Leading scholars, offering international and multidisciplinary viewpoints, examine the meaning of home to elders and the ways in which this meaning may be sustained, threatened, or modified according to changes associated with growing old.
Organized into four sections–The Essence of Home, Disruptions of Home, Creating and Recreating Home, and Community Perspectives on the Meaning of Home, this volume explores topics including:
- What makes a house a home?
- What role does the meaning of home play in the process of relocation to another place of residence?
- What is the relationship between a person’s home life and cherished possessions such as symbolic jewelry or religious items in late life?
- How does the community/neighborhood environment influence the way that older people feel about the places in which they live?
Contributors include Hans-Werner Wahl, Robert L. Rubinstein, Edmund Sherman, Carolyn Norris-Baker, and Rick Scheidt, among others. As a special feature, this volume concludes with critical commentaries from three eminent scholars, Amos Rapoport, Kim Dovey, and Marie Versperi.
This volume will be of interest to practitioners, researchers, upper-level graduates/graduate-level students in gerontology, environmental psychology, social work, and nursing. It will be valuable to everyone in the helping professions who seek a deeper understanding of the ways in which ‘being at home’ and attachment to place plays a key role in the life experience and well-being of their clients as they grow older.
Table of Content
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Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I: Coming Home
Between the Shores of Recollection and Imagination: Self, Aging, and Home, Habib Chaudhury and Graham D. Rowles
Part II: The Essence of Home
Dimensions of the Meaning of Home in Later Life, Frank Oswald and Hans-Werner Wahl
Home, Self, and Identity, Robert L. Rubinstein and Kate de Medeiros
Cherished Objects and the Home: Their Meaning and Roles in Late Life, Eedmund Sherman and Joan Dacher
Home in the Context of Religion for Elderly Hindus in India, Sanjoy Mazumdar and Shampa Mazumdar
Part III: Disruptions of Home
Psychic Homelands and the Imagination of Place: A Literary Perspective, Nora J. Rubinstein
Elderly Migrants and the Concept of Home: A Swedish Perspective, Fereshteh Ahmadi Lewin
Semiotic Use of the Word ìHomeî Among People with Alzheimer’s Disease: A Plea for Selfhood?, Jacquelyn Frank
Conceptualizing Home and Homelessness: A Life Course Perspective, John F. Watkins and Amy F. Hosier
Part IV: Creating and Recreating Home
African Reinventions: Home, Place and Kinship Among Abaluyia of Kenya, Maria G. Cattell
Home, Identity, and Belonging in Later Life: The Perspectives of Disadvantaged Inner City Men, Cherry Russell
The Image of Nursing Homes and its Impact on the Meaning of Home for Elders, Elaine Caouette
Part V: Community Perspective on the Meaning of Home
On Community as Home: Places that Endure in Rural Kansas, Carolyn Norris-Baker and Rick J. Scheidt
The Influence of Neighborhood and Community on Well-Being and Identity in Later Life: An English Perspective, Sheila M. Peace, Caroline Holland, and Leonie Kellaher
Growing Older in Postwar Suburbs: The Meanings and Experiences of Home, Carole Despres and Sebastian Lord
Part VI: Leaving Home: Commentaries
On Using ”Home” and ”Place, ” Amos Rapoport
Home as Paradox, Kim Dovey
New Horizons on Home, Maria D. Vesperi
Leaving Home, Graham D. Rowles and Habib Chaudhury
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About the author
Habib Chaudhury, Ph D, is Chair and Professor, Department of Gerontology, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. He is also affiliated with the Centre for Research on Personhood in Dementia at the University of British Columbia.