Dr. Grenier presented a paper in the symposium ‘Understanding Experiences of Ageing: Perspectives from Critical and Cultural Gerontology’ (Participants: Jan Baars, Paul Higgs, Amanda Grenier, Chris Phillipson) at the Cultural Gerontology conference in Galway Ireland on April 11, 2014.
http://www.conference.ie/Conferences/menu.asp?menu=1370&Conference=213
Crossing the boundaries of critical and cultural gerontology in the study of late life
Abstract: The study of ageing and late life is in transition. In this paper, I explore three sites of experience to think through the relationship between critical and cultural gerontology. Examples from research on frailty, transitions, and homelessness, illustrate how critical and cultural gerontology differentially contribute to understandings of ageing and late life. Yet, in each account, the interpretation could not have been achieved without crossing the boundaries of these two perspectives. Accounting for the interplay between structures, cultural contexts and individual experience requires a flexible and inter-disciplinary approach that reaches across critical and cultural gerontology in order to better understand the complexities and disjunctures that exist in the everyday lives of older people.