thomas scharf director, irish centre for social gerontology, nui galway rural ageing seminar, age ni...
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![Page 1: Thomas Scharf Director, Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, NUI Galway Rural Ageing Seminar, Age NI Belfast, 30 May 2013 Rural ageing: a research challenge](https://reader035.vdocuments.site/reader035/viewer/2022080915/56649ddf5503460f94ad81a8/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Thomas ScharfDirector, Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, NUI Galway
Rural Ageing Seminar, Age NIBelfast, 30 May 2013
Rural ageing: a research challenge
![Page 2: Thomas Scharf Director, Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, NUI Galway Rural Ageing Seminar, Age NI Belfast, 30 May 2013 Rural ageing: a research challenge](https://reader035.vdocuments.site/reader035/viewer/2022080915/56649ddf5503460f94ad81a8/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
Environments of ageing
• Space and place as major dimensions of research on ageing
• ‘Classic’ studies in gerontology focus on urban and rural contexts:
– Urban: e.g. Sheldon (1948), Townsend (1957), Rowles (1978)
– Rural: e.g. Rosenmayr (1982), Cribier (1973), Wenger (1984)
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Environments of ageing: key issues
• Rural gerontology part of a shift towards an ‘environmental gerontology’ with a focus on:
– Understanding the key tasks facing older adults in diverse physical and ecological settings;
– Exploring the impacts of globalisation on older people’s environmental experiences;
– Addressing the policy and practice impacts of demographic change at a spatial level
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Why focus on rural ageing?
• Considerable social, economic and demographic change within rural areas;
• Changing local infrastructures;
• Challenges associated with providing public services in changing rural contexts;
• Ongoing weaknesses in the research evidence base for rural areas.
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Key research challenges
• Coping with ‘rurality’
– Lack of generalisability
– Nation-specific understandings of ‘the rural’
– Impacts of varying approaches to exploring rural issues
• Comparing urban and rural environments
– ‘Delay’ and ‘level’ hypotheses (Tews, 1987)
– Limited value of urban-rural comparisons
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Towards a more critical perspective
• Social divisions approach, identifying rural older people as a ‘minority’ within primarily urban societies
• Exploring difference within and between different rural contexts (e.g. gender, social class, ethnicity, spatial dimensions)
• Extending the ‘rural gerontological imagination’ (e.g. social inclusion/exclusion; methods)
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Rural Ageing Observatory at NUI Galway
• Research leading to improved quality of life for rural dwellers
• Participation of older people and relevant stakeholders in the research process
• Key focus on forms of exclusion and inclusion relating to older people in rural areas
• Life-course perspective
• Policy/practice influence in relation to rural ageing
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Rural Ageing Observatory at NUI Galway