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Mary Moore Free presents a new perspective on the literature of aging with her study of the rich, old, cognitively intact, powerful, formally retired, elite elders whose needs do not include nursing care. Living in a small private retirement home in urban Texas, the residents of The Hermitage continue to retain the power that they exercised in their active years by manipulating their environments, controlling inheritances, casting absentee ballots, and medicalizing their old age by forming partnerships with their doctors, thus relieving themselves of the personal responsibility of being old. In the expanding genre of retirement home ethnography, there is little on wealthy elders. Many who are able to give cogent life stories are unwilling to trade privacy for support of investigative studies. It is to Free's credit that she was able to win the residents' confidence and elicit another dimension of what institutionalized retirement can be like.
Sommario
Preface
Introduction
Key Theories and Background Literature of Being Old and Living in Formal Retirement
Old Age as an Achieved Status
The Evolution of Formal Retirement Living in the United States and Resources to Support It
The Corporate and Physical Environments of The Hermitage
The Social Environment of The Hermitage
The Process of Adaptation as a Function of Well-Being at The Hermitage
The Process of Health Care as a Function of the Well-Being of Being Well at The Hermitage
Life at The Hermitage from the Personal Perspectives of an Elderly Woman and an Elderly Man
The Hermitage as an Optimal Environment
Appendix One: Occupancy Agreement
Appendix Two: Age-related Biophysiological Changes
Bibliography
Index
Info autore
MARY MOORE FREE is House Anthropologist and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Baylor Health Care System/Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. She has published over 20 articles in anthropological and medical journals and has made five educational films on what it means to be old and group dynamics.
