two - Theorising time and space in social gerontology

Summary

The themes of time and space occupy a central place within social gerontology (Baars 2015), however, these are generally implicit and often poorly theorised by researchers and writers in the field. Yet the ways in which we understand time, space and the interconnections between them impact on the ways we frame ageing and later life. As conceptions of time and space change so too do our theories of ageing. As a result, it is important to critically assess the time-spaces employed in social gerontology if we are to understand the potential impact of globalisation on contemporary ageing. In this book we use the term time-space to refer to how spatial and temporal regimes are interconnected and constitute one another at both the material and symbolic level. These time-spaces produce and are reproduced by a set of dominant ideas, practices and discourses. The transition from one time-space to another is reflected in a change in the relationship between these two constituent parts and leads to changes in the social, cultural, political and economic practices that were underpinned by the previous system. Therefore, those gerontological theories that were developed around earlier time-spaces focused on the nation state are being challenged by the emergence of new forms of space, from the local to the global. To explore what this means for our understanding of later life and for older people themselves we need to move away from the conventional narrative about the development of social gerontological theories and re-examine them in terms of the temporal and spatial frames which they deploy.

Social gerontology represents a broad church (Moody 2000, Victor et al 2007, Phillipson 2013a). It spans a range of disciplines from the biomedical through to the arts. Indeed, having been criticised for most of its history for being data rich but theory poor (Bengtson et al 1997, Harper 2000, Alley et al 2010), social gerontology is now faced with a seeming embarrassment of theoretical riches. However, the connection to empirical studies has not always as strong as it might have been (Hendricks et al 2010). Moreover, the changing terminology and often fuzzy theoretical boundaries have made it difficult to present a comprehensive and unambiguous picture of the state of theory within the subject.