Negotiating Well-being

Older People's Narratives of Relationships and Relationality

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12901827
AutoresLizzie Ward (0000-0002-4158-2030, University of Brighton, autor correspondente)
Ano2014
Volume8
Fascículo3
Páginas293-305
Data de publicação2014-07-03
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEthics and Social Welfare (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1749-6535 • E-ISSN: 1749-6543
EditoraTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17496535.2014.932419
OpenAlexW2100729724
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas6
Referências citadas24

This article discusses well-being in old age by drawing on findings from participatory research carried out by older co-researchers exploring how older people learn to sustain their own and others’ well-being. It considers the way in which research based in older people's experience can inform ethical policy and practice capable of delivering well-being. It critiques individualized notions of well-being and provides a counter-perspective based in relational understandings of what it is to be human drawn from feminist care ethics. This offers a different way of understanding the significance of social relationships and networks to older people's well-being from that offered by a focus on ‘community’ which has emerged in the communitarian discourses of the UK Coalition government. It illustrates this with older people's accounts of well-being highlighting the ways in which relationships with people, places and spaces are negotiated with ageing. Finally it argues that this relational conceptualization of well-being embodies values and the ethical dimensions of responsibility based in lived experiences. This provides the basis for alternative values-based policies and practices which we need to distinguish from the instrumental expression of social relationships and ‘community’ within communitarian discourses

Conceptualization · Government (linguistics · Narrative · Negotiation · Older people · Perspective (graphical · Political science · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Medicine · Migration, Aging, and Tourism Studies · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics