Managing Change in Old Age: The Control of Meaning in an Institutional Setting (Suny Anthropology and Judaic Studies) - Hardcover

Hazan, Haim

9780791410639: Managing Change in Old Age: The Control of Meaning in an Institutional Setting (Suny Anthropology and Judaic Studies)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0791410633 ISBN 13: 9780791410639

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1992

This book is an ethnographic study of an old age home in Israel that sheds light on the existential experience of elderly retirees. Hazan looks carefully at the universal concerns of old age, specifically examining the nature of everyday life in the institutional setting. He shows the workings of the micropolitics of control in an old age home and the tension between controlling dwindling resources and sustaining life-long meaning for residents. He also effectively brings out distinctive features of the Israeli situation, its cultural and bureaucratic codes. Hazan's study of the life cycle, based in the anthropology of process, is a senstive portrayal of the dynamics of institutionalized elderly in a complex society.

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About the Author:

Haim Hazan is in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel-Aviv University.

Review:

“Hazan’s book is interesting to read and that it is one of its strengths. It describes in rich detail the meaning of growing old in a home, stressing the diverse ways this is achieved. Hazan helps to dispel the prevailing concern with adaptation or adjustment so frequently found in the gerontological literature.The case study is informed by a sound explanatory framework, grounded in principles of understanding and explication. ‘Fields of control’ and ‘spheres of influence’ are the organizing concepts, providing a handy means of bringing the empirical matter to life.The contribution is important to the field of aging because the field has been dominated by a ‘linear’ view of the aging experience, emphasizing needs and successful adjustment to the denigration of its complications and dynamism.” ― Jaber F. Gubrium, University of Florida

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