老いを歩む : フィンランドの年金生活者達の合宿にみる身体変容への展望(<特集>メタモルフォーシスの人類学)
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概要
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What kind of process is getting old? What is aging? We do not recognize the weakening of our bodies until we cannot neglect it any more. The gaze of other people forces the "self" to confront its bodily transformation of aging. Especially, interactions within the same age group have that effect. This paper examines the following two questions. First, how is the continuity of aging self maintained? Secondly, how do the fragmented experiences of getting old become shared once again? We can find the answer in the process of perceiving one's old age, which is triggered by the aging body itself within the life course of elderly people. The central focus of ethnographic description in this paper is a group of elderly Finnish people and the welfare service facility where these people spend their time and share their space. In particular, examples have been taken from a pensioners' parish camp in Archipelago Town, located in southwest Finland. The pensioners' camp offers various kinds of activities to its participants. By participating in those activities and sharing their experiences with other people with various health conditions, elderly people in the camp are encouraged to actively engage with and help each other. That relationship keeps revolving between active forms of participation and the passive need to be assisted by other people. Therefore, the camp is a place to share the experience of becoming old, such as the aging of the body, or the biographical turning point after retirement. As a result of that interaction and the relationship of assisting and being assisted, the camp prompts participants to find their own "past" or "future" within someone else's daily life. Quoting the moral philosopher Derek Parfit, Kaoru Ando redefined the modem "subject" by suggesting that the behavioral patterns of anticipation and attachment towards a future self establish the temporal continuity of the "person." The revolving relationships between active and passive engagement in the pensioners' camp create the patterns of anticipation towards and the attachment to one's own self among other aging people. That performative process enables the continuity of the aging self. The logic of establishing old age as a meaningful process by activating the daily life of elderly people in Archipelago Town is articulated in the institutional setting of the pensioners' camp described in this paper.
- 2009-12-31