Juliana Mansvelt

Healthy ageing from the perspective of older people: A capability approach to resilience

A policy focus on healthy ageing has been critiqued for homogenising, oppressing and neglecting the physical realities of older age. Current healthy ageing discourse places responsibility on individuals for achieving good physical health and ignores their broader circumstances. Sen’s capability approach provides a basis for including the physical changes of ageing and the social environment by focusing on what older people themselves value in regards to healthy ageing. Accounts of desired living standards in 145 interviews with people aged 63–93 years in New Zealand were subjected to a thematic analysis which revealed six commonly valued ‘functionings’: physical comfort, social integration, contribution, security, autonomy and enjoyment. The capability to achieve the valued functionings was of high importance regardless of physical health status while this capability was often limited by social and material circumstances. The importance of an environment supportive of valued functionings provides a framework for understanding health for older adults, whatever their present physical abilities. We suggest that health psychology is in a good position to reflect critically on the impact of discourses promoting healthy ageing in the lives of older adults, and consider broader models that include understandings of resilience and capability.

Geographies of consumption: engaging with absent presences:

For geographers and others studying landscapes of consumption, sustained engagements with ‘absent presences’ — be they historically constituted or exhibited as more contemporary silences — have prompted researchers to reflect on contradictions and biases in narratives, exposing taken-for-granted assumptions about the research endeavour and the subjects of research. Focusing on research related to consuming, branding imaginaries, material and relational geographies, I outline how researchers have examined existing categorizations and conceptualizations of consumption practices and places to reflect on the power and politics ‘at work’.

Green consumerism : an A-to-Z guide

Via 150 signed entries, Green Consumerism: An A-to-Z Guide offers a wide-ranging examination of green consumerism, one reflecting the diversity of views and debates surrounding the concept. The multiplicity of topics and disciplinary perspectives provides a useful survey of the nature of green consumerism, the forms it takes, the issues impacting it, and the practices it involves. Contributing authors also provide insights into the social and spacial constitution of green consumerism, its multifaceted and sometimes contested contours, and the ways it is embedded and shaped in relation to wider cultural, economic, political and environmental processes. Readers will derive a sense not only of what green consumerism has become, but more critically, how it might evolve, addressing both limitations and possibilities for real and meaningful change. Along with the articles, which include cross-references and further reading suggestions, pedagogical elements of this electronic-only product include a Readers Guide, Chronology, Resource Guide, Glossary, Appendix, and thorough Index.

Professional Development: Assuring Quality in E-Learning Policy and Practice.

Purpose – The paper reports on findings of research into the institutional and individual influences on engaging in professional development (PD), reflecting on how PD might be made available in ways which could support quality in e‐learning.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents findings of a research project exploring factors influencing engagement in e‐learning PD within New Zealand tertiary education institutions. The research comprised an online survey of 408 individuals in three polytechnics and two universities and 40 qualitative interviews ascertaining beliefs, experiences and practices of staff regarding e‐learning PD.Findings – The survey and interviews suggest there are numerous factors which both help and hinder quality of engagement in e‐learning PD. Most PD engaged in by staff is informal. Engagement in formal PD is influenced by organisational structure, co‐ordination, poorly developed and/or implemented e‐learning policy, differences in managerial support, and individual beliefs ...

Pursuing security: economic resources and the ontological security of older New Zealanders

ABSTRACT Access to economic resources influences the material conditions of life for older people, as well as the freedoms and capacities of older people to achieve the kind of lives they value. Security is one aspect of later life valued by older people. Ontological security provides a sense of order and continuity and needs to be understood in terms of the situated life experiences and circumstances of older people. The study reported in this paper analysed 145 qualitative interviews with New Zealanders aged 63–93 in order to explore how participants understand ontological security. Varying levels of access to economic resources were associated with differing abilities of participants to manage the unpredictability of everyday life. Among the wealthy, security was strongly connected to the freedoms provided by ample financial resources. Contrary to what might be expected, those with the lowest levels of economic resources did not express higher levels of insecurity, but instead drew upon life experiences of managing and making do to construct a trajectory of security. Those with mid-range levels of economic resources expressed most insecurity, including anxiety over changing economic conditions and concerns over their ability to manage reductions in economic resources. In discussing the implications of this, the paper highlights the need to recognise ways in which access to economic resources intersect with life circumstances, past experiences and future social expectations to provide opportunities for all older people to pursue security as they strive to age well.

Still being ‘Mother’? Consumption and identity practices for women in later life

Studies of mothering and consumption have primarily focussed on mothers to be and mothers of young children with little known about the intersection between consumption and mothering beyond the years of childhood dependence. This article argues that performances of mothering enacted through consumption do not end with children leaving home. Many women were consciously ‘Still being mother’, with consumption choices significant in the ways in which mothering identities were performed. The analysis of interviews from three studies of family life, living standards and consumption in older age identified three constructs of the ‘good’ mothering of adult children. Aspects of the ‘provisioning mother’ were evident in providing for children through gifts, material and financial support. Appropriate consumption practices by adult children demonstrated the ‘role model mother’ who has taught her children well. Mothers also framed themselves as ‘independent mothers’ who had sufficient social and financial resources to not burden children, hinting not only at their own ‘controlled’ consumption practices but also at future changes in mothering and consumption that might need to be managed as they aged. These mothering identities were not static and were exhibited differently across a range of living standards. ‘Still being mother’ mattered, but the resources available to women to shape these identities through consumption practices differed according to their material circumstances, expectations and familial relations, which had implications for their identity as independent mothers and children.

Producing Rural Recreation Spaces: Representation and Place Identity

Abstract Rural spaces in New Zealand have tended to be associated with rugged wildness, agricultural productivity and the mastery of landscape through the (masculine) pioneering spirit. Such images are perpetuated in ‘Dairyland’, an interactive visitor centre located near Hawera, a rural service town in South Taranaki. The created environment that comprises the Dairyland experience is a function of the symbolic representations of ‘authentic’ images of pastoral production and the actions of the owners and managers of the site. This landscape of leisure reinforces taken-forgranted constructs of rural space and simultaneously creates meanings of place which connect the company which owns the site with local place identity. Public debate surrounding the use of Dairyland for tourist information services suggests such ‘powerful’ representations of space may be resisted. The complex and contested nature of the production of this particular leisure space indicates the necessity for further research into how such ...

Consumption Geographies: Turns or Intersections?

The last 20 years have seen an explosion of work on geographies of consumption. Much of the research has been informed by approaches arising from the New Cultural Geographies. While cultural geographers have examined issues of representation, identity, landscape, and sociality, economic geographers continued to focus on geographies of retail and of commodities informed by political economic and commodity chain perspectives. Although the need to integrate production and consumption has long been discussed and the merits of particular approaches debated, economic and cultural perspectives have until recently remained relatively largely separate. As geographies of consumption expanded rapidly in the latter decades of the twentieth century they have not so much undergone a singular economic or cultural turn but have been characterised by the growing intersection of cultural and economic perspectives through particular research agendas. The chapter discusses these and then concludes with a discussion of research themes in which perspectives derived from cultural and economic geographies are providing new insights into the nature of social and spatial change.

Chapter 9 Urban spaces – ageing places? insights from interviews and focus groups into the spatiality of later life

With the so-called greying of many nations, ageing is becoming a critical issue for social and urban policy (Polivka & Longino, 2004). While populations may be ageing chronologically in many countries, notions of ageing and ‘the elderly’ are shifting – influenced by economic, political and cultural changes. People are living longer, and are living more diverse and flexible lives. The shape of their lives is changing in relation to factors such as government policy, the economy, leisure and work practice, and the giving and receiving of care (OECD, 1996). Such changes pose challenges for policy makers as these societal shifts have both social and spatial consequences. ‘Ageing’ is consequently a concept which needs unpacking in order to make informed decisions about planning and public policy – to understand how the concept of age is shaped, negotiated and experienced differentially in place (Williams & Ylanne-McEwen, 2000). This chapter shows how the personal stories and experiences of older individuals form narratives which can both shape and challenge policy makers’ views of ageing and place relationships.

S. Miles (2010) Spaces for Consumption. Pleasure and Placelessness in the Post-Industrial City

values, ethics, practices. And here are chapters on boutique hotels, Chilean wine, chicken, teak, foodies and tourists and fair traders and . . .Like a theorists’ supermarket sweep, the book does a trolley dash through the aisles; but if we were to analyse its basket at the till, what would we see? An ‘unmanageable consumer’, an omnivore, someone flexing their cultural capital, or, to borrow a Baudrillard slogan from Dave Clarke’s chapter, do we see in this book-basket ‘the total promiscuity of things’? To be honest, this book’s arrival made me depressed (and I like shopping). Opening its covers feels like that moment of too-much-choice-so-can’t-choose that I sometimes feel in the supermarket or sandwich shop. I’m hungry, but can’t see anything I really want to eat. Taken separately, there’s much to commend the chapters here, but taken together – offered side by side, like so many tins of soup, I have difficulty choosing, and go home soupless. It’s overabundant. Don’t get me wrong: there’s clever stuff in here, and useful stuff. It’s just that there’s too much choice – of topic, of approach. I simply don’t know how to think about shopping any more. I’m struggling to self-diagnose the malady this book has brought out in me (Clarke’s discussion of fetishism and seduction helps a bit). Is it because it’s a book? Normally I love books, love the bookness of books – but in this case maybe the issue is the format, the packaging. Assembled in this way, it’s hard to get your hands around. It’s like a compilation (Now That’s What I Call Consumption?) – all I can do is shuffle through it, with the detached unattention of the channel surfer, or the taster-menu eater (to mix metaphors). Has consumption consumed geography? If back in the mid-1990s it was ‘all consumption’, what is it now? Final contradictory comment (hey, it’s ok, consumption is contradictory): Ashgate, in continuing to see merit in publishing edited collections (even if only in hard covers) is to be commended for bucking a market trend. But, in this particular case, the book has left me feeling full but oddly unsatisfied.