Geographical Gerontology: New Contributions and Spaces For Development

The study of geographical dimensions of aging has never reached its full potential. Perhaps the best explanation for this state of geography in gerontology is that geographical analysis never had a firm foothold in gerontology in the first place. The geography of aging has been encouraged in its development through the years by the contributions of geographers such as Graham Rowles, Stephen Golant, Glenda Laws, Mark Rosenberg, and a few others who followed them, such as Gavin Andrews. Yet, only a fraction of the depth and scope of the collected theories, concepts, and methods of geography have been applied to gerontological thinking and research. Relatively few geographers have engaged the problems and opportunities of gerontology, and as a result, only part of geography's power to influence gerontology (or gerontology's chance to gain from geography) has been implemented. As a case in point, the lack of interest in aging by geographers ebbed to such a low point a few years ago that the aging specialty group of the Association of American Geographers was dissolved. Seemingly, at least in North America, the connection between geographical inquiry and gerontology remains tenuous. The mystery of this relationship becomes even more compelling if we pause to consider how geography cannot be separated from gerontology. Geographical dimensions of experience are fundamentally a part of everyday life for everyone, including of course, older people. Another element of the mystery is that parts of geography—a polyglot discipline—overlap with other approaches to aging construed as “environmental gerontology.” The latter, a tradition based primarily in the seminal contributions of nongeographers working with a focus on the environment (and to some degree on “place”) has added tremendous value to gerontology. The list of names is too long to mention, but Powell Lawton still casts a very long shadow and continues to dominate the thinking of many working in this vein. In environmental gerontology we find much empirical work, indeed much of it perhaps prone to the criticism of gerontology in general where much “microfication” and too little theoretical “development” occur (Hagestad & Dannefer, 2001). I stress development because Lawton's contributions remain the starting point for much research in this area, and the challenge of theoretical growth noted by Lawton and others 20 years ago remains (Wahl & Weisman, 2003). Nonetheless, the environmental gerontology tradition has become the dominant mode of geographical discourse within gerontology at the expense of a broader conception of geographical gerontology suggested by geographers (Andrews, Cutchin, McCracken, Phillips, & Wiles, 2007). I doubt that environmental gerontology has purposely excluded geographical concepts and theories. Perhaps the best way to understand the relationship is that environmental gerontology has not strayed very far from its birthplace (environmental psychology). The result is that environmental gerontology presents what many geographers are likely to find a too circumscribed, and too uncritical, view of aging, place, and space. And as I noted previously, geographers have not been engaged in numbers enough to enrich the environmental gerontology perspective with theories and concepts that would enhance the potential of a geographical gerontology. Moreover, many environmental gerontologists have not engaged with the geographic literature to extend thought. For the most part separated from each other, geography and gerontology both suffer the loss of potential. In the midst of this situation, any scholarly works that can help to bridge the gulf are most welcome. Arriving on the scene are two new viewpoints on geographical dimensions of aging that move some steps beyond the scope of traditional environmental gerontology and open up interesting conversations. Gerald Hodge's The Geography of Aging is an impressive contribution that can well serve nongerontologists, gerontology students, and seasoned gerontologists. And although Hodge writes with a focus on the Canadian context of boomers and the community response, it would be wise of American readers in particular to pay attention because of similarities between the two countries’ cultures, demographics, geographies, and challenges/opportunities. Hodge's volume is organized into four parts. The first part includes a chapter that introduces a variety of useful conceptual perspectives on aging and geography, a chapter that documents and conceptualizes the broad spatial patterns of seniors and their migration in Canada, and a chapter that moves down in geographic scale to consider the changing community contexts—urban, suburban, and rural—of Canada's older adults during the last three decades. In the second part of the book, Hodge shifts our attention to the community geography of seniors with a chapter on the key issues of daily life and activity of seniors and another on the most important aspects of community resources for older residents. The third part shifts our attention to future seniors’ demography and geography in Canada in Chapter 6, and then it offers in Chapter 7 a focused explanation of the key changes and issues that communities are likely to face as a result of the demographic and geographic changes. The final part of the text offers two chapters about planning for the upcoming effects of aging communities. Chapter 8 suggests the core conceptual issues that planners or other city officials must consider, and Chapter 9 provides a blueprint for how to carry out such planning efforts. Although Hodge is not alarmist in tone, his argument does suggest that communities undertake planning now and continue it into the future so that the challenges of boomer aging can be met and the opportunities used. Although Hodge, an urban planning professor, is neither a geographer nor a gerontologist per se, he apparently has been practicing unofficially at both roles for some time. The book is well supported by both geographical and gerontological literatures, and the citations and references are thorough—this is a scholarly text even though it seems to be directed at a broad audience including gerontologists, planners, and policy-makers. As the title suggests, Hodge's undertaking is ambitious. Yet, even though the subject matter is wide, Hodge accomplishes an admirable amount of nuance and sensitivity in his discussion. For instance, he is careful to note the complex role of gender, culture, and ethnicity in the story, and to my delight, he is sensitive to dynamics at various geographic scales of analysis (from neighborhood to country and various types of places in between). Moreover, I found the book interesting in its focus on activity in time and space, interaction of older people with their environments, as well as its use of concepts much overlooked in gerontology (and geography) such as activity space. Hodge uses good examples as well as many tables and figures throughout the book, and he appends brief personal essays by himself and others at the end of most chapters in an effort to bring key issues to life. As both a practical and conceptual primer on the complex issues of aging and geography, the book is in many ways a success and welcome addition. Hodge has, in my opinion, offered some useful geographical gerontology to the question of the boomer cohort's effect and needs. My enthusiasm for the volume is diminished somewhat by Hodge's overreliance on two frameworks. One is Lawton's model of environmental press, which Hodge returns to at various junctures to explain complexities of aging and place that the model is simply unfit to handle. The second is the planner-oriented focus on the triad of housing, transportation, and support services. Perhaps each model is well suited to basic planning purposes, yet for a book that at times engages with more subtle features of geography and aging, such as place and meaning, Hodge's perspective on the issues is skewed toward functionalism. Furthermore, Hodge seems to have overlooked other interesting and pertinent ideas from the more critical geography and aging literature such as “landscape” and the various critical significances it has (e.g., Kearns & Andrews, 2005; Laws, 1995). Nonetheless, the book serves an important audience and purpose. Whereas Hodge's urban planning perspective provides a more functional orientation to the questions of aging and geography, Norah Keating's edited volume brings a human ecology view to bear on the subset of older adults aging in rural places. Keating's approach is stated in Chapter 1 (written with Judith Phillips) as a “critical human ecology,” which is explained as a combination of the aforementioned perspective with that of critical gerontology. The primary goal is to challenge assumptions about growing older in rural areas. Although the collection as a whole does not offer many critical insights in the full sense of critical gerontology, it does bring what are presumed to be lingering, incorrect assumptions about rural aging into sharp relief. The collection of chapters is set up by the introductory chapter on human ecology and critical gerontology by Keating and Phillips as well as the second chapter by Tamara Daly and Gordon Grant on the relationship between the life course, ecology, and critical perspectives on rural aging. The next nine chapters take up a variety of issues of rural aging before the concluding chapter by Keating that provides a synthesis of themes in the preceding chapters. The list of authors includes a combination of more senior scholars familiar to many gerontologists (e.g., Chappell, Martin-Matthews, Scharf, and Wenger) and those who are in earlier phases of their careers. Most authors are Canadian, with the exception of several British authors and one Dutch author, and most chapters focus on Canadian contexts. The vast majority of the empirical evidence presented comes from qualitative data and analysis, although readers are rarely presented with details about methodology. Creating a cohesive narrative in an edited volume is near impossible, with the structure of the chapters playing an important role in helping to shape the reader's understanding of the issues, arguments, and conclusions. Keating faced a challenge with the volume as topics of connection to places and people, caregiving, disability and participation, mobility, and exclusion and inclusion were positioned in that order. Although the logic of the organization was not clear to me, Keating and contributors helped address this difficulty by employing frequent cross-referencing between chapters. The organizational issue notwithstanding, the volume is an important contribution for several reasons. First, there is a paucity of rural aging books, and those published are now dated. Second, the critical approach is useful (if limited in scope and power). Third, some of the chapters stand out as exemplary in their clarity and insight into vital issues of rural aging. Among the chapters I found most exciting was that by Sims-Gould and Martin-Matthews on the challenges of rural home care provision. The authors demonstrate a careful understanding, grounded in both theory and their data, of the nuance and tensions of aging and care in rural places. In addition to explaining the difficulties of care provision caused by barriers of distance, transportation, and weather, Sims-Gould and Martin-Matthews show how problems of privacy are also benefits in rural contexts and that a culture of independence and care refusal is often countered by family and neighborly care. They conclude that “the presence or absence of formal services is not the sole indicator of the social vitality of rural communities, nor the only indicator of whether rural areas are indeed good places in which to grow old” (p. 51). The two chapters by Jenny de Jong Gierveld and colleagues also add interesting new insights by focusing on social participation (volunteering in particular) in rural contexts. Although they find greater levels of volunteering in rural Canada as compared with urban Canada, regardless of disability level, they also find evidence that this difference may be caused by obligatory volunteering due to resource limitations and needs in rural communities. Even more hard hitting is Scharf and Bartlam's chapter on social exclusion of older people in rural communities. These authors’ argument challenges assumptions of the bucolic rural retreat where older adults may be short of resources but at least included in the community and served by the community's commitment to the common good. Using qualitative data from Britain, Scharf and Bartlam explain “how limited material resources, poor-quality social relationships, lack of access to services, and changes within rural communities can interact to reduce well-being” (p. 106). Because the contributors come from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, the literature used is varied. Yet, the book as a whole is grounded in more recent literatures than those used in Hodge's book (although less of it from geography). Those looking for a deep engagement with critical gerontology, however, will be disappointed. The critical is, for the most part, limited to giving voice to rural people and critically examining assumptions—both very important in their own right but much more tentative than critical gerontology's typical engagement with social theory and political economy. I also found myself wondering why colleagues from other parts of Europe or from the U.S. were not included in the collection and how that limited conclusions. In addition, with the exception of the chapter by Scharf and Bartlam, the discussion of policy is too muted. Nevertheless, the book is well written and edited, and at times it is stimulating and suggestive of a need for more work on the topic. After reading these books, I felt sure of two things. On the one hand, the books indicate that the place of geography as a subject matter in gerontology is alive and worthy of the attention of quality scholars. On the other hand, there is much left to do to extend the potential of geographic inquiry into gerontology. I would be the last to argue that geographies of aging must be conducted only by geographers, but geographies of aging will be unfulfilled without the inclusion of more insights from geographers. The good news is that there are lots of opportunities and ways to take what is provided by these two useful books and extend it. I will suggest a few here and leave the discussion open. Two of the oldest, largest, and most vibrant fields within geography are economic and political geography. The need for each in the study of place and older adults is implicit by omission in the arguments of these books. The problems of demographic change, mobility across space and time, and urban development (place change) at the heart of Hodge's book are fundamentally linked to processes of economic geography. Regional and urban economic development are major forces influencing the issues that are central to Hodge's concern, such as retirement destinations, housing markets, and transportation networks (e.g., Storper & Walker, 1989). The fate of rural places and populations at the center of Keating's book also are implicated in economic geographies. The geographic literature on rural restructuring in the more developed world has elaborated how rural lives and towns are interconnected with global corporations and global economic policies (e.g., Woods, 2005). Without those literatures and ideas, the understanding of rural aging, or of boomer aging and community adaptation, will be incomplete. Perhaps more importantly, the solutions we derive from those incomplete understandings are likely to be misguided. But we also need to address how communities are to plan for the surge in seniors or to make the rural experience better for older people. Such policies are political actions (and part of a political economy) that do not take place in a vacuum or without the influences of territorial power and larger forces of regional and national policy formation (e.g., Cox, 1997). Without linking the bigger picture of political-geographic issues—constraints and opportunities—gerontological applications along these lines are more likely to fail than succeed. Finally, the perspective of human–environment “fit” underlying both books continues to be a problem in much environmental gerontology because it tends to undertheorize, and thereby oversimplify, the human–place relationship. Recognition of the complexity and interconnectedness of places, their ongoing change, and the continuous (nondualistic) and active relationship of people and places suggests a need for improved theory about aging in place (Cutchin, 2003). The concept of “therapeutic landscapes” has developed currency in health geography and to some degree for the approach to older adults in care settings (see Williams, 2007), but the concept has been little applied to research on the broader community settings for older adults. A fuller depiction of the encounters with, and processes of, place would most likely result. Such theoretical growth would enable future authors to take these two books as starting points and push toward a more holistic, theoretical, and meaningful geographical gerontology.