Environmental Perspectives on Ageing

According to Dannefer, context, broadly defined,1 ‘refers to the totality of the diverse range of phenomena, events and forces that exist outside the developing individual’ (1992: 84). The assumption that ageing occurs in context has meanwhile become, implicitly or explicitly, a core feature of models of ageing in biology, as well as those in the social and behavioural sciences. How such context is defined more concretely and what kind of impact is attributed to context strongly depends on the meta-theoretical perspective on ageing behind each of these disciplinary approaches. First, in current biogerontological theories, ageing is primarily viewed as an internal process of decline related to the flow of chronological age, ending in the event of death (Cristofalo et al., 1999). Environmental conditions are, however, expected to shape the survival time of ageing organisms, because it is generally acknowledged in models of longevity that genetic factors explain less than 30 per cent of variability in survival time in humans and in many other species (Vaupel et al., 2003). The understanding of context in biological models of ageing tends nevertheless to remain rather general, mostly referring to external physical properties such as temperature, kind and quantity of food, or environmental stress. Secondly, the social and behavioural sciences have put major emphasis on the operation of historical, cultural, and societal contexts, and how these shape ageing processes. As has been convincingly argued, historical events along with societal expectations and norms play a critical role in the sequencing of the life course2 from its very beginning to its very end (Baars et al., 2006; Dannefer, 1992; Elder, 1974). Hence, sociologists often focus on characteristics such as social class, cohort, and community-level variables to address the impact of contexts on older adults both today and in the future (e.g., see Phillipson, 2007). Psychological models of human ageing have also argued that the contextual component of lifespan and adult life development is critical to understanding development and ageing (Baltes et al., 1980, 1998). As compared to social science perspectives, the emphasis is more on micro rather than macro levels of person–environment (p–e) interfaces. That is, a fundamental psychological challenge for ageing individuals is continuously to adjust their relationship with the environment that they inhabit. Such adjustments may be required, for example, by loss in functional capacity (implying the need to relocate to a barrier-free environment), or by major life events related to ageing, such as the experience of retirement (occasioning, for instance, changes in the use of everyday living space at home with a partner). Accordingly, a major research task of psychological gerontology is to describe and explain stability and change of p–e dynamics as people age. An additional approach to defining context, which has evolved within gerontology, places major emphasis on the physical environmental sphere. Social gerontology has always acknowledged the critical role of physical surroundings on older people. This was illustrated by the detailed treatment of the role of housing for older people in one of the first handbooks in the field, edited by Tibbitts (1960). Alongside the evolution of social gerontology, a subdiscipline emerged with strong nurturance from Kleemeier’s work (1959), which has been called ‘environmental gerontology’ (other terms include ‘the ecology of ageing’). This research arena, founded on the basic principle that