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Relational Sociology: Contributions to Understanding Residential Relocation Decisions in Later Life
Sarah Hillcoat-Nallétamby,
Sarah Hillcoat-Nalletamby
The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology, Pages: 621 - 639
Swansea University Author: Sarah Hillcoat-Nalletamby
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DOI (Published version): 10.1007/978-3-319-66005-9_31
Abstract
Policy discourse and service provisions targeted at older people reflect a globalised emphasis which portrays individuals as empowered consumers, able to exercise agency in diverse markets when it comes to choosing products and services to meet their health and social care requirements. This emphasi...
| Published in: | The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology |
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| ISBN: | 978-3-319-66004-2 978-3-319-66005-9 |
| Published: |
Palgrave Macmillan
2018
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| Online Access: |
http://www.csa-scs.ca/files/webapps/csapress/relational/palgrave-handbook-of-relational-sociology/ |
| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa27105 |
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| Abstract: |
Policy discourse and service provisions targeted at older people reflect a globalised emphasis which portrays individuals as empowered consumers, able to exercise agency in diverse markets when it comes to choosing products and services to meet their health and social care requirements. This emphasis finds its routes in neo-liberal thinking which gives primacy to individual, voluntaristic, rational choices embedded within decision-making predicated on intentional, consequential action. Viewed through a relational lens, this chapter challenges the neo-liberal perspective by elaborating a critical theoretical, and empirically tested alternative interpretive framework; this is posited on the possibilities for more complex and nuanced experiences of social action, shaped by temporal, transactional processes evolving with others through complex figurations of interdependent relationship. Using qualitative data from older people who have experienced a later life residential relocation, analysis of their narratives is undertaken using the author's interpretive framework which draws on concepts of temporality, transactional process and interdependencies to make sense of their experiences. The chapter's overarching ontological aim is two-fold - to demonstrate the relevance of relational sociology as an orientation with potential to offer a more sophisticated and extensive understanding of the social phenomenon of later life residential relocation decision-making as a transactional processes; and to enhance theory in the field of gerontology, where scholars have tended to focus on theorizing later life social phenomena through the lens of macro-level structural determinism and its constraining influence on individual agency, or the micro-level focus of humanistic approaches. The field of gerontology has therefore yet to adopt, in any depth, the ontological insights provided by relational sociology. |
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| Item Description: |
I have submitted the final version of my chapter to the editor for this handbook on 8th January 2017 (final version with comments and revisions attached). The book is to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017 (see link and Chapter 41 - http://www.csa-scs.ca/files/webapps/csapress/relational/palgrave-handbook-of-relational-sociology/). |
| Keywords: |
later life; older people; residential relocation; extra-care; assisted living; gerontology; environmental gerontology; figurations of reference; transactions; self-actions; process; interdependencies; temporality |
| College: |
Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences |
| Start Page: |
621 |
| End Page: |
639 |