six - Literature on social relations and caregiving

Summary

This is the last chapter that belongs to the part of this book based on the scoping review conducted prior to writing this book (for more information on this review, see the Appendix). This particular chapter is based on the literature on social relations and caregiving that brings attention to the intersection between ethnicity and old age that has been published in the 20-year period in focus in this review (n=52). As was the case in the previous two chapters this chapter begins by looking at where it is believed that research on the topic of this chapter was at before presenting the results of the scoping review. This is why I have consulted the handbooks, encyclopaedias and edited collections that are available in order to get a bird's eye view of scholarship at the intersection that focuses on social relations and caregiving before diving into the results of the scoping review performed.

In the entry on social relationships found in the Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences, Krause has a specific section titled ‘Variations by race’ in which he writes that it is not uncommon to assume that different ethnic and racial groups have different cultural values and that this may influence their social interactions, although ‘findings from the literature on race differences in social relationships, however, are by no means clear’ (Krause, 2006: 194). Furthermore, after summarily addressing some of the questions that the literature has raised, he ends up suggesting that a future agenda for social gerontology in this area needs to include not only more sophisticated research on racial differences in relation to social relationship measures but also studies of the implications of cross-racial relationships for ageing/old age-related issues as well as cohort-astute studies of the differences found in social relationships among minority group members.

In the chapter ‘Social relationships and health among minority older adults’ in the Handbook of Minority Aging, Lincoln (2014: 25) writes: ‘despite volumes of research on social support, many questions of conceptual, methodological, and theoretical importance remain. This is especially the case for older racial and ethnic minorities’.