Ageing, Narrative and Identity New Qualitative Social Research

Ageing, Narrative and Identity: New Qualitative Social Research outlines the methodology and results of the Fiction and the Cultural Mediation of Ageing Project (FCMAP), led by a research team from Brunel University, UK. In investigating how older people resist stereotypical cultural representations of ageing, the study demonstrates the importance of narrative understanding to social agency. This book will therefore be of interest not only to students and researchers in the growing interdisciplinary field of Ageing Studies, but also to those with interests in Social Policy, Social Narrative and wider socio-cultural conceptions of the interaction between representation and everyday life.

Nick Hubble is Head of English at Brunel University, UK.

Philip Tew is Professor of English and Director of the Brunel Centre for Contemporary Writing at Brunel University, UK.

PART I: CONTEXTS AND METHODOLOGIES
1. The Fiction and the Cultural Mediation of Ageing Project (FCMAP)
2. Everyday Life, Self-narrative and Identity
PART II: MASS OBSERVATION AND AGEING
3. Mass Observation and the University of the Third Age
4. Understanding Third and Fourth Age Subjectivity from Mass Observation Responses
5. Responses to the Mass Observation Ageing Directives: Five Case Studies
PART III: READERS, WRITERS AND AGEING
6. Representations of Ageing in Post-war British Fiction
7. The Reading Diaries: Four Case Studies
8. The Role of Narrative Representation and Exchange in How Older People Understand Ageing
9. The Specific Attitudes of Writers to Ageing