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The narrative self in rural dementia: a case study from eastern Nova Scotia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2018

RILEY CHISHOLM  and
KATHERINE BISCHOPING
RILEY CHISHOLM*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada.
KATHERINE BISCHOPING
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, York University, Toronto, Canada.
*
Address for correspondence: Riley Chisholm, Department of Sociology, 110C Annex Building, PO Box 5000, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, B2 G 2W5, Canada E-mail: Rchishol@stfx.ca
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Abstract

This analysis examines how the narrative self of a person with dementia is maintained by family members in a small rural Nova Scotian community. In the literature, the expectation is often that rurality is a condition of isolation, distance from family and limited health resources. However, drawing on three years of ethnographic and interviewing research with a large extended family whose patriarch, Alexander, is a person with dementia, we demonstrate how a community's rurality influences interpretations of dementia. In Alexander's rurality, of particular import are local definitions of belonging, which privilege intimate knowledge of local history, working as a farmer to shape the land, and being of Scottish descent and male. As family members find Alexander's belonging to come into question in their community, we show them to employ narratives in which he is valorised for continuing to uphold local values – of ‘usefulness’ and of ‘being the land’. We show how the family members must also revisit and revise these narratives when Alexander's belonging is further called into question outside the family setting and, specifically, at the local farmer's market, where Alexander is often no longer greeted by other marketgoers. The men and women of the family arrive at different interpretations of this development, with the women considering marketgoers to demean and dehumanise Alexander, while the men feel that the marketgoers are avoiding interactions that would embarrass him. Such disagreements reveal the ongoing emotional labour of creating narratives that lack closure, certainty and consensus, as well as ways in which gender and rurality operate intersectionally in the process of meaning-making.

Keywords

dementiaidentityruralfamilynarrative
Type
Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 39 , Issue 7 , July 2019 , pp. 1436 - 1458
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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