A CENTER AS HAVEN: ETHNOGRAPHY OF ELDERS IN AN UNDERCLASS COMMUNITY (GHETTO, SENIOR CENTERS, ELDERLY).
Contributors: University of Pennsylvania.
Published: 1992
Number of pages: 213
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Gerontology.; Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Description: Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "the state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity ... and it is one of the fundamental rights of every human being." For elders who live in Turner, a poor, black Philadelphia community labelled underclass and known by outsiders for its underground drug economy and related crime, all three indicators of health are threatened by social ills: unsafe streets, dangerous public thoroughfares, thefts, muggings, burglaries, and stray bullets of random shootings. Social isolation, one alternative that elders have to survive social ills, increases their susceptibility to mental and physical ill health. Another alternative is for elders to come together during daytime hours into a protected space, a haven, and freely socialize with others who have similar life exigencies and needs, thus adding meaning to their lives and contributing to health and well-being. A senior center is one such haven.

This urban ethnography addresses the question: How do elders in an underclass community construct social relationships during daytime hours in a senior center as a means for survival of threats to social health and well-being? Participant observation, the method of data collection using the researcher as the instrument, was conducted over three years in the Frederick Douglass Senior Center in Turner, Philadelphia. Inductive analysis of data resulted in this ethnographic portrayal of lives of elders residing in the heart of drug territory and who find haven in the Center. While in the haven, elders exchange fear and social isolation for sociability and companionship, relating to each other according to particular rules, norms, values, and rituals, and actively constructing a community with a social hierarchy, a community that is different in many ways from the one they know on the outside. Ultimately, elders use this haven to adapt to and survive dramatic societal changes that have taken place during long lifetimes, changes resulting in threats to their mental, physical, and social health and well-being.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-11, Section: B, page: 5644.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 1992.

School code: 0175.