Member Checking Gerontology: The Case of Retirement

Gerontology has long been a public-facing field with an applied focus. As such, the credibility of gerontology’s conclusions and guidance about aging are crucial, our advice having relevance and impact in proportion to its popular resonance. In 2021 I authored an article for a large-circulation newspaper that generated over 500 reader replies, creating an opportunity for member checking of a kind. The article reported my personal experience of having retired—what I expected and what was a surprise. All of my observations about emotions and lifestyle, while my own, were nonetheless grounded in the research literature. Public comments on the article came from a readership that skews male and highly educated, i.e., people like myself. Many comments affirmed my observations (e.g., about time use, awareness of finitude) as experiences we had in common. Some comments disputed my authority, as an academic, to say anything valid about the “real world.” Opinion split on the value of continued work: it gives life meaning, it invites corrosive stress. Likewise, some retirees endorsed surrender to leisure while others urged engagement. One research takeaway: with no standard way to be retired or regard it, the quality of retired life remains a measurement challenge. Another takeaway: Retirees with partners commonly describe experience in the first-personal plural (we, us), suggesting that dyads are often apt units of analysis for retirement studies. This is but one case study, but it indicates that we must continually assess whether gerontology’s knowledge is valid and whether the public is grateful for it

Safe passage of goods and self during residential relocation in later life

Techniques of possession research among older people tend to accentuate their prizing of things and their use of special dispositions to achieve the protection or ‘safe passage’ of things as they transfer to a new owner. Such efforts on behalf of possessions may also be undertaken to perpetuate the self. To study the care of things and self in a wider context, we examined older people’s repertoire of disposition strategies during episodes of household relocation and downsizing. We analysed the narratives of persons in 75 households in the Midwestern United States of America. People indeed told stories about the safe passage of cherished possessions – their initiative to place things, appreciation by new owners, and attempts to project the values or memory of the giver. Such accounts of special placements, however, dotted rather than dominated recollections of the move. More commonly, large quantities of items were passed via non-specific offers of possessions to others who may volunteer to take them. This allowed people to nonetheless express satisfaction that their possessions had found appreciative owners. Even though our interviews did not disclose extensive attempts at self-transmission, whole-house downsizing may affirm the self in another way: as conscientious about the care of things. Such affirmation of the present self as accomplished and responsible can be seen as a positive adaptation to the narrowing life world

KEEPING THINGS, BUT ONLY FOR A WHILE

This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Innovation in Aging following peer review. The version of record Ekerdt D. J. (2019). KEEPING THINGS, BUT ONLY FOR A WHILE. Innovation in Aging, 3(Suppl 1), S362–S363. https://doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igz038.1323 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igz038.1323. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.The life course is accomplished by material culture held as a convoy of possessions, but also sustained by public affordances and amenities that include the artifacts and artworks to be found in museums. In both places—household and museum—objects come and go, but there is mainly keeping. The difference lies in the capacity to keep things indefinitely: it is virtue for museums but a predicament for households of aging adults. Museums model ideals of permanence and responsibility toward things, ideals that, in the long run, households can only faintly attain. For older adults and for gerontologists, preservation is the wrong lesson to take away from the galleries. Rather, what we can learn there is how single, selected things can show, in a thoughtful way, an entire world of ideas and universe of meaning. No need to keep it all—and forever—but we can honor things while we can.

Possession Divestment by Sales in Later Life

Residential relocation in later life is almost always a downsizing, with many possessions to be divested in a short period of time. This article examines older movers’ capacities for selling things, and ways that selling attenuates people's ties to those things, thus accomplishing the human dis-possession of the material convoy. In qualitative interviews in 79 households in the Midwestern United States, older adults reported their experience with possession sales associated with residential relocation. Among this group, three-quarters of the households downsized by selling some belongings. Informal sales seemed the least fraught of all strategies, estate sales had mixed reviews, and garage sales were recalled as laborious. Sellers’ efforts were eased by social relations and social networks as helpers and buyers came forward. As selling proceeded, sentiment about possessions waned as their materiality and economic value came to the fore, easing their detachment from the household. Possession selling is challenging because older adults are limited in the knowledge, skills, and efforts that they can apply to the recommodification of their belongings. Selling can nonetheless be encouraged as a divestment strategy as long as the frustrations and drawbacks are transparent, and the goal of ridding is kept in view

Methods of tailoring the deposition of metals using self-assembled monolayers

In some aspects, the present disclosure provides methods of depositing a metal onto a nanomaterial which has been passivized with a self-assembled monolayer at a weakened point in the topography of the nanomaterial. In some embodiments, the weakened point is caused by the curvature of the topography. This method may be used to prepare electronic devices such as memory modules.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

Confronting the Material Convoy in Later Life

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Smith, G. V. and Ekerdt, D. J. (2011), Confronting the Material Convoy in Later Life*. Sociological Inquiry, 81: 377–391. doi:10.1111/j.1475-682X.2011.00378.x, which has been published in final form at http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-682X.2011.00378.x. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.We adapt a metaphor from life course studies to designate the whole of one’s possessions, across time, as a convoy of material support. This dynamic collection of things supports daily life and the self, but it can also present difficulty in later life. To alleviate the purported burdens of the material convoy, a discourse has arisen that urges elders and their family members to reduce the volume of possessions. An analysis of 11 such possession management texts shows authors addressing two distinct audiences about elders’ need to downsize: family members and elders themselves. Authors who speak to family members do so with an urgent, unsentimental tone that echoes mainstream clutter-control advice about disorderly, overfull households. In texts for elders, the standard critique about consumption and unruly lives is gentler, more sensitive to the meaning of things, and underplays the emotions of divestment. There is stress on the responsibility to spare the next generation and control one’s legacy. These latter texts seem to respect that downsizing in later life symbolizes a narrowing of the life world