Ageing, Diversity and Equality

Social Justice Perspectives

Sue Westwood

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351851312
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Current understandings of ageing and diversity are impoverished in three main ways. Firstly, with regards to thinking about what inequalities operate in later life there has been an excessive preoccupation with economic resources. On the other hand, less attention has been paid to cultural norms and values, other resources, wider social processes, political participation and community engagement. Secondly, in terms of thinking about the 'who' of inequality, this has so far been limited to a very narrow range of minority populations. Finally, when considering the 'how' of inequality, social gerontology's theoretical analyses remain under-developed. The overall effect of these issues is that social gerontology remains deeply embedded in normative assumptions which serve to exclude a wide range of older people.

Ageing, Diversity and Equality aims to challenge and provoke the above described normativity and offer an alternative approach which highlights the heterogeneity and diversity of ageing, associated inequalities and their intersections.

The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781351851329, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 licence.

1 Introduction

Sue Westwood

Ageing, diversity and equality

As Daatland and Biggs (2006, 1) observed over a decade ago, ‘to understand contemporary societal ageing, there is a need to recognise its diversity’. However, social gerontology continues to approach ageing from homogenous, normative perspectives (Martinson and Berridge, 2014) with insufficient attention paid to diversity:

There is a staggering lack of evidence for some groups and certain aspects of inequalities. We have ignored or overlooked the diversity of our ageing population, arguably through focusing primarily on the differences between young and old.

(Centre for Ageing Better, 2017, 12)

There is a long-standing body of literature on ageing, gender and class (Arber and Ginn, 1991; Arber, Davidson and Ginn, 2003; Calasanti and Slevin, 2013). However, this has very often failed to connect with other social divisions, and sites of inequality. While lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) ageing is also beginning to be addressed within research (Rosenfeld 2003, 2010; Ward, River and Sutherland, 2012; Hoy-Ellis and Fredriksen-Goldsen, 2017), diversity among older LGBT people is less well recognised (Blood and Bamford 2010; Westwood, 2016; Westwood and Price, 2016). Furthermore, heterosexual ageing remains a taken-for-granted norm, informing much of mainstream gerontological research in an under-interrogated way (Cronin, 2006). While research is now also addressing culture, ethnicity and ageing (Torres, 2015; Ute and Torres, 2015) and religion, spirituality and ageing (Mackinlay, 2015), the subtleties, complexities, nuances and intersections in these areas are also not yet well addressed (Zubair and Norris, 2015).

Similarly, while there is a growing body of literature on older people and social care (Vlachantoni et al., 2015; Daly and Westwood, 2017) it mostly refers to the needs of older people with age-acquired disabilities and health conditions, rather than those ageing with them. Indeed, the trope of ‘successful ageing’ is predicated upon the assumption of their absence. Issues affecting older people with learning/intellectual disabilities are particularly under-addressed (Ward, 2015). Moreover, while there is growing academic interest in spatiality as a dimension of inequality, ageing spatialities, beyond the urban/rural dichotomy (Buffel, Phillipson and Scharf, 2012; Burholt and Dobbs, 2012) remain under-explored (Schwanen, Hardill and Lucas, 2012), particularly workplace ageing and ageing in hidden contexts, such as prisons (O’Hara et al., 2015).

In addition to the ‘who’ and the ‘where’ of ageing, diversity and inequality, the ‘what’ (Baker et al., 2016) has also been considered along relatively narrow lines. Social gerontologists have considered inequalities in terms of social and economic contexts (Angel and Settersten, 2013) including at their intersection with ‘class’ (Formosa and Higgs, 2015), and the ‘interplay of health disparities, economic resources, and public policies’ (Crystal, 2017, 205). These have been analysed at local, national and comparative international and global levels (Hyde and Higgs 2016; OECD, 2017). In his recent review of critical gerontology, and the theoretical/philosophical concepts underpinning it, Jan Baars (2017) has observed that social inequality in terms of material reproduction has been prioritised over social inequality in terms of cultural reproduction. His analysis highlights not only the privileging of materiality but also the binary ways in which inequality is approached, i.e. the material and/or the cultural.

In terms of the ‘how’ (Baker et al., 2016) of ageing and inequality, this has been addressed, to a greater or lesser extent, by the main theories in social gerontology, i.e. ‘(1) social constructionist, (2) social exchange, (3) life course, (4) feminist, (5) age stratification (age and society), (6) political economy of aging, and (7) critical theory’ (Bengtson, Burgess and Parrott, 1997, S72). Social constructionist theories of ageing emphasise how older age(s) are socially constituted positions, which change according to cultural, temporal and spatial contexts. More recently, they have pointed to ‘increasing diversity within age categories and cohorts that is accompanied by cumulative inequalities across all phases of life’ (Mortimer, Jeylan and Moen, 2016, 111). Life course theories (Shanahan, Mortimer and Johnson, 2016) have emphasised in particular the significance of cumulative dis/advantage across a lifetime (Dannefer, 2003; DiPrete and Eirich, 2006). However, notions that lifetimes follow a particular ‘course’ are imbued with assumptions about how lives are lived, predicated on heterosexist reproductive norms (Carpenter, 2010). Feminist theories (Arber and Ginn, 1991; Calasanti and Slevin, 2013) have focused on the centrality of gender as an organising principle in life and in ageing, the comparative socio-economic disadvantages of older women compared with older men and ‘how the dominant social institutions render older women vulnerable and dependent throughout their life course’ (Estes, 2017, 81). While social constructionist, life course and feminist theories have much to offer to an analysis of wider ageing diversity and inequality, they have not been applied to this as much as they might have been.

Critical gerontology is ‘an interdisciplinary sub-field consisting mostly of humanities and social science scholars who challenge the assumptions of mainstream gerontology and biomedical models of ageing’ (Katz, 2015, 29). It has focused on three main conceptual areas:

Firstly, political economy ‘… postulates that aging and old age are directly related to the nature of the society in which they occur and, therefore, cannot be considered or analyzed in isolation from other societal forces and characteristics’… . Secondly, moral economy studies aging and old age through ‘… norms, beliefs and values in a given context’… . Finally, humanistic gerontology focuses on larger questions of meaning in the lives of the older people.

(Paris, 2016)

These theories are themselves restrictive, continuing as they do to focus on socio-economic issues. Moreover, even critical gerontology has, with a few notable exceptions (e.g. Daatland and Biggs, 2006), not considered ageing and diversity in any great depth.

Researchers interested in aging have relentlessly collected mountains of data, often driven by narrowly defined, problem-based questions and with little attention to basic assumptions or larger theoretical issues … the lack of attention to theory has meant that research questions have often been informed by an uncritical reliance on images and assumptions about aging drawn from popular culture or from traditions and paradigms of theory that are considered outdated within the broader discourses of behavioral and social theory.

(Baars et al., 2017, 1)

This ‘uncritical reliance’ has often led to homogenising narratives which make generalisations about ageing based on research which has often not included questions of diversity in its parameters, has not included representative populations (i.e. included people from minorities) and has not incorporated issues of diversity and/or inequality in its analysis. This means that at best associated narratives only apply to majority populations and at worst, they are grossly inaccurate, because they are based only on data from, and analyses of, part of the ageing population.

There is growing recognition of the significance of intersectionality in the social sciences. Intersectionality refers to ‘the mutually constructed nature of social division and the ways these are experienced, reproduced and resisted in everyday life’ (Taylor, 2009, 190). Intersectional analyses ‘look at forms of inequality which are routed through one another, and which cannot be untangled to reveal a single cause’ (Grabham et al., 2009, 1). Intersectionality is generally understood to be significant for ageing.

Multiple factors combine and overlap to influence individual and group experiences of later life. Intersectionality describes the simultaneous impact of characteristics, such as gender, poverty and disadvantage and sexual orientation. It considers the many personal identities and power hierarchies and systems that contribute to discrimination and disadvantage. Intersectionality offers a holistic account of people’s experiences of disadvantage and discrimination in later life and has the potential to offer solutions that are better suited to our increasingly diverse older population.

(Centre for Ageing Better, 2017, 12)

However, while intersectionality has been considered in relation to particular ageing minorities (Cronin and King, 2010), it has not been considered in relation to ageing as a whole. Indeed, much of social gerontology continues with narratives of homogeneity, privileging majority populations. Where minoritised groups are considered, it is often only as an add-on, as a politically correct nod to ‘difference’ without any critical interrogation of the broader normative assumptions which inform social gerontological discourse. Minoritised older people are at best considered in terms of the exotic ‘Other’, rather than being integrated into mainstream theorising. Those working to make the experiences of marginalised older people more visible, and indeed more thinkable, have tended to advocate on behalf of particular groups, e.g. people from minority ethnic backgrounds, or LGBT older people. In order to render their arguments more distinct, they have, inevitable drawn upon the strategic use of identity categories (Bernstein, 2009) to demonstrate comparative inequalities. While understandable, this has, inevitably, led to narratives of ageing and diversity existing in silos, without making (potentially illuminating) connections between uneven outcomes in later life. These silos have then led to diminished power in the voices of those seeking to highlight the heterogeneity of ageing, and associated inequalities.

So, understandings of ageing diversity are currently impoverished in three main ways. Firstly, in terms of thinking about the ‘what’ of inequality, i.e. what inequalities operate in later life. There has been an excessive preoccupation with economic resources, and to a lesser extent, cultural norms and values, and an under-attention to other resources, wider social processes, and to political participation and community engagement. Secondly, in terms of thinking about the ‘who’ of inequality, this has so far been limited to ‘race’, culture and ethnicity, and LGBT issues, with insufficient attention given to diversity within and among these populations and in relation to other areas of diversity. Thirdly, in terms of thinking about the ‘how’ of inequality, social gerontology’s theoretical analyses remain under-developed. The overall effect of this is that social gerontology remains deeply embedded in normative assumptions which serve to marginalise increasingly relevant minority populations.

This edited collection aims to challenge and provoke this normativity, and offer an alternative approach which highlights the heterogeneity and diversity of ageing. It also aims to explore and critically interrogate the (in)equalities associated with ageing and diversity. The overarching framework of this collection is that of a social justice perspective, engaging with the work of Nancy Fraser (2013) who approaches social justice from three interrelated dimensions: resources (economic), recognition (social status, cultural visibility and cultural worth) and representation (social and political participation and access to justice). Several authors (Lynch et al., 2016; Westwood, 2016) have expanded Fraser’s concept of resources from economic to include affective resources (love, care and affection), social resources (social support) and formal care provision, and this collection will also do so.

The collection is multidisciplinary, with contributions from both UK and international authors (many of whom are leaders in their fields) from a wide range of backgrounds: cultural studies, demography, economics, ethics, social gerontology, health sciences, history, law, migration studies, psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy, social justice, social policy, social work, sociology, socio-legal studies, statistics. Several activists are also co-contributors, combining academic perspectives with lived experiences. This wide variety of perspectives is unified by each chapter being framed around the same theoretical structure, i.e. Fraser’s social justice model.

Social justice framework

Nancy Fraser (1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2013) initially theorised about social justice in relation to both (Marxist) economics and also issues of recognition (Honneth, 1992, 1995). Nancy Fraser originally argued for the need to think about social justice in terms of both resource distribution and cultural recognition.

Today, claims for social justice seem to divide into two types: claims for the redistribution of resources and claims for the recognition of cultural difference. Increasingly, these two kinds of claims are polarized against one another. As a result, we are asked to choose between class politics and identity politics, social democracy and multiculturalism, redistribution and recognition. These, however, are false antitheses. Justice today requires both redistribution and recognition. Neither alone is sufficient.

(Fraser, 1998, 1)

In her analysis of resources, Fraser placed emphasis on the traditional issue of the (re-)distribution of economic resources. However, other resources are also of importance, especially in later life.

Health, physical and cognitive functioning (Glaser, Price, Willis, Stuchbury & Nicholls, 2009), access to ‘love, care and solidarity’ (Lynch, Baker & Lyons, 2009), safe housing (Barnes, 2012), social networks and informal social and instrumental support (‘social capital’, Cronin & King, 2014) all have direct impact upon well-being in late life (Bond & Cabrero, 2007; Fredriksen-Goldsen et al., 2013). Differential access to these can produce profound affective inequalities (Lynch, Baker & Lyons, 2009) and engage with issues of inequalities of care from the perspectives of feminist care ethics (Tronto, 1993; Kittay, 1999; Sevenhuijsen, 2003; Held, 2006; Lynch, 2007, 2010).

(Westwood, 2016, 8)

Equality of recognition involves ‘social status, cultural visibility and cultural worth’ (Westwood, 2016, 8). As Fraser (1998, 5) explains, in terms of the politics of recognition, ‘Here the goal, in its most plausible form, is a difference-friendly world, where assimilation to majority or dominant cultural norms is no longer the price of equal respect’. Fraser describes a lack of recognition or ‘mis-recognition’ as ‘status injury whose locus is social relations’ (6). She goes on to explore how both resour...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Gender
• Part II Sexualities
• Part III Culture, ethnicity and religion
• Part IV Disabilities, long-term conditions and care
• Part V Spatiality
• Index