ISBN
978-1847425591Dimensions
240 x 172 mmImprint
Policy PressISBN
978-1847425935Dimensions
240 x 172 mmImprint
Policy PressISBN
978-1447323297Dimensions
Imprint
Policy PressISBN
978-1447323303Dimensions
Imprint
Policy PressThis book focuses on older people as makers of meaning and insight, highlighting the evolving values, priorities and ways of communicating that make later life fascinating. It explores what creating ‘meaning’ in later life really implies, for older people themselves, for how to conceptualise older people and for relationships between generations.
The book offers a language for discussing major types of lifecourse meaning, not least those concerning ethical and temporal aspects of the ways people interpret their lifecourses, the ways older people form part of social and symbolic landscapes, and the types of wisdom they can offer.
It will appeal to students of gerontology, sociological methodology, humanistic sociology, philosophy, psychology, and health promotion and medicine.
Ricca Edmondson (died June 2021) was Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland, Galway. After studying philosophy at the University of Lancaster and writing her D.Phil. at Oxford on reasoning in the social sciences, she carried out research at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. She then joined the School of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland, Galway, specialising in interdisciplinary and intercultural approaches to life-course meaning and wisdom, and their history, landscapes and social settings.
Foreword by Rick Moody;
Introduction;
Life Courses, Insight and Meaning;
Diminishing Older People: Silence, Occlusion and ‘Fading’;
Lifetimes, Meaning and Listening to Older People;
Languages for Life-Course Meanings;
Meaning and intergenerationality: approaches by younger people;
Conclusion: Morality, Insight and Wisdom in Life-course Construction.