In this paper, we examine the injunction issued by the prominent politician, broadcaster and older people's advocate, Baroness Joan Bakewell, to engage in ‘death talk’. We see positive ethical potential in this injunction, insofar as it serves as a call to confront more directly the prospects of death and dying, thereby releasing creative energies with which to change our outlook on life and ageing more generally. However, when set against a culture that valorises choice, independence and control, the positive ethical potential of such injunctions is invariably thwarted. We illustrate this with reference to one of Bakewell's interventions in a debate on scientific innovation and population ageing. In examining the context of her intervention, we affirm her intuition about its positive ethical potential, but we also point to an ambivalence that accompanies the formulation of the injunction – one that ultimately blunts the force and significance of her intuition. We suggest that Gilleard and Higgs' idea of the third age/fourth age dialectic, combined with the psycho-analytic concepts of fantasy and mourning, allow us to express this intuition better. In particular, we argue that the expression ‘loss talk’ (rather than ‘death talk’) better captures the ethical negotiations that should ultimately underpin the transformation processes associated with ageing, and that our theoretical contextualisation of her remarks can help us see this more clearly. In this view, deteriorations in our physical and mental capacities are best understood as involving changes in how we see ourselves, i.e. in our identifications, and so what is at stake are losses of identity and the conditions under which we can engage in new processes of identification.

Falls among community-dwelling seniors constitute a major public health concern because of the potential morbidity and mortality associated with the fall. This study examined the informal care networks accessed by Canadian seniors who had visited the Emergency Department as a result of a fall, and considered the implications of the processes of asking for and receiving help on the senior's identity. Four themes were identified. The first was valuing independence. The remaining three themes concerned threats to the participants' identities linked to the need to ask for or receive help from family and friends. They were: becoming indebted, feeling devalued and becoming a burden to others. Seniors were noted to excuse family members from the expectation of helping because of work and family commitments, and illness. Participants described a mutually beneficial relationship with friends wherein both parties valued their independence and provided assistance to the other when needed. Their comments suggested that assistance was viewed as a good to be traded among peers. Our findings indicate that seniors value their independence and may not seek help even when it appears to be available, if asking threatens valued identities. Health and social care practitioners and policy makers responsible for planning and delivery of services should take this into account in order to ensure the best possible care for injured community-dwelling seniors.

Research on the correspondence between retirement intentions and subsequent behaviour is scarce. We aimed to explore possible associations between retirement intentions and behaviour, using five-year high-quality quantitative panel data on Norwegian senior workers. Retirement intentions operate at different levels of firmness: (a) considerations; (b) preferences; and (c) decisions. Compared to work continuation considerations, a targeted age for retirement improved predictive power whether the target was preferred or decided, and particularly so if the target (i.e. the preferred or decided age of retirement), corresponded with a normative retirement age. Because more workers are able to state a preferred age of retiring than a decision about when to retire, preferences may be better proxies for retirement behaviour than decisions, when the issue is planning for policies. The correspondence between intentions and behaviour varies primarily by health, education and type of work. Older workers with poor health, and workers with low education, often retire earlier than they prefer. Blue-collar workers often retire earlier than they had decided. These findings illustrate the possible effect of labour market resources, not only for senior workers' labour market participation, but also for their opportunities to work up to the age they prefer or had decided. Even for white-collar workers and those in good health, constraints seem to apply when they wish to retire late.

This paper examines the ways in which older people's residential and nursing homes can constitute heteronormative environments – social spaces in which the same-sex attractions and desires of residents are disregarded in the provision of everyday care. The aim of this discussion is to examine the synergies and differences between older lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) adults' expectations for future care home provision and the expectations of care staff and managers in providing residential services to older people with diverse sexual backgrounds. We present qualitative evidence from research into the provision of care environments in Wales. In this paper, we present findings from two cohorts: first, from five focus groups with care and nursing staff and managers; and second, from 29 semi-structured interviews with older LGB adults (50–76 years) residing in urban and rural locations across Wales. We argue that residential care environments can constitute heterosexualised spaces in which LGB identities are neglected in comparison to the needs and preferences of other residents. To this extent, we discuss how care staff and managers can be more attentive and responsive to the sexual biographies of all residents and argue against the separation of care and sexual orientation in practice.

The impact of disparities in socio-economic status on the health of older people is an important issue for policy makers in the context of population ageing. As older people live in different types of economic circumstances and because, as people age, their desires and needs are different to those of younger generations, measures of living standards need to be appropriate for older people. This paper reports on the validation of a measure of living standards for older people based on Sen's Capability Approach. Using this approach, living standards are conceptualised as varying from constraint to freedom rather than from hardship to comfort. Using the New Zealand Longitudinal Study of Ageing omnibus survey of 3,923 adults aged 50–87 years, the validity of the measure was assessed. The results indicate that this measure assesses what older people are able to achieve. In addition, this measure discriminates better at the higher end of the living standards spectrum than an existing measure that assesses living standards from hardship to comfort in terms of what people possess. From this, a short form of the measure has been developed which offers a conceptually based and valid measure useful for survey research with older people. This measure of living standards provides future avenues for improved understandings of socio-economic position in later life.

Horse–human relationships expressed as a kind of co-embodied engagement or mutual physicality between horse and rider receive note in emerging literatures on equine sports and multi-species ethnography. Less attention focuses on the impacts of equestrienne activities on ageing female bodies. This study is based on analysis of narrative data collected from open-ended qualitative interviews with 36 women, aged 40–70, who participate in a variety of equestrian activities and sports in the North American Midwest and Arctic Norway. Although ageing informants associate animal partnerships with the maintenance of health, and although informants' narratives show some accord with master narratives of ageing athletes identified by sports sociologists, the natures of horse–human relationships invite more explicit, horse- specific contexts of analysis. The phrase ‘autobiologies of ageing’ denotes how women's narratives of equestrienne ageing privilege and centre a subjective sense of physical identity or embodied self where the rider's experience of her body becomes entangled with and impartible from that of the horse or horses she rides.

The neo-liberal ideologies that point to individual responsibility for risks increasingly influence countries of the global North. The anti-ageing industry reflects this dictate and encourages middle-aged people to use their products and services to manage their ageing. However, given the negative connotations attached to the term ‘anti-ageing’, which is usually seen to focus on aesthetics and thus be a woman's concern, men may be likely to disavow being involved in such activities. The article uses interview data collected from men aged 42–70 from Finland and the United States of America to explore whether and how men adhere to the call to manage their ageing when such anti-ageing activities are seen to be potentially feminising. We find that these men reflected neo-liberalism in the sense that they felt that, although ageing cannot be prevented, it can be controlled. Also while they generally rejected anti-ageing products and services that they judged to affect aesthetics, they reported that they use those that they define as promoting health and performance instead. For them, masculinity is the instrumental focus on performance to the exclusion of beauty or attractiveness. Masculine anti-ageing bodily strategies must also be ‘natural’, involving hard work rather than the use of products, which they regard as never having been scientifically proven to enhance performance. Thus, in talk of their anti-ageing, men distance themselves from women.

Few studies explore the application of literature on care home closures in practice or how it can influence residents' experiences. The aim of this study was to investigate from multiple perspectives how a protocol, designed by a local council for the involuntary relocation and safe transfer of older adult residents, was adhered to and the influence that the protocol had on the experiences of residents who relocated from two care homes. Interviews were conducted with 34 stakeholders, including relocated residents (N=11), relatives (N=2), care home staff (N=13), managers (N=6) and advocates (N=2), and analysed using framework analysis. The protocol covered key aspects of guidelines extracted from research evidence grouped into four themes: involvement; staff approaches; preparation; and consistency and familiarity, with the majority of the guidelines being followed in practice. Two further themes that centred on the processes of transitional adjustment and impact of relocation were influenced by the protocol but were also mediated by factors relating to the environment and the resident. Involvement of residents, relatives and advocates, extensive planning and a person-centred approach were of particular importance in improving residents' experiences of relocation. A model that places residents' experiences at the centre of relocations is proposed, which draws on and applies the themes identified in this study and applies them within the context of opportunities and risks.

The aim of this article is to investigate different ways in which nursing home scandals in Sweden have been framed, to discuss the relations between these existing frameworks, and to identify ways of describing the problem that are absent in the current debates. Data for the study consisted of media articles, television documentaries and internet debates, expert reports and court hearings, and interviews with representatives of organisations dealing with the issue of mistreatment in care services for older people. An analytical tool developed within social movement research was used to identify three ‘debates’ on such mistreatment in Sweden, where competing ways of framing the problem have been used: (a) a debate where staff are cast as either perpetrators or victims, (b) a debate on privatisation and profit as the motive for neglect of care recipients, and (c) a debate on deserving and non-deserving recipients of socially provided care centred around populist claims. The analysis highlights a need to introduce an alternative frame for interpretation where mistreatment in care for older people is regarded as involving scandalous cases of ageism. This anti-ageism frame would provide older people with a lead role in the drama – not just as victims but as stakeholders in relation to the problem.

Worldwide, populations are ageing and consequently so are the consumer profiles for most organisations. Understanding how best to ensure satisfaction in interactions with older customers, patients, members of organisations, and so on is therefore increasingly important. This paper examines two research questions: (a) How satisfied or dissatisfied are older people with their customer service experience, and what are the factors associated with dissatisfaction? and (b) What prompts older people to want to change service providers? The research questions are addressed using a mixed-methods approach – quantitative analysis of observation logs, supported by illustrative quotes from focus groups. We find that on the whole older people are generally satisfied with their interactions with organisations, although a substantial minority of interactions lead to dissatisfaction or lower-than-expected satisfaction. Dissatisfaction with interactions is mostly associated with impersonal communications, including interactions that are not conducted face to face, and those that are one-off interactions rather than repeated interactions. Media and communications firms prompted the greatest levels of dissatisfaction among older consumers. Dissatisfied older consumers from our sample are more than 12 times more likely to report an intention to switch providers than satisfied consumers. This highlights the potential costs to organisations of poor customer interactions with older people.