Civic Socialising

Older people and social

interaction in local neighbourhood

shops Joan Stewart

Colette Browning

Jane Sims

Image permission: Microsoft

There is a largely theoretical knowledge-base about the value of interactions with others who are not family or friends (Blau, 2009, Fingerman, 2004, Fingerman, 2009, Kang, 1996)

Neighbourhood shops have been recognised as a places that enable social interaction (Oldenburg, 1991, Macintyre, 2000, Smith, 2000, Scarpello, 2009, Horne, 1984)

Why investigate this?

Image permission: Microsoft

club

neighbours

friendschurch

family

others?

Research approaches were largely:

quantitative

commonly employed:

- closed questions

- network mapping

- pre-determined typologies

- large non-purpose-collected data bases from which data were over interpreted

How / Why ?

Appraisal of journal

articles concerned

with older people’s

social ‘networks’

published between

1979 and 2011

Common research themes / underlying ethos:

Dependency

Risk of social deficit

Depression

Disease

Mortality

How / Why ?

Interpretive and exploratory (classic

grounded theory)

Focus on older people’s relationships

with people other than their family or

friends

A perspective that older people tend

to be proactive and resilient, rather

than dependent and despondent

My approach

Method

Sample

Data

Site

Classic grounded theory1

TheoreticalOlder shoppers av. age 79 (11) Shop-keepers (6)

InterviewsObservation

1Glaser, B. and Strauss, A. 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Aldine, Chicago.

• Inductive / constant comparative method

• Aims to identify the participants’ main concern …

• …develop succinct conceptual theory of how

participants resolve their concern

Classic Grounded Theory

1 Glaser, B. and Strauss, A. 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Aldine, Chicago.

‘Oh here comes the Smiths … you know (laughs)

and its everybody in the shop knows us’

‘See in the big shopping centre they don’t really know you… you could be a chair’

‘It’s (the neighbourhood) not a grotty area (amusement) it’s the only way I can put it’

‘I feel if I’m buying something they (shopkeeper)

should be polite to me’

‘People who go there all the time it’s a bonding experience …we all help each other because we know and we see each other’

Identity

Status

Trust

Coding

‘... but we already had a liquor shop see so we all howled that down’

Surveillance

Censorship

‘That was the grocer yes he wanted a licence for liquor ...’

‘My argument was .. if they allow there’s not room for two .. there’s only room for one and if they allowed another one in one business would go broke and then you’d have a chain reaction’

Authentication

Influence

Identity

Status

Trust

Surveillance

Censorship

Codes Category / Conceptual hypotheses

Membership

Stages in the development of the conceptual theory

 Stage 1 2 3 Main

concern

Conceptual

theory

Theoretical

hypotheses

 

 

Authentication Influence  Membership? ?

Codes

(concep

ts)

Trust ? ?

Identity ?

Status ?

SurveillanceNot yet identified

CensorshipNot yet identified

Choice Not yet identified Not yet identified Not yet identified

‘I shop there because we’ve got (bold type denotes emphasis) to have a grocer shop’

 

‘If they don’t get the customer turnover they close up’

Researcher:

‘I got a sense that the people who live in this area keep those shops in business cause they want them to stay’

Participant: 

‘To stay, that’s right’

Choice

Present time

‘We’ve got everything if we wanted it... say we don’t drive a car anymore you could go down here and almost get anything you want’

‘If they’re going to make us all have .. drivers’ tests and then they say well you’re not able to drive that will force people to look for the local shops and then you don’t have a choice and because through that .. it will continue on because we want those who want to be independent and not rely on relatives or whatever to drive you to shops if you want to be’

Choice

Future

ConsolidationStrengthening their community standing and maintaining the

milieu of the local shops

= autonomy

now and in the future

Main concern of the participants

Aim

Civic Socialising

Research

Policy and practice

Extension of the knowledge-base

Policy and practice

‘Well you can go there even if you are on a walking frame

you know or walking with a stick I mean you can make it

that far from here’

‘And you see the thing is they do mending like I don’t have a

machine anymore and my hands don’t work (shows hands) so if

it’s a zip in here or ah well will you take this up’

Implications

Age Care Reform Package ‘Living Longer. Living Better’

‘provides older Australians with more choice, more

control and easier access to a full range of

services, where they want it and when they need it’

Implications

Independence or dependence? Focus is on support service provision

Home delivery of goods or shopping services while an older person remains at home could isolate them

Older people who live in an unsafe environment or areas with multiple physical barriers are less likely to get out and therefore more prone to isolation, depression, reduced fitness and increased mobility problems

(World Health Organisation, 2012)

Current structures and services to enable an ‘independence

model of care’ are already overburdened or inadequate

(The Allen Consulting Group Care Coalition, 2007)

We need

Enabling environments

Identify the ways that older

people currently look after

themselves

We need

Open Helsinki project 2010A collaboration between Sitra and OK DoWorld Design Capital 2012 Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0.

Further research

Civic Socialising …

Other neighbourhoods?

Younger people?

Different socioeconomic circumstances?

Could a similar beneficial effect be gained if a local shop was introduced?