Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Relinquishing the practices of a lifetime : observations on ageing, caring and literacies.
AU - Hamilton, Mary
N1 - This is available as a pdf on the journal website
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - This paper draws on ethnographic and case study data from a variety of sources to explore the changing social practices of literacy across the lifespan. It explores the new literacy demands that people encounter with age when dealing with life events in a range of social domains. These include increased leisure; travel; changing family and peer relationships as a result of death and loss; issues of health and disability and accessing new technologies. It reveals how literacy is implicated in peoples' changing sense of time, place and history; how the older person’s identity as a literate actor may be interrupted by both institutional and informal processes of caring and their disengagement from spheres of activity that were previously central markers of their identity. Ageing thus involves both expansion and retreat from familiar literacy practices.
AB - This paper draws on ethnographic and case study data from a variety of sources to explore the changing social practices of literacy across the lifespan. It explores the new literacy demands that people encounter with age when dealing with life events in a range of social domains. These include increased leisure; travel; changing family and peer relationships as a result of death and loss; issues of health and disability and accessing new technologies. It reveals how literacy is implicated in peoples' changing sense of time, place and history; how the older person’s identity as a literate actor may be interrupted by both institutional and informal processes of caring and their disengagement from spheres of activity that were previously central markers of their identity. Ageing thus involves both expansion and retreat from familiar literacy practices.
KW - adult literacy ageing
M3 - Journal article
VL - 17
SP - 63
EP - 74
JO - Literacy and Numeracy Studies
JF - Literacy and Numeracy Studies
SN - 1441-0559
IS - 1
ER -