Abstract
As social analysts, we have always based ourselves on spatially arranged scenarios, such as the village, the location, site, community, locality or cultural area. This has enabled us to focus on various different socio-cultural processes, such as identities, migration, diversity of lifestyles, and even the phenomena of globalization. But there are few studies with empirical evidence that approach the analysis of actual living spaces and their socio-spatial practices of the elderly as a sector, and in relation to specific living conditions; the way in which these are accepted in the rural situation; the way they describe and interpret it, and attribute it memory, meaning and sense. That is why I consider it appropriate to propose an analysis of their living environment: their homes and plots of land; the community and the region as key variables, following the proposal for analysis by Lee Cuba and Hummon (1993), who show how the sense of belonging to a place, a home, a community and the region develops. Its analysis enriches the symbolic and affective significance, as well as guiding and motivating; action and reaction; the rootedness and rootlessness that inhabiting a specific place, which those of us who work with the elderly would like to access, since it is there where the consciousness and the crossing point with all the spheres of reality occurs, and where public policy programmes must have an impact, if they are to have a real effect on the life of the elderly population.
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Notes
- 1.
I consider each of these to be living spaces, social constructions which are culturally designed with specific properties where the elderly person(s) ensure their reproduction and the satisfaction of their basic needs (which may be material and/or symbolic).
- 2.
The notion of agency I build up following Long (2007: 48), defining it as: the ability of the elderly to process experience (from their own individual and group-based life), to design ways of coping with life, even under the most extreme conditions. Agency is usually produced and shaped within social interaction, directly influencing decision-making and action taken in any situation.
- 3.
De Certeau (1996) calls living spaces “practiced space,” “places of memory, identified and identifying”; symbolized places, full of inter-subjective meanings; with dimensions where experience contributes to subjectivising the place objectified by others; with actions, interactions, perceptions and meanings, linked to lifestyles, such as constructed environments (Rapoport 1978).
- 4.
Frank Oswald (2005). Note that in the US and Germany in more than 80 % of cases, the elderly spend all day at home .
- 5.
Wengler and Burholt (2001) states that apparently living in small communities is good in the third age but on entering the fourth age (when physical strength weakens considerably) living in villages or rural communities is quite problematic, due to the lack of healthcare and services.
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Vázquez-Palacios, F.R. (2016). The Spatial Practices of the Elderly in Rural Settings. In: Sánchez-González, D., Rodríguez-Rodríguez, V. (eds) Environmental Gerontology in Europe and Latin America. International Perspectives on Aging, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21419-1_12
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