternative discourses. I will begin by describing how the interviewees used different strategies when trying to explain the importance, and their experiences, of the class-grandparent practice. Apart from the mentioned discourse on decline, withdrawal and loss, four different discourses were particularly prominent in the interviews. I will describe how discourses related to nostalgia, reproduction, production, and participation were employed. I will also explain the effects of these discourses — the subject positions that became available for the interviewees. Finally, I will discuss the images of old age identities that were produced in the interviews, and how these competing images can be understood as both antagonistic and necessary. Positionings: strategies for cultural intelligibility “In the case of older people, ‘identity problems’ have always been a significant concern in societies where issues relating to production and reproduction have traditionally been central both to the social order and to the individual's identity within it,” wrote Phillipson and Biggs (1998:15). One ubiquitous discourse on old age emphasises bereavement and loss in these arenas as people retire from work (production) and hold a more marginal place in reproduction, interpreted as material consumption as well as family responsibilities. This discourse has been widely used and reproduced both within gerontology and in everyday-interactions. In a Swedish context it is important to stress how it has also 1 “knock, knock” was referring to the expression “knock on wood” and used in the hope that the level of activity would continue to occur after it had been acknowledged.

been present as “a threat” in the construction of the antiageist perspective of the senior rights movement during the 1980s and 1990s (Jönson, 2005:300). It has been suggested that, in response to circumstances where cultural recognition and cultural continuity is something that do not happen by themselves, individual actors will attempt to find or create spaces that lend some form of predictability to life (Biggs, 1993; Phillipson & Biggs, 1998). In light of the present study, it might be added that such attempts can also comprise the very constitution of arenas for the exercise of agency, and of positions from which an individual subject may speak and be recognised. Volunteer work in school was sometimes explicitly described as one way to do this, and in the interviews with class-grandparents it was possible to detect how the experience of this activity was actually described as producing positive old age identities as one of its main effects. The creation of such spaces from which to obtain a recognised position was not, however, unproblematic. Rather, the interviewees often expressed a need to explain and motivate their participation, both as class-grandparents and as participants of this study; they repeatedly seemed to relate and react to discourses that questioned their assistance. In doing so, the above-mentioned arenas of “production” and “reproduction” frequently recurred as did ideas of participation, together with nostalgic notions of the past. These arenas were used as resources from which it was possible to extract meaning for the identity as old as well as for the classgrandparent practice. Nostalgia — insidious positions between experience and retrogression In the interviewees' accounts of their class-grandparent experiences, they often referred to their accumulation of life experiences. Accounts of “how it was” were used to explain their view on today's society, and even though not all references to the past were nostalgic, it was obvious that nostalgia was something that the interviewees related to. But nostalgia is difficult to grasp; it might be said to expose a fundamental ambivalence, implying as it does a longing for an idealised past and a concurrent awareness of the impossibility to “go back” (Boym, 2001). Nostalgia was sometimes present as restorative nostalgia, an attempt at reconstructing a lost past or condition. Other times it was possible to view it solely as reflective nostalgia, a thriving in the distressing longing itself, referring perhaps to existential, yearning feelings of loss and uncertainty (cf. Boym, 2001). Both of these two aspects were thus present, but seldom in any pure form. Primarily, references to the past were used as a strategy, or mode, to express certain opinions, feelings, and expressions of both self and society by way of comparison. Regardless of how, the use of nostalgic references made it easier to say things that could otherwise have been questioned. You're not supposed to say that everything was better before, are you, but I sometimes wonder if it wasn't. I mean, when I was young — we looked after one another, and in school… you wouldn't dare speak those words that you hear from the youth of today. There was more respect in the old days. I don't know if my presence can make that

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happen again, but I think that it's important to remember how it was because there were some good things and it breaks my heart that they are not remembered. I think of that a lot, about the feelings of security that I think we've lost, although going back is perhaps not exactly… no that's not what I want. Here, the interviewee's memories of the past are compared with her experiences of the present. She selects pieces of the past and sees them through rather rose-coloured glasses. The comparison between past and present makes it clear that even though she declares that “going back” is not what she wants, she still has some aspirations of restoration. But we also learn about how the losses and forgetting are breaking her heart, and that she thinks of them quite a bit. Here, we can see how reflective nostalgia makes what is said very personal and emotional, and thus more difficult to argue against. Most of the interviewees were very vague when it came to specifying their ideas of the past. This vagueness revealed a contingency that made up a discourse on “the old days.” By not being specific as to what “the old days” and, for example, “respect” really meant, the interviewee above managed to attract and include persons who would define the terms, and their potential political implications, in opposite ways. One class-grandfather said that today “we've lost the structure, the awareness that if you do something [in the class-room] you have to take responsibility and face the consequences.” A class-grandmother said: “there's a loss of structure, I think, a loss of security in school.” Here, the loss of structure is an idea that unites the two, despite the signs that their definitions of “structure” differ. Viewing nostalgia as practice — an actual doing — shows nostalgia as a performative that works on (at least) two levels. Firstly, by using a nostalgic discourse (for example, when the interviewee above mentions the idea of a supposedly “better past”) the possibility of a notion where the social development is one of deterioration is reproduced. Secondly, by thinking of this use of the past in terms of performativity, we also have to recognise that what happens in such a speech act, where the past is nostalgically emphasised at the expense of qualities in the present, is the simultaneous constitution of the speaking subject. The speaker is positioned by the discourse that she evokes; giving a nostalgic account was to be nostalgic. Acting out nostalgia was thus a practice that seemed fundamentally related to the identity of the subject, not only for what it made possible to say, but because nostalgia itself did something — it had real effects. Being older persons and being nostalgic meant that the interviewees thereby performed an established stereotype. Hazan (1994) wrote how one of the most deeply rooted stereotypes of the aged is that they are inflexible, conservative and resistant to change, and that they “dwell on and draw their life meaning from the past” (Hazan, 1994:31). In the interviews this stereotype was repeatedly mentioned and fended off. The understanding of old people as less modern seemed to bereave the speaker performing a nostalgic speech act of political significance, and both the speaker and the spoken message risked becoming marginalised, something that many of the interviewees seemed to be aware of. “Oh, I really sound like a very old woman,” one woman said about her own nostalgic account,

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thereby reflexively commenting upon the connection between nostalgia and (gendered) old age identities. This comment was perhaps necessary in order for her not to look ignorant of the associations of her statement and thus risking to become “a very old woman” in the eyes of others (the interviewer). However, at the same time her comment was letting the connection downplay the significance of what she had just said. But does nostalgia have to be apolitical? Do politics and emotions, nostalgia and its connections to pre-modernity, necessarily describe a given dichotomy? Viewing the nostalgic speech acts in the interviews it is possible to see how nostalgia worked as a double-edged sword. It seemed to be an emotional antidote to politics, as Boym (2001) has pointed out, but — perhaps for this very reason — it remained an effective political tool. The very poetics and the relative emptiness of nostalgic expressions reach out to a lot of people by not being specific and by appealing to the feelings of the listeners, and not primarily to their intellect. References to “how it was” positioned the speaker as a person with experience of and knowledge about this period of time, a position that rendered the speaker authority as an older person. Being positioned as an experienced and even authoritative person was therefore another possible effect of nostalgic speech acts. Such a position was also supported by the interviewed teachers and thereby further emphasised. It was thus not surprising that in one informal conversation in the school-yard, the pupils also talked about class-grandparents in general as “wise,” but lacking knowledge about “modern things.” But the position as experienced and knowledgeable was insidious. If the references to a supposedly better past were explicitly called nostalgic, the position could easily be deemed retrogressive, and negative old age stereotypes be enforced. Reproduction — gendered genealogical positions of continuity I'm their granny, ehh, symbolically. Another commonly occurring way to explain the identity as an older person in school was to relate it to family and to a reproductively valid position. This position was sometimes ideologically closely connected to communitarian ideals, but by locating the source of it in the past, it was nostalgically made harmless. I have grandchildren of my own, but I also feel I have something to offer children who don't have grannies of their own. It's not like I feel for all kids the same way as for my own grandchildren, that's different, but as an elderly woman I still… I think I can still fill the position in some way. We all need the connection, you know, to feel that you're part of something bigger, and I feel I can be that connection for a lot of kids. Like family for them. […] I often think about how it used to be in the old days when all grown-ups took responsibility for all children. I think that's a good thing in a way, and just thinking about it and the fact that we have lost it makes my eyes fill with tears. But that's how it is, that's the course of history I guess. Family was often extended beyond blood relations even though the interviewee above clearly marked a difference —

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not doing so would possibly have made her appear suspicious considering the dominating discourses on gender and family ties from which she probably drew personal identity. She formulated her motives for taking part in the project in the same way as many other participants, because she explicitly emphasised the position as granny in its most literal sense — as an older woman she felt that she had something to offer children who did not have grandparents of their own. In doing this she confirmed the catch-phrase described on the website of one of the larger class-grandfather associations in Sweden: “All children are our children.”2 What was often on offer was a connection with “something bigger.” This “something bigger” seemed to specifically comprise family bonds and the passing of generations. The interviewee above, as did many others, referred to an imprecise “the old days” when “all grown-ups took responsibility for all children.” Again we are dealing with clear constructions of these “old days,” and it is possible to see how nostalgia is used not to make statements as to how exactly we should organise social life, but rather reflectively, as a way to dwell in an emotion (“we have lost it,” “eyes fill with tears”) awakened by unspecified allusions to another time. The last sentence also shows how the interviewee surrenders to what she perceives as inevitable: “that's how it is, that's the course of history, I guess.” This articulation of class-grandparent experiences and motives together with a family-connoting vocabulary reappears in the choice of the name — class-grandfather or classgrandmother. Studies have shown that at least in Western countries the grandparent role is often vague, with few explicit norms, and often associated with stereotypical images of older people (Gauthier, 2002; Retzes & Mutran, 2004; Silverstein, Giarrusso, & Bengtson, 1998). But still the genealogical associations of the name instil a reproductively comprehensible position for people — both older and younger — that takes part in these kinds of projects and practices. A name contains an important message about the practice in question, and even though the name is probably chosen with a certain amount of humour, and although no persons who are not actual grandparents would probably ever be denied taking part, it still performatively reiterates the centrality of family-connoting subject positions. To enter a position denominated as “grandparent,” is also to enter an explicit “age role” (Kaufmann & Elder, 2003; Riely, Foner & Waring, 1988). For the classgrandparents this constituted an antagonism between the activity that the class-grandparent practice implied on the one hand, and the stereotypical notions of passivity that were connected to old age on the other. It was obvious, if not completely surprising, that it was only female interviewees who stressed how their presence in school was important because of the way they filled a supposed gap in the pupils' lives. It was only women (but not all women) who emphasised the practice of being a classgrandparent as a family-related position. This hints, of course, to the gendered availability of this genealogical discourse where grandparenthood has often been constructed as 2

It was obvious that some of the class-grandparents were influenced by the rhetoric on project websites and in project plans. However, these in turn reflect an idea that is to be found also outside these projects. Also, the majority of the interviewees did not take part of any organised projects, but had initiated their participation themselves, or had been contacted by former teacher colleagues.

“feminised” (Mann, 2007:282), as well as to the different conditions for existing as (older) men and women. Production — positions as useful citizens

It's the best job I ever had. The articulated reasons behind more organised classgrandparent projects as they are described on websites and in information sheets sometimes hint at a situation of unemployment, thus constituting the position as class-grandparent as comprehensible from a perspective on production. This economic discourse often recurred in the interviewees' accounts. I feel that I am needed, and it feels good to give something to society. Too many [older persons] feel lonely and they get sick… Then it's better to do this, to have something to do, and to contribute to society. A discourse on productive ageing (Butler & Gleason, 1985; Morrow-Howell, Hinterlong, & Sherraden, 2001) is present here, as are the logics of a discourse on successful ageing as formulated by Rowe and Kahn (1997). To “give something to society” and to “contribute to society” are central expressions in the quote. The statement that “too many feel lonely and they get sick” together with the indication that this could be remedied by having something to do suggests a view on the class-grandparent practice as an exchange where all parties gain something. This helps me stay young! Young at mind as well as physically. And that's a way to help [society] too I think, isn't it? I'm thinking of all the costs, you see! This understanding rests on an extension of the more narrow use of “productivity” as relating to production and the economy to also include contributions in the domains of social and moral economy (Narushima, 2005; Warburton & McLaughlin, 2005). To be productive is interpreted not just as producing something (help in schools), but also as not being a burden to the economic system (by keeping healthy). Although important, these contributions are often invisible in the economic calculations (Cruikshank, 2003:25). Stressing economic effects and effects on one's well-being when talking about the class-grandparent experience, made a more gender neutral alternative than the genealogical discourse (i.e., less connected to femininity) and was thus, an alternative that was more available for men. Being the “breadwinner” is central to masculine family-related identities, as theories of masculinity have often pointed out (Connell, 2005). However, after reaching retirement age masculine identities are often slightly redirected, drawing instead on “activity” and “doing something useful” (Davidson, Daly, & Arber, 2003:84; see also Mann, 2007:282). It's important to do right if you wanna be a proper human being. That's how it was before, in the good old days, and that's important to hold on to I think. You have to do something! The practice of being a class-grandparent was often justified as proof of an active and productive lifestyle. But to “do right”

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(contribute), or just to “do something” (be active), were not described as neutral acts. As we can see in the above quote, both right-doing and doing something were described as required in order to become “a proper human being.” By taking a classgrandparent position, the interviewee can thereby be seen as constructing himself as a morally righteous person, at the same time as he is indirectly countering any discourses that would depict older people as lazy and unproductive. Working as a class-grandparent was considered as such an act that qualified him as “a proper human being,” and it was further legitimised by vague references to “how it was before” in “the good old days.” While some of the interviewees seemed to take as a starting-point that volunteer work was an entirely good and altruistic thing, others were aware of the critique that has been levelled against the effects of volunteer work. One such critique that has been recognised lately is the way contemporary governments have been taking an interest in the potential economic benefits by cutting back resources (cf. Warburton & McLaughlin, 2005). Around the time of the interviews, labour unions in Sweden levelled criticism against volunteer workers for causing an arduous work situation for the employees, especially within the public geriatric care system (cf. Flytström, 2007). In order to counter the subject positions offered by this critical discourse, and at the same time avoid creating an antagonistic relation between themselves and the teachers, the interviewees sometimes seemed to downplay their importance: “I don't think we steal anybody's job, it's not like we are not indispensable.” On project websites this potential critique is also often countered in advance. It is the social rather than the pedagogical responsibility that is emphasised, and it is repeatedly mentioned that class-grandparents are in school for the sake of the children, and that they are not competing with other occupational groups such as the teachers. The same argument appeared in the interviews: It's important to stress that we are not teachers. We don't have any pedagogical responsibility. We're just being there, being… ourselves! […] I'm no privileged old lady that commit to charity work because I have nothing better to do. I do this because there's a need, and if I didn't do it nobody would. There is no money for it! In this quote the interviewee is first countering the potential critical discourse by stressing her lack of pedagogical responsibility. But she is also using a discourse on anti-ageism (or is it a gendered social classism?), thereby effectively countering any ideas that she is only doing it for her own sake. At the end of the quote it is the logics of an economical discourse that finally gets to define the situation. Participation — positions of active agency The word participation is often pointed out as important when it comes to describing what constitutes well-being in general. It has been shown to lower mortality and to promote both physical and emotional well-being (Glass, Mednes de Leon, Marottoli, & Berkman, 1999; Lennartsson & Silverstein, 2001). Neither participation nor well-being is, however,

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easily defined. Because they connote positive things, they have both been labelled “hurrah” words — very positive, but also very broad (Dinham, 2006). In the interviews, the gains of participation were often described in terms of age: It's a good thing to get out and meet people! Both in order to help out, but also just to meet people. It makes you younger. Involvement with others — yes, the very exposure to others — might be said to condition the possibility to give an account of, and thus to become, oneself. This was also true for the way the interviewees talked about participation: … as long as I'm doing this, at least I know that I mean something! I get to feel that I am someone. That becomes very obvious when I'm in school. To mean something and to be someone were expressions that the interviewees closely tied to the recounted participation in schoolwork. Participation in social life was experienced as central to the sense of self, and to self-esteem, in accordance with scientific discourses on the topic. The word participation was almost always used to contradict the sometimes implicit discourse on old age as a period of loneliness, decline and withdrawal. Sitting at home alone — that's not living! I can't understand people that don't get out! But everybody can't, I guess. It's not easy to get old, sometimes. Well, to work like this is a way to participate, and not… You might think that older people should recede, but I don't think… It's important for older people to keep being a part of it all! We have a lot to give, but more importantly, we need to get what we get when we participate. It's about not letting retirement age stop you from living… Not that people that don't do as I do don't live, but you know what I mean… Improving intergenerational relationships has elsewhere been described as a cost-effective strategy, not only as a way to meet community needs, but also because it helps redefine the role of elders (Henkin & Kingston, 1999; Warburton & McLaughlin, 2005). In trying to make sense of their own lives and choices, their own identities as seniors, the interviewees struggled with the sometimes opposing discourses on old age. In the quotes above, participation is equated with “living,” a metaphor that is very strong. This tells us something about the centrality of social relations for the idea of being a human, but it also reveals the construction of a limit. Such limits must be noted because the consequences of exceeding them may be severe, for example, when care staff stop viewing those under their care as human. However, ideals of participation were constantly contrasted with discourses that nursed the ones whose lives could not be defined as participating or active (e.g., discourses on equality regarding dignity and rights, discourses where pension is regarded a well-deserved period of rest). But there was always a clear distinction between the “I” who did participate, and the “others” who did not. Entering the subject position of an active and participating older person thus served not only to create a

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distinction between different categories of old people, but also to emphasise ones own position as culturally approved and not stereotypically old. In the rhetorical realm of the interviews, participation was also a central tool in the constitution of the subject as a human being.3 Completing remarks: possibilities of self-understanding The interviewees in this study can all be said to occupy ageless positions (Twigg, 2007; Townsend et al., 2006; Andrews, 1999), because they resisted the narrow cultural definitions implicit in the discourses that assign to older persons more sedentary, passive qualities. At the same time, however, they all positioned themselves as elders; it was the fact that they were old that guaranteed them access to the quality that was most often emphasised in the interviews — life experience. Implementing the idea of “important knowledge” in their recounts (something that was supposedly practised before, but is now thought of as being about to be forgotten) made the interviewees come forth as mediators of this knowledge; it enabled a position as experienced and knowledgeable. There is of course nothing new or modern about this idea in itself, but put to work in this context it nevertheless revealed a rather modern belief in the existence of true knowledge and stable subjects, and it emphasised the importance of knowing one's origins. Keeping this knowledge alive was described as a very important task, the alternative being decay into post-modern uncertainty. Using reflective nostalgia when describing this “important knowledge” made it possible to stop and dwell in the consensus of the nostalgic feeling, thus avoiding going into exactly what this knowledge consisted of. The effect, however, was the constitution of an aged subject position pervaded by political significance and social importance. It is possible to see how nostalgia was part of an identity politics pursued while occupying the position as an older person. Nostalgia could here be said to make this position possible as long as nostalgia was conducted in a specific way. It was necessary that the nostalgic feeling was something that was on offer (an offer of shared feelings and mutual understandings) and/or lent authority to the speaker. If nostalgia was instead interpreted as an adjective describing the speaking subject it instantly risked becoming a threat to the aimed at position as an active older person, rendering it old-fashioned or retrogressive. Even though age has been suggested here as the nodal point of the class-grandparents' identities, perhaps conjuring misleadingly an image of old age as a homogenous category, other aspects were also present. When gender was discussed, masculinity was explicitly referred to as the most important quality. This standpoint was motivated by a supposed feminisation of the teaching profession. As femininity was not 3 Sometimes nostalgia was used in the accounts of participation. When this happened it was often in order to emphasise the idea that “in the old days” elderly people were more integrated in society, and how the old and their experiences were then also much more respected. This stand conflicts with how the past has been used previously by the senior rights movement in Sweden. As Jönson (2005:299) has described, the radical perspective of the 1940s, as well as the People's Home perspective of the 1940s–1970s, provided images where the past was primarily depicted as a difficult period for the old.

suggested as a requested quality in itself, female class-grandparents had to repeat other discourses in order to appear “important.” The most frequent choice regarded the position as a caring grandparent — it was only women who referred to the genealogical aspects of the class-grandparent practice, stressing the idea that many children are missing out on contact with grandparents today. This tells us something about how, as McMullin and Berger (2006) pointed out, although much has changed in recent decades, dominant middle-class ideologies still suggest that men should be responsible as the breadwinner and women should be responsible for domestic labour, and it indicates perhaps that women tend to construct meaning around reproduction to a higher degree than do men (at least when it comes to doing it explicitly). But it also, and perhaps more importantly, tells us something about the conditions for existing and talking as older women and men. What is also interesting to mention is that the interviewees all spoke from within the norm of a white Swedishness. When and if other ethnic groups were mentioned, they were used to describe the need for multiple role models supposedly needed in the more heterogeneous Swedish society of today. Sometimes the opposite argumentation was also used. Older people with different ethnic backgrounds were supposed to learn and to gain from the experience of visiting Swedish schools because it would help them to take part in Swedish social life. In this paper, the class-grandparent practice and the interviews in which arguments and experiences were verbalised have been analysed as constituent scenes of agency, scenes upon which available subject positions were constituted. It was possible to view the articulated identities as both normative and performative of the class-grandparents' emic understandings of a desirable elderliness. The preferred qualities that the interviewees emphasised as important for older persons in general (and class-grandparents in particular) were, for example, experience, knowledge, continuity, responsibility, genealogical contact, production, activity, participation and health. These qualities were often paired with a strong sense of the will to do right or to instil an idea of a more premodern context of trust in the school system, where kinship systems as well as traditions and localised relations organised in terms of place were put forward (Giddens, 1990). The emphasis on certain characteristics of course implicated the exclusion of others. Excluded — explicitly or by force of symbolic inversion — were identities where old age was equated with for, example, dependence, poor health, infirmity, laziness, loneliness and inactivity. Potentially, the exclusion of these already stigmatised qualities thwarts the involvement of persons already and perhaps unhappily identifying with these descriptions, reinforcing instead their feelings of alienation and perhaps inferiority (cf. Fanon, 1986). The discourses emphasising activity and participation offer important alternatives to the more passive stereotypes, which often lurked in the interviewees' presentations, inviting them to emphasise other ways of comprehending the meanings and identities of old age. The efforts to counter, or even contest, ageist notions of ageing and old age suggest that this is not a culturally sedimented discourse, but rather a political one. It has been pointed out elsewhere how old age images of decline are being superseded by “new positive ideals of activity, independence, and self-care” (Katz, 2005:144). The efforts, even the ones where nostalgia was

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used, seemed to leave few alternatives but to repeat individualist discourses on productive and active ageing, where productiveness, activity and participation were almost exclusively defined in terms of contributing to society, either directly (by functioning as “unpaid teachers” in a situation of dwindling economic resources leading to reductions in school personnel), or indirectly (by keeping healthy). Talking from within these discourses thus positioned the interviewees in “a social matrix where moral, disciplinary conventions around activity, health, and independence” came to represent the ideal old age (Katz, 2005:127). Identifying with positions appointed by individualist discourses ironically and perhaps paradoxically reinforced the discourses on decline and loss as these were used in order to describe the antagonising characteristics of “the others” — identities and qualities rendered “bad” and potentially threatening the constituted old age identity as active, productive and participating. Some of the interviewees did not feel completely comfortable with the effects of this individualist discourse. Or rather, there seemed to be no problem whatsoever presenting oneself through it. Realising, however, how it made “others” appear, many felt obliged to acknowledge an awareness of the problems associated with it, such as contempt for weakness and disloyalty with others. These interviewees emphasised instead either the logics of discourses on equality regarding dignity and rights, or discourses on anti-ageism. The discourses on equality regarding dignity and rights were primarily used altruistically and emphatically when talking about other older people, who were not as privileged as the speaker (cf. Shuman 2006). The discourse on anti-ageism seemed to be used in order to counter descriptions of old people as “greedy geezers” (cf. Jönson, 2005:292), and installing instead the awareness that as a category old people are often culturally marginalised. Taken together, the multitude of subject positions offered by these discourses seem to constitute a rather vague ground for politics (Nelson, 1982). On the other hand, if we view the sign “old people” as an empty signifier, “a signifier without a signified” (Laclau, 1996:36) — gathering people with very different physical abilities, social, cultural and economical circumstances into one category united only by age — it becomes clear how at the same time that it constitutes a problem, the (relative) emptiness of this signifier is the condition for its including character, and thus for the possibility of the category as a political one. The interviewee's manoeuvring of discourses was an act that included identities into the category of old people, expanding the equivalential relation between identities that do not otherwise have so much in common. Exclusion is constitutive of all identity (Laclau, 1996:52), and the dominating discourses on, for example, participation certainly excluded certain identities from the description of preferred qualities in old age (Hepworth, 1995; Katz, 2005). But the excluded identities were often possible to include if described from an alternative perspective. The use of phrases like “the good old days” made such a change of perspective possible. The presence of “the good old days” or other related expressions, made possible a change in the terrain, and of the logics of difference that were otherwise so central in the interviews. There was a consensus around the signifier “the good old days,” and articulated together with a position as “old,” it brought about a unity within the category of “old people.” The articulation made “old age” open enough to host different and possibly incompatible identities and demands.

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