Orton, Marian (2017) Ageing in urban neighbourhoods in Beijing, China : an ethnographic study of older Chinese people's neighbourhood experiences. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis explores Chinese older people’s perception and experiences of ageing and age care in an urban neighbourhood in Beijing China. It is informed by a growing body of theoretical and empirical research regarding ageing and also draws upon research that has made linkage between ageing and place. However, little research has investigated older people’s experiences of ageing in a rapid changing urban neighbourhood and how these environmental changes affect their day to day lives in China. Thus, by conducting 34 in-depth interviews, participant observation in three urban neighbourhoods in urban Beijing and photography produced by the researcher, this study took a social constructionist stance and ethnographic research design to explore older people’s ageing experience in a rapidly changing environment, in this case, the role of the neighbourhood outdoor places in their day to day lives. The findings from this study demonstrate that the Western understanding of AIP is not sufficient to apply to the current social, economic and cultural context in urban Beijing. As the nascent concept of Ageing in place (AIP) has been embedded within broad socio-cultural institutions, numerous institutional legacies and socio-cultural factors directly and indirectly related to AIP serve as the discursive resources that shape and inform individuals’ disputant discourses. These factors not only frame their basic logics, vocabularies and moral reasoning but also shape their structural positions on housing access, pension rights and later-life care. Participants in these three neighbourhoods have been constantly constructing and reconstructing their understanding of ageing and AIP with the wider economic, political, social and cultural influences. These interesting perceptions of and attachment to neighbourhood engagement invite further theoretical reflections, as ageing and age care for older people in China have been greatly influenced by existing cultural norms, as well as new social trends, in a far more complicated and ambivalent fashion than commonly assumed and observers have envisioned.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Older people -- China -- Beijing, Aging -- China -- Beijing, Older people -- Care -- China -- Beijing, Sociology, Urban -- China -- Beijing, Neighborhoods -- Social aspects -- China -- Beijing
Official Date:	July 2017
Dates:	Date Event July 2017 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Centre for Lifelong Learning
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Harrison, Christine, 1953- ; Mockford, Carole
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	xiv, 384 leaves : illustrations, maps
Language:	eng

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