Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T05:25:59.960Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reducing loneliness among older people – who is responsible?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2018

Axel Agren Open the ORCID record for Axel Agren [Opens in a new window]  and
Elisabet Cedersund
Axel Agren*
Affiliation:
Department of Social and Welfare Studies (ISV), Division Ageing and Social Change, Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden
Elisabet Cedersund
Affiliation:
Department of Social and Welfare Studies (ISV), Division Ageing and Social Change, Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the Swedish news-press, loneliness among older people is presented as a severe problem that needs to be solved. The issue of who is responsible for reducing loneliness and how this responsibility is designated is, however, rarely discussed. In this study, we have analysed how responsibility is designated and constructed in articles from the Swedish news-press. Focus has been on identifying responsibility in discourses proceeding from the concept of subject positions. This concept has enabled analysis on how responsibility is negotiated and who is positioned as a responsible actor with the ability to perform actions that reduce loneliness. Three dominating discourses were found. In the discourse of responsibility within politics and the welfare state, the responsibility is both self-taken and designated to other institutions held responsible for not initiating sufficient measures to reduce loneliness. In the discourse of responsibility within societal and evolutionary perspectives on loneliness, developments beyond the individual's control are considered to contribute to loneliness. At the same time ‘we’ in ‘society’ are considered capable of reducing loneliness, thereby constructing individuals as responsible actors. Within the discourses of responsibility within senior organisations, both senior organisations and people who participate in activities are constructed as responsible actors. In conclusion, the responsibility for reducing loneliness is, apart from the discourse on senior organisations, designated to those working with older people.

Keywords

lonelinessresponsibilitynews-presssubject positionsdiscourses
Type
Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , March 2020 , pp. 584 - 603
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Altheide, DL and Snow, RP (1979) Media Logic. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Althusser, L (1971) Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. London: New Left Books.Google Scholar
Bengtsson, T (2010) Population Ageing – A Threat to the Welfare State? The Case of Sweden. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergmann, J (1998) Introduction: Morality in discourse. Research on Language and Social Interaction 31, 279–294.Google Scholar
Berggren, H and Trägård, L (2015) Är svensken människa? – Gemenskap och oberoende i det moderna Sverige. Stockholm: Norstedts.Google Scholar
Birren, JE and Bengtson, VL (eds) (1988) Emergent Theories of Aging. New York, NY: Springer.Google Scholar
Burr, V (2003) Social Constructionism. Second edition. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Edley, N (2001) Analysing masculinity: Interpretative repertoires, ideological dilemmas and subject positions. In Wetherell, M, Taylor, S and Yates, S (eds), Discourse as Data. A Guide for Analysis. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Ekerdt, D (1986) The busy ethic: moral continuity between work and retirement. The Gerontologist 26, 239–244.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Estes, C-L (1979) The Aging Enterprise. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Estes, C-L (1999) The aging enterprise revisited. In Estes, C-L and Minkler, M (eds), Critical Gerontology Perspectives from Political and Moral Economy. Amityville, NY: Baywood, pp. 135–146.Google Scholar
Fealy, G, McNamara, M, Pearl Treacy, M and Lyons, I (2015) Constructing ageing and age identities: a case study of newspaper discourses. Ageing & Society 32, 85–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gadson, A (2003) Neither heart nor home: the (un)making of elder care responsibility. Journal of Aging Studies 17, 17–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gentleman, A (2016) Loneliness ‘forces older people into hospitals’ and strains services, say senior doctors. The Guardian, February 1. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/01/loneliness-forces-older-people-into-hospitals-and-strains-services-say-senior-doctors.Google Scholar
Gilleard, C and Higgs, P (2007) Cultures of Ageing: Self, Citizen and the Body, 2nd Edn. Harlow, UK: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Jolanki, O (2015) Whose business is it anyway? Distributing responsibilities between family members and formal carers. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice 9, 319–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, S (2000) Busy bodies: activity, aging, and the management of everyday life. Journal of Aging Studies 14, 135–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kessler, E-M, Rakoczy, K and Staudinger, UM (2004) The portrayal of older people in prime time television series: the match with gerontological evidence. Ageing & Society 24, 531–552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koskinen, S, Salminen, L and Leino-Kilpi, H (2014) Media portrayal of older people as illustrated in Finnish newspapers. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being 9, 25304.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laclau, E and Mouffe, C (2001) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy – Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Second edition. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Laliberte Rudman, D (2006) Shaping the active, autonomous and responsible modern retiree: an analysis of discursive technologies and their links with neo-liberal political rationality. Ageing & Society 26, 181–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loseke, D (2003) Thinking About Social Problems, 2nd Edn. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine Transaction.Google Scholar
Lundgren, AS and Ljuslinder, K (2011) ‘The baby-boom is over and the ageing shock awaits’: populist media imagery in news-press representations of population ageing. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life 6, 39–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markström, C, Ljuslinder, K and Sjöström, S (2011) Konsensus och personifierade konflikter – Problembeskrivningar av äldreomsorg i svensk dagspress. Sociologisk Forskning 48, 5–23.Google Scholar
Monbiot, G (2014) The age of loneliness is killing us. The Guardian, October 14. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/age-of-loneliness-killing-us.Google Scholar
Mullins, L-C (2007) Loneliness. In Birren, J (ed.), Encyclopedia of Gerontology. New York (NY): Elsevier, pp. 93–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nilsson, M (2008) Our Elderly – On the Construction of Older People in Public Discourses (Dissertation). Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden. (In Swedish)Google Scholar
O'Grady, S (2015) Loneliness as big a killer as obesity and as dangerous as heavy smoking. Express. Available at http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/563610/Loneliness-bad-obesity-and-heavy-smoking.Google Scholar
Phillipson, C (1998) Reconstructing Old Age. New Agendas in Social Theory. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Pikhartova, J, Bowling, A and Victor, CR (2016) Is loneliness in later life a self-fulfilling prophecy? Aging & Mental Health 20, 543–549.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosendale, M (2007) Loneliness: an exploration of meaning. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association 13, 201–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rozanova, J (2010) Discourse of successful aging in The Globe & Mail: insights from critical gerontology. Journal of Aging Studies 24, 213–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schirmer, W and Michailakis, D (2016) Loneliness among the elderly as a social problem: the perspectives of medicine, religion and economy. Ageing & Society 36, 1559–1579.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Socialstyrelsen (2016) Så tycker de äldre om äldreomsorgen 2016. Available at http://www.socialstyrelsen.se/publikationer2016/2016-10-2.Google Scholar
Solin, A and Östman, J-O (2015) Introduction: Discourse and responsibility. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice 9, 287–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spector, M and Kitsuse, J (1973) Social problems: a re-formulation. Social Problems 21, 145–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, JB (2000) The Media and Modernity – A Social Theory of the Media. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Timonen, V (2016) Beyond Successful and Active Ageing – A Theory of Model Ageing. Chicago, IL: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Townsend, P (1981) The structured dependency of the elderly: a creation of social policy in the twentieth century. Ageing & Society 1, 5–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uotila, H, Lumme-Sandt, K and Saarenheimo, M (2010) Lonely older people as a problem in society – construction in Finnish media. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life 5, 103–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Dyk, S (2014) The appraisal of difference: critical gerontology and the active-ageing-paradigm. Journal of Aging Studies 31, 93–103.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Victor, CR (2015) Loneliness and later life – concepts, prevalence, and consequences. In Sha'ked, A and Rokach, A (eds), Addressing Loneliness – Coping, Prevention and Clinical Interventions. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Victor, CR, Scrambler, S and Bond, J (2009) The Social World of Older People: Loneliness and Social Isolation in Later Life. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Victor, CR and Sullivan, MP (2015) Loneliness and isolation. In Twigg, J and Martin, W (eds), Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Warburton, J and Jeppsson Grassman, E (2011) Variations in older people's social and productive ageing activities across different social welfare regimes. International Journal of Social Welfare 20, 180–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westberg, N (2012) Messages from Seclusion. A Sociological Study of Loneliness and Solitude (Dissertation). Göteborg, Sweden: Daidalos. (In Swedish)Google Scholar
Wetherell, M and Edley, N (1999) Negotiating hegemonic masculinity: imaginary positions and psycho-discursive practices. Feminism Psychology 9, 335–356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winther Jørgensen, M and Phillips, L (2002) Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilińska, M and Cedersund, E (2010) ‘Classic ageism’ or ‘brutal economy’? Old age and older people in the Polish media. Journal of Aging Studies 24, 335–343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar