4th Midterm Conference of the Research Network on Ageing in Europe of the European Sociological Association : Ageing in Europe: Agency, Citizenship and the Dynamics of Power
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| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Conference |
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| Description | The major conference theme ‘Agency, Citizenship and the Dynamics of Power’ brought together topics that have traditionally stood at the core of sociological thinking, but that have not been necessarily at the heart of gerontological theory and research. Many authors now point to the contemporary struggles over the representation of older age within and beyond the realm of the social sciences. Later life and older people are represented on one hand as a quiescent minority bearing multiple disadvantages within a social status of limited agency and increasing dependency, experiencing a loss of autonomy and the need to redefine one´s role in the community and society. On the other hand, older people are also seen as a source of new political, economic, and cultural ‘grey’ power, as an influential actor in contemporary societies, shaping the contours of new policies and welfare regimes. These debates reflect the diversity of the experiences of ageing selves and the pluralities of life courses as well as of the institutional, political, and social changes with which the personal and individual experience is inseparably interlinked. These struggles lead also to the reformulation of the concepts of agency, autonomy, or power themselves and to the calling for their even more reflexive application in academic accounts of the human experience in later life. The conference brought together almost 60 scholars from 35 universities or research institutions from 13 European countries to discuss up-to-date results of empirical research and follow-up with theoretical and conceptual debates from the field of sociology of age and ageing, social gerontology and related disciplines. |
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