This qualitative study examines meanings and experiences of ageism for older Australians. While the concept is widely applied in academic social analysis, the term is not understood or used by many of the informants. They talk freely, however, about negative experiences in ‘being seen as old’ and ‘being treated as old’. Active ageing is viewed as a positive way of presenting and interpreting oneself as separate from the ‘old’ group. Informants recognise that older people as a group experience negative treatment in terms of poor access to transport and housing, low incomes, forced retirement and inadequate nursing home care. While few have experienced overt or brutal ageism, interaction in everyday life involves some negative treatment, occasional positive ‘sageism’, and others ‘keeping watch’ for one's vulnerabilities. Health professionals are a major source of ageist treatment. Some older people limit their lives by accommodating ageism, while others actively negotiate new images of ageing for themselves and those who will be old in the future.

This paper traces the emergence and evolution of the concept of ageism with respect to employment matters in the UK, and challenges some features of the emerging concept as defective and undermining of efforts to eradicate age discrimination in employment. Also revealed is some loosening in recent years of the association of the term ‘ageism’ with older employees. This latter observation informed the focus of our empirical work, which examined the views of 460 Business Studies students concerning age and employment. A significant proportion had experienced ageism directly in employment, and a large majority favoured the introduction of legislative protection against age discrimination, with blanket coverage irrespective of age. Though negative stereotypes regarding older workers were by no means uncommon among the sample, little firm evidence emerged of intergenerational tensions or resentment towards older people. The concluding section considers the policy implications of our findings, including the relative merits of weighting policy responses towards older employees. It is argued that initiatives restricted in this way, and further constrained by commercial imperatives and macro-economic objectives, are likely to prove divisive and self-defeating as a means of combating ageism.

The purpose of this paper is to present a descriptive account and analysis of ethnographic research which focuses on gossip as an important social interaction between older people in sheltered housing. Analysis reveals that gossip plays a prominent role in the daily life of older people in the schemes studied, reinforcing social norms and values that assume great significance in a close-knit, predominantly female environment. Conclusions are drawn that while gossip may serve a useful social purpose in sheltered housing, it may also have important and paradoxical consequences for the individual. In particular, gossip is understood to be a form of interaction that encourages the individual to strike a balance between their personal and social needs in this communal setting.

This paper explores some of the experiences of older people living in residential settings (sheltered, very sheltered housing and residential care), in the context of theories of participation, consumerism and citizenship. It draws on material from personal interviews undertaken with over 100 older people in England and Wales, and also from discussions with staff. Two-thirds of respondents were aged over 85. A significant minority of residents expressed some concerns about the routines of life, such as meals and social contact. Staff expectations of social participation were often unrealistic: for many residents, social contact was more a matter of adjustment than of friendship. Residents did not participate in deciding how the residential settings where they lived should be organised and managed, except for helping with simple domestic tasks. There is a need to change both attitudes and practice to enable older people to participate more fully in these settings.

Most published research on informal care for older people focuses on the support provided by relatives. The role of non-kin carers can, however, also be significant in supporting older people in their own homes. In this paper, we report the findings from an exploratory study of the support provided by friends and neighbours who are the main carers of frail older people. It draws on interviews with an opportunistic sample of friends, neighbours and older people, which explored their views about the support arrangements, the reasons why help was provided and any difficulties experienced. Several friends and neighbours provided intensive and frequent help, and some played a key role in co-ordinating other services. One of the main forms of direct support related to older people's quality of life, at a broader level than the practical help provided by statutory services. The flexibility of such support, and the friends' and neighbours' concern for older people as individuals, were particularly important to the people they helped. Nevertheless, such help was not provided without costs to the carers. The study highlights the need for policy-makers and practitioners not to take help from friends and neighbours for granted and, in line with the White Paper Modernising Social Services, to provide the support services they need.

Dementia studies are currently dominated by biomedical and psychological models that focus on the individual without regard to their socio-cultural context (Bond 1992, 1999; Lyman 1989; Harding and Palfry 1997; Whitehouse et al. 2000). There is now a growing interest in how socio-cultural factors may mediate the experience of, and response to, dementia (Holstein 1998). The purpose of this review is to examine this growing interest in the socio-cultural context of dementia with reference to earlier developments in disability studies (Oliver 1990; Thomas 1999) and ageing research in general (Estes et al. 1984). The implications of placing dementia in a socio-cultural context for research, policy and practice will be discussed.

Most of the theoretical work on dementia has been devoted to pointing out the inadequacies of biomedical and psychological models in which problems are attributed solely to an individual's neuropathology with a simultaneous neglect of socio-cultural factors (Binney and Swan 1991; Lyman 1989; Harding and Palfry 1998; Kitwood 1998). The study of dementia, it is argued, has been limited by the broader ‘biomedicalisation of ageing’ whereby problems of ageing have been attributed to the ‘tragedy’ of the individual's pathology rather than as a function of an inadequate societal response. Robertson (1991) describes how people so labelled are referred to as ‘victims’ or ‘sufferers’. All difficulties in the person's life are attributed to their underlying disease with a consequent neglect of social and environmental factors that may ameliorate or prevent such ‘symptoms’.