The gerontological prism: developing interdisciplinary bridges

352 Pages·2018·59.945 MB·English

by  Allman, Richard M., Clair, Jeffrey Michael

THE GERONTOLOGICAL PRISM:
Developing Interdisciplinary Bridges
Edited by
Jeffrey Michael Clair
and
Richard M. Allman
University ofA labama at Birmingham
Jon Hendricks, Series Editor
Society and Aging Series
Boca Raton London New York
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First published 2000 by Baywood Publishing Company, Inc.
Published 2018 by CRC Press
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ISBN 13:978-0-415-78428-3 (pbk)
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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 99-32264
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The gerontological prism : developing interdisciplinary bridges I
edited by Jeffrey Michael Clair and Richard M. Allman.
p. em. -- (Society and aging)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-89503-201-5 (cloth)
1. Gerontology. 2. Aged--Medical care. I. Clair, Jeffrey M.,
1958- II. Allman, Richard M., 1955- III. Series : Society
and aging series.
HQ106l.G416 1999
305.26--dc21 99-32264
CIP
Preface
This book has its origins from a meeting to promote disciplinary cooperation in aging
research and practice undertaken by a group of multidisciplinary scholars who came
together to discuss their ideas in May of 1996. The enterprise was sponsored by the
Boldizar Social Medicine Fund, and by the Department of Sociology, School of
Social and Behavioral Sciences, School of Health Related Professions, and the
Center for Aging at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. From this conference
each participant has produced a chapter for this volume which represents their
contributions to the original gathering. We come back together here under the
eventual title of our effort: The Gerontological Prism: Developing Interdisciplinary
Bridges.
Chapters prepared for this book will challenge and stimulate anyone concerned
with the human interactions and biopsychosocial processes that constitute aging. The
authors come close to representing the almost bewildering number of disciplines
currently offering suggestions on improving research and practice strategies in geron­
tology and geriatrics. They include researchers and practicing physicians, from
general medicine, geriatrics, surgery, neurology, OB-GYN, urology, and ophthal­
mology, as well as the disciplines within the social and behavioral sciences such as
sociology, psychology, history, and medical sociology; the health administration
professions; nursing; and from the economic and ethical dimensions of public health.
Our intention is to draw distinctions between disciplinary, multidisciplinary,
and interdisciplinary studies. Our approach is to provide original manuscripts that are
focused and comprehensive, drawing on empirical and applied research, literature
reviews, and theoretical and research agenda setting contributions. We come together
as contributors with a diverse, yet specifically focused, body of material that should
encourage concentrated efforts to develop bridges for integrating the disparate parts
of the gerontological literature.
Although the strength of disciplinary perspectives is apparent, the issues raised,
when combined, cut across disciplinary boundaries. We codify a host of literature in
gerontology and geriatrics and generate new questions in a language meant to be
discipline-friendly. This is another purpose of our union: to put together a body of
work that can be used in the varied gerontology and geriatric education programs. We
have found that no matter where a course offering is housed, today’s student body is
diverse and the topics addressed here will make up the stuff of many class discus­
sions. We have tried to make the issues here accessible to scholars and students in
many disciplines, especially those outside the specialized backgrounds of the authors.
iii
iv / THE GERONTOLOGICAL PRISM
To some extent, each chapter explores a unified objective, that of generating a
disciplinary-blind gerontology. The fundamental assumption throughout this book is
that the aging individual and society can be enhanced by an understanding of the
correlates of basic social, behavioral, demographic, economic, political, ethical, and
biomedical processes involving aging. Each author touches on issues that have both
social psychological and practical policy significance. We aim toward sensitizing
the reader to the possibilities of a properly informed interdisciplinary approach to
gerontology.
Our perspective promises movement toward an eventual rapprochement
between opposing disciplinary perspectives, although we identify many significant
issues still unresolved. First, while virtually all disciplines offer perspectives on how
much the overall environment of aging has changed, training and research in geron­
tology and geriatrics remains enmeshed in traditional perspectives and methods.
Second, disciplinary jargon is a major obstacle to shared information. We need to
deal with differences in our conceptual languages before we can identify promising
ideas, and distinguish them from dead-ends. Third, most professional journals typi­
cally publish only a single discipline’s research. Since the cited research shows
almost no overlap across disciplines, the result is the failure to promote broad based
information on aging. The themes of interdisciplinary bridges and research priorities
epitomize the need for, and provide the substantive basis of, a gerontological
dialogue across disciplines.
The idea for putting prism in our title was borrowed from our co-authors in this
volume, Stanford and Stanford. They describe the cultural diversity in society as a
prism. We like the primary essence of the analogy, and agree that one of the colors
in the spectrum of diversity is gerontology. The prism represents a perspective
generated from a variety of sources all weaved together, casting light, and drawing
light from each other. In academia, gerontological boundaries are usually demar­
cated, even as we speak of diffusion and generality. Like the color spectrum of a
prism, these boundaries should blend and merge with the agenda and concerns of
race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, social support, religion, personal
preferences, aspirations, and co-morbid health trajectories. Even the fluctuant quality
of the life course itself relates to the metaphorical prism. Each person, like the crystal
slant, varies in complexity and capacity. We can see a mosaic of people taking this
fluctuant reality and, like art, forging something more permanent to house person-
hood and the rhythm of life. Viewing our lives like a prism makes us recognize that
we do not exist in a homogeneous world. We have our identities, habits, personal
presentations of self, group affiliations, and our special way of living. These
examples, too, identify another reason for our cooperation here, to generate integra­
tive efforts, to focus on becoming leaders toward helping our institutions grow into
seamless organizations, molding and merging seemingly isolated gerontological
research agendas. To accomplish this, we have to understand that we cannot continue
to perpetuate narrow disciplinary agenda that fail to focus on the breadth and depth
of the prism before us.
This book is timely in that social change has placed new demands on our
aging society, thereby altering almost every aspect of the individual aging process.
PREFACE / v
Mandates toward changing aging programs and practices are abundant. Just as
medicine was encouraged to embrace the biological sciences some 100 years ago,
recent directives are now suggesting the importance of bridging or blending the
gerontological disciplines and professions, developing a broader view of the geron­
tological spectrum. This book is an attempt to contribute to that dialogue by pro­
ducing questions and evidence concerning the appropriate goals and objectives of
gerontology in the context of a changing environment.
The turn of this century will prove to be a pivotal period for the politics of aging.
Social policies for older persons are undergoing a scrutiny unlike anything seen since
existing programs and laws benefiting older persons were enacted in the 1930s and
1960s. Torres-Gil, in many of his writings, has informed us that our near future
should prove to be a “watershed” in the transition from the modem aging period to a
new aging era “where generational claims, diversity and longevity” will be hallmarks
of the politics of aging and social policy. This transition is observable by the growing
public awareness about aging and gerontological and geriatric concerns. Aging no
longer is just the domain of gerontology and geriatrics, but cuts across disciplines and
policy agenda. We are all becoming aware that the aging of America has implications
for the economic, political, and social conditions of our nation. Our responses will
shape what this country looks like in the next century.
Many issues raised within the following pages are only now receiving proper
attention from multiple perspectives. The current lack of convergence among geron­
tological and geriatric scientific perspectives needs to be replaced with interdisci­
plinary collaborative efforts. Such efforts are rare for many reasons, but conceptual
language differences across disciplines remain the most formidable obstacle. This
edited collection represents a beginning effort to bring together within one volume
the gerontological prism.
In producing a collection which builds toward an interdisciplinary gerontology,
we provide observations that influence and challenge health care professionals,
social, behavioral, and basic scientists, those in the various schools of medicine,
nursing, and public health, and others concerned about the present problems and
future direction of our aging population and society. We fully expect this book to
have an impact on generating additional thinking about interdisciplinary gerontology,
thereby transforming general theoretical debate and permeating empirical practice.

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Joe Hendricks for his support of this project. We also would
like to thank Bill Ershler, William Hazzard, John Mountz, and Fernando Torres-Gil
for their early contributions and participation. Our appreciation to Bill Cockerham,
Mark La Gory, Toshio Sei, and Michael Wrigley for reviewing various parts of this
collection, and to the anonymous external reviewers. Also, our gratitude to Freddie
Thomas for preparing all the manuscripts for this publication, and, most important,
her giving spirit.
Jeffrey Michael Clair
Richard M. Allman
vii

Table of Contents
Introduction........................................................................................................... 1
SECTION I: CORE DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES
CHAPTER 1
Aging and Social Change: Toward an Interdisciplinary Research
Agenda........................................................................................................ 9
Stephen J. Cutler
CHAPTER 2
Psychology’s Contributions to Gerontology............................................. 29
Laura L· Carstensen, Jeremy Graff, and Frieder Lang
CHAPTER 3
A Social Psychology of the Life Cycle: Interdisciplinary Social
Policies, Perceptions, and Prospects........................................................ 49
Jeffrey Michael Clair, William C. Yoels, and David A. Karp
CHAPTER 4
Clinical and Health Services Delivery Research .................................... 75
Richard M. Allman, Patricia S. Baker, and Richard S. Maisiak
SECTION II: KEY SUBSTANTIVE ISSUES
CHAPTER 5
Diversity As a Catalyst for Change........................................................... 97
E. Percil Stanford and Gwendolyn E. Stanford
CHAPTER 6
Intergenerational Relationships and Aging: Families, Cohorts,
and Social Change...................................................................................... 115
Vern Bengtson, Timothy Biblarz, Edward Clarke, Roseann Giarrusso,
Robert Roberts, Judith Richlin-Klonsky, and Merril Silverstein
ix