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With expertise in nursing,
social work, physical therapy and MU’s Eldercare Center,
Mizzou is quickly emerging as a national leader in gerontology.
Photo by Ken Hammond (USDA)
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Life
in Nursing Homes Challenges Stereotypes
Contemporary American culture prevents a deep
understanding of what it means to be old. The stereotypes are
strong and pervasive. Nursing home residents are depicted as sick,
frail, isolated and socially dysfunctional. Jaber Gubrium, a researcher
at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is challenging these perceptions.
“Too much of a reliance on stereotypes
blinds you to the way old people really are,” Gubrium says.
“My goal is to help people take off the usual lenses to
reveal the elderly in the multiplicity of their lives, as something
more than a homogenous group.”
Gubrium marvels at the complexity of life
within nursing homes, and his book, Speaking of Life,
uses residents’ life stories to present this more complex
view. He has conducted scores of in-depth, oral history interviews
with nursing-home residents. Using narrative as a tool, his subjects
have provided a complex, thorough picture of the diverse experiences
of old people. Ultimately, their stories have spoiled the stereotypes.
For example, Gubrium says that within nursing homes, because of
the prejudices borne from culturally constructed stereotypes,
workers might perceive outspoken residents simply as behavior
problems or troublemakers. A deeper, more critical analysis, however,
reveals that these residents are simply trying to maintain their
identity as people.
In Speaking of Life, one woman ruins
the assumption that the elderly are comfortable and at peace with
their religious faith. The resident’s health concerns and
acceptance that she may never return to her home cause her to
ponder whether she is losing her faith.
As editor of Ways of Aging, a new
volume on diverse experiences of the elderly, Gubrium wants to
build a deeper understanding of how old people live and how they
feel about being old. Much of Gubrium’s research provides
alternative experiences to the traditional assumptions society
harbors about the elderly. Through the words of several contributors,
the subjects in the new book illuminate these experiences.
Chairman of the sociology
department, Gubrium says that MU is rapidly becoming a major
national center for research in gerontology. MU gerontological
researchers are nationally and internationally recognized, and
are seeking the kind of support that would put the University
in the top tier of institutions researching problems of growing
old and aging. Gubrium is the editor-in-chief of the Journal
of Aging Studies, an internationally prominent research periodical
in gerontology that is published at MU.
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Last Update:
March 12, 2007
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