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The nursing home as a discursive anchor for the ageing body

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 1999

JABER F. GUBRIUM
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Florida
JAMES A. HOLSTEIN
Affiliation:
Social and Cultural Sciences, Marquette University, Milwaukee

Abstract

The nursing home has become a paramount site for the care and custody of old people, but it also affects how we think and talk about the ageing body. In this article, narrative and ethnographic material drawn from a variety of care-related settings is used to illustrate how and where the nursing home serves as a discursive anchor for embodiment. Circumstantial, local cultural, and organisational mediations are considered, featuring institutionalisation to be as much a descriptive phenomenon, as it is a residential relocation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

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