Countryside Connections: Older People, Community and Place in Rural Britain 9781447310310

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COUNTRYSIDE CONNECTIONS Older people, community and place in rural Britain

Foreword by Alan Walker

Edited by Catherine Hagan Hennessy, Robin Means and Vanessa Burholt

COUNTRYSIDE CONNECTIONS Older people, community and place in rural Britain Edited by Catherine Hagan Hennessy, Robin Means and Vanessa Burholt

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Policy Press North America office: University of Bristol Policy Press 6th Floor c/o The University of Chicago Press Howard House 1427 East 60th Street Queen’s Avenue Chicago, IL 60637, USA Clifton t: +1 773 702 7700 Bristol BS8 1SD f: +1 773-702-9756 UK [email protected] t: +44 (0)117 331 5020 www.press.uchicago.edu f: +44 (0)117 331 5367 [email protected] www.policypress.co.uk © Policy Press 2014 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 978 1 44731 030 3 hardcover The right of Catherine Hagan Hennessy, Robin Means and Vanessa Burholt to be identified as editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Policy Press. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the editors and contributors and not of the University of Bristol or Policy Press. The University of Bristol and Policy Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Policy Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design by Policy Press Front cover image: istock Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow Policy Press uses environmentally responsible print partners

Contents List of tables and figures v Acknowledgements vii Notes on contributors ix Foreword by Alan Walker xv one

Countryside connections in later life: setting the scene Catherine Hagan Hennessy, Robin Means and Vanessa Burholt

two

Conceptualising rural connectivities in later life Nigel Curry,Vanessa Burholt and Catherine Hagan Hennessy

31

three

Rural connectivity and older people’s leisure participation Catherine Hagan Hennessy,Yvette Staelens, Gloria Lankshear, Andrew Phippen,  Avril Silk and Daniel Zahra

63

four

Connecting with community: the nature of belonging among 95 rural elders Vanessa Burholt, Nigel Curry, Norah Keating and Jacquie Eales

five

Beyond transport: understanding the role of mobilities in connecting rural elders in civic society Graham Parkhurst, Kathleen Galvin, Charles Musselwhite, Judith Phillips, Ian Shergold and Les Todres

125

six

Deep mapping and rural connectivities Jane Bailey, Iain Biggs and Daniel Buzzo

159

seven

Older people, low income and place: making connections in rural Britain Shane Doheny and Paul Milbourne

193

eight

Connecting with older people as project stakeholders: lessons for public participation and engagement in rural research Simon Evans, Ray Jones and Janet Smithson

221

nine

Towards connectivity in a Grey and Pleasant Land? Robin Means,Vanessa Burholt and Catherine Hagan Hennessy

245

Index

1

277

iii

List of tables and figures Tables 1.1 1.2 1.3 2.1 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1

Characteristics of the study sites in Wales Characteristics of the study sites in South West England Characteristics of participants in each type of rural area The main activity of older people’s forums in the South West Levels of low income, benefit receipt and qualifications among older people in the study areas The number of key services and community and voluntary activities in the study areas The social dimensions of place Summary of the content of 23 posts made by 14 participants on a thread entitled ‘What is rurality?’

16 17 20 34 200 203 205 231

Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 2.1

2.2 2.3 2.4 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3

‘Judges assessing an entry: Hatherleigh Conservative 12 Flower Show’ ‘Archie Parkhouse leading his sheep’ 12 ‘Over 60s Club members waiting for the bus’ 13 ‘Harvest Festival Service’ 13 Districts and local authorities in Wales and South West 15 England showing the location of the study sites Levels of involvement of rural elders in a selected range of 37 community organisations (percentage involved in any one group) Barriers to participating in community activities (percentage 38 of all who responded to this question) Bourdieu’s four capitals make up, in different proportions, 47 the capital profile of individuals and groups of rural elders Ecological model for connectivities 49 Frequency of participation in hobbies and leisure activities 69 Examples of Gypsy Traveller leisure portraits 82 Examples of North Cornwall leisure portraits 84 Statistical mediation model for social place attachment 108 Statistical mediation model for aesthetic place attachment 108 Statistical mediation model for amenity/ 109 environment-oriented physical attachment to place

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Implications of the narrow economic-efficiency approach 128 to trip characterisation 5.2 Indicative comparative trip profile classification by stage 129 in life course 5.3 A continuum of modes of connectivity 132 5.4 Reported household connection to the Internet 133 5.5 Example five-stage biographical transition across the 139 mobility continuum 5.6 Most recent use of a range of transport options 142 5.7 Reported difficulty in accessing services, facilities and 145 locations of social connection 5.8 Distribution of distances reported travelled to locations 146 of social and community connectivity 5.9 Reported use of the Internet for banking and shopping 146 by age group 5.10 Perceptions of feeling excluded by degree of rurality 148 of residence 6.1 Conversing 164 6.2 Walking with Stroll Back The Years 165 6.3 Lifecycles and contested sites 167 6.4 Interaction 168 6.5 Taskscape 169 6.6 Joining in 171 6.7 Close to Blisland Primary School 174 6.8 Insect encounter 176 6.9 Pack o’ Cards 179 6.10 Team ‘weaving’ session 180 9.1 Diagrammatic representation of the relationship between 258 the sociocultural and environmental domains of the human ecology model for social connectivity 9.2 Diagrammatic representation of the relationship between 261 the sociocultural and environmental domains of the human ecology model for environmental connectivity

vi

Acknowledgements The genesis of this book was in the connections that were created with colleagues – old and new – and rural communities through the Grey and Pleasant Land project. This work provided a special opportunity to bring together a group of researchers and practitioners to explore ageing in the British countryside from a previously unattempted interdisciplinary perspective. This was made possible through funding from the UK Research Councils (RES-353-25-0011) under the New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) programme. We are grateful to these funders and to the NDA Programme Director, Alan Walker, for their support and encouragement to undertake this work. The linked Canadian project that provided a comparative international dimension in this research (Rural Connectivities of Older Adults: Health in Context) was funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) Institute on Ageing (CIHR CUK 94355). We wish to thank these funders for their support for collaboration with our Canadian colleagues at the University of Alberta. Images of the British countryside – past and present – form an important part of this work, and we gratefully acknowledge the photographers whose images we have used in this book. Permission to use the photographs by James Ravilious included in Chapter One was kindly granted by the Beaford Archive. Ted Franklin of the Ideas House and Ana Langridge provided the photographs of the Gypsy Traveller and North Cornwall interviewees, respectively, in Chapter Three. All photographs in Chapter Six are courtesy of Jane Bailey. The staff at Policy Press provided helpful assistance in all aspects of the production of this book. We thank Emily Watt, Laura Vickers, Alison Shaw, Isobel Bainton, Rebecca Tomlinson and Laura Greaves for their advice and guidance throughout this process. Finally, this book would not exist without the generous cooperation of the older adults whose experiences of rural ageing are the subject of this volume. We are grateful to our study participants and to all the rural community members who helped us in our research. Catherine Hagan Hennessy, Robin Means and Vanessa Burholt

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Notes on contributors Jane Bailey is an artist-researcher who employs a collaborative approach to engaging with place and people. Alongside her art practice, she has worked as a multimedia producer/director, including with the Engine Room, University of the Arts London, exploring interdisciplinary collaborations for the Wellcome Trust. Her role within the Grey and Pleasant Land project formed part of an art practice doctorate at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Iain Biggs, Royal West of England Academy, is an independent artist/ educator/researcher. He is visiting research fellow at the University of the West of England where he was previously reader in visual arts practices and director of the PLaCE International (England) Research Centre.Trained as a painter/printmaker, since 1999, he has undertaken a range of deep mapping projects. He has published on this and a range of other issues, particularly place and interdisciplinarity. Vanessa Burholt is professor of gerontology and director of the Centre for Innovative Ageing in the College of Human and Health Sciences at Swansea University. She holds a public appointment as the research member on the National Partnership Forum for Older People in Wales. Her research concentrates on older people’s attachment to people and places, with a particular focus on rurality, loneliness, support networks and intergenerational relationships, ethnicity, and migration. Daniel Buzzo is an artist, designer, researcher and educator working with new media and creative technologies. An alumnus of the Royal College of Art, he is a founding member of the Creative Technologies Lab at the University of the West of England and an associate of the Digital Cultures Research Centre, Bristol. His work has been published and shown widely including on BBC TV, the International Symposium on Electronic Art, Artists Television Access and the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, and has appeared in publications as diverse as The Face, The Guardian and Revolver. Nigel Curry is professor of countryside planning in the Countryside and Community Research Institute at the University of Gloucestershire. His interests lie in the areas of rural endogenous ix

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development and social cohesion, including the contributions of rural elders. He has undertaken a wide range of research studies in these areas for the UK government and its rural agencies and his international perspective draws on visiting posts held at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Switzerland and the University of Lincoln, New Zealand. Shane Doheny is a researcher in the School of Geography and Planning at Cardiff University. He has published in areas of geography, health care policy, political sociology and social policy, all reflecting interests in governance and citizenship. His recent work has led to a specialism on older people’s experiences in relation to public service provision, community and poverty.This has resulted in current activities with the Wales Rural Observatory developing research on the experiences of older people who are living in different types of places in Wales. Jacquie Eales is the research manager with the Research on Aging, Policies and Practice research team in the Department of Human Ecology at the University of Alberta, Canada. Having grown up in a rural farming community in northern British Columbia, she is particularly interested in the interface between older adults and the rural communities in which they reside and the process of creating a best person–environment fit and how that process changes over the life course of the older adult. Simon Evans is a principal research fellow and head of research for the Association for Dementia Studies, University of Worcester. He is a social gerontologist whose research focuses on quality of life for older people across a range of settings, including housing, health and social care. His interests include mixed methods, research ethics and public engagement with research. Simon is an associate editor for Ageing & Society and a Fellow of the National Institute for Health Research School for Social Care Research. Kathleen Galvin is professor of nursing practice, Faculty of Health and Social Care, University of Hull. She is interested in interdisciplinary perspectives on well-being and care and is co-author (with Les Todres) of Caring and well-being: a lifeworld approach (Routledge, 2012). Professor Galvin leads a research development group, Well-Being and Long Term Conditions, at the University of Hull. She is involved in

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Notes on contributors

international research, in particular, with Swedish colleagues, and is a founding member of the European Academy of Caring Science. Catherine Hagan Hennessy is professor of public health and ageing at Plymouth University. Her background is in social science and public health and her research in the US and the UK has focused on the health and well-being of older adults, including in rural and remote settings. She has published widely on these topics and is coeditor (with Alan Walker) of Growing older: quality of life in old age (Open University Press, 2004). Professor Hennessy was the principal investigator on the Grey and Pleasant Land project. Norah Keating is a professor in the Department of Human Ecology at the University of Alberta, Canada. She is a social gerontologist with a long-standing interest in older adults in rural areas. She is author of Aging in rural Canada (Butterworths, 1991) and editor of Rural ageing: a good place to grow old? (The Policy Press, 2008). Professor Keating is co-director of a multidisciplinary team that conducts research on the quality of life of older adults. She is involved in international studies on ageing and is director of the Global Social Initiative on Ageing of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics. Ray Jones is professor of health informatics at Plymouth University whose research focuses on the area of e-health. His main interests and publications are in the area of assessing the impact of using the Internet and in finding ways to employ it efficiently, effectively and equitably. Gloria Lankshear is a researcher at Plymouth University with a sociological background who is currently working on research projects around issues in health and social care. She has previously participated in research in the areas of surveillance and the implementation of workplace technology, including on the Economic and Social Research Council’s Virtual Society programme. Robin Means is professor of health and social care in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of the West of England, where he was previously associate dean (Research and Knowledge Exchange). His gerontological research has had a strong focus on housing and and social care issues and he is co-author (with Sally Richards and Randall Smith) of Community care: policy and practice (4th edn) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). He is president of the British Society of xi

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Gerontology from summer 2012 to summer 2014 and will be past president for the two years after that. Paul Milbourne is professor of human geography in the School of Planning and Geography at Cardiff University. He is a social geographer with long-standing research interests in the rural dimensions of welfare reform, poverty and homelessness. His recent books include Rural Wales in the twenty first century (University of Wales Press, 2011), Welfare reform in rural places (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2010) and (with Paul Cloke) International perspectives on rural homelessness (Routledge, 2006). Charles Musselwhite is associate professor in the Centre for Innovative Ageing, Swansea University.With a background in transport and traffic psychology related to later life, he heads up the group’s Environments and Ageing research theme. He has carried out research into ageing in relation to technological, environmental, health and sustainability contexts of transportation and the built environment. He has advised the UK’s Parliamentary Advisory Council on Transport Safety and appeared on BBC TV and radio with regard to such topics. Graham Parkhurst is professor of sustainable mobility and director of the Centre for Transport and Society at the University of the West of England. His background is in psychology, anthropology and geography. Graham’s research considers the strategic and practical changes necessary for mobility policy to deliver welfare, well-being and environmental sustainability, including the specific needs of, and implications for, social groups such as older citizens. Graham is an advocate for ‘collective mobility’, alongside traditional public and private transport solutions. Judith Phillips is professor of gerontology in the Centre for Innovative Ageing, Swansea University. She is a social gerontologist with a particular interest in environmental aspects of ageing and later life, including transport and housing issues, urban design, and retirement communities. She is author of numerous books and articles on these subjects and others on care, family and community life of older people, and issues of work–family life balance. She is involved in research on ageing with colleagues in Canada and Sweden and is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the British Society of Gerontology.

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Notes on contributors

Andrew Phippen is professor of social responsibility in information technology at Plymouth University. While most of his research is based around young people and online behaviour, he has worked on social aspects of technology throughout his career as both a consultant and academic. His work has included projects with British Telecom on public engagement with online services and oral history projects across Europe. He is currently researching the impact of the Superfast Broadband project on rural Cornish communities and is a frequent media commentator on social technology issues. Avril Silk is an independent author with a particular interest in community publishing and recording disappearing ways of life. With Martin Levinson of Exeter University, she co-authored Dreams of the road (Birlinn Ltd, 2007), accounts of the lives of older Gypsies in the South West. She edited Ashbrittle at the Millennium (Ashbrittle Arts, 2000), a book about her home village, and edited, designed and published The Rose Queen dined on spam and semolina (www.avrilsilk. com/author/2/index.html), exploring the lives of older people attending the Stawley Active Living Lunch Club. Long-standing involvement in arts organisations has given her extensive experience in bringing performance and participative arts to rural communities. Ian Shergold is a researcher in the Centre for Transport and Society at the University of the West of England. He has a particular interest in the role that mobility plays in facilitating sustainable communities. Ongoing research with older people, and their use of travel and transport, has allowed him to develop a focus on how such mobility might affect well-being and inclusion in society for this group, as well as its effects on the resilience of local communities. Janet Smithson is a qualitative social psychology researcher whose main interests include gender and discourse, work–life practices and policies, life course transitions, qualitative methodologies, Internetmediated discourse, and communication. She is currently researching alternative dispute resolution after separation or divorce. Recent research includes studies of online behaviour, including older people’s use of the Internet for well-being. She teaches qualitative research methods at the University of Exeter. Yvette Staelens is a visiting research fellow in the School of Applied Sciences at Bournemouth University. She is a museum specialist with over 20 years of professional practice in the museum sector in the xiii

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UK preceding her development and leadership of the postgraduate museum studies programme at Bournemouth. Her research interests lie in the realm of intangible cultural heritage. She has undertaken research studies in the heritage sector for national and local government agencies and, most recently, led a team investigating The Singing Landscape of the West of England. Les Todres is professor of health philosophy in the School of Health and Social Care at Bournemouth University. He is a clinical psychologist with a long-standing interest in transdisciplinary approaches to care and is co-author (with Kathleen Galvin) of Caring and well-being: a lifeworld approach (Routledge, 2012). Professor Todres is director of Bournemouth University’s Centre for Qualitative Research and specialises in the use of phenomenological methodology to understand people’s experiences of well-being. He is a founding member of the European Academy of Caring Science. Daniel Zahra is a lecturer in psychology at Plymouth University, where he teaches research methods and statistics. His research interests and publications focus on the influence of emotion on reasoning and the evaluation of health services programmes.

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Foreword This important book spotlights older people’s participation in rural community life and, especially, the ways in which older rural dwellers are connected to their communities and the contributions they make to rural civic society. The dominant gerontological focus on urban environments has led to the neglect of older people living in rural areas. Unfortunately, in terms of policy and practice and also with regard to research, the specific concerns of this group of older people are often overlooked.Yet, as the editors point out, key gerontological themes, such as social inclusion, support networks, financial security, social participation, availability of and access to services, and transport and mobility, are all highly pertinent to the rural context. In fact, because the median population age is higher in rural than urban areas and is increasing faster, these issues arguably deserve even closer attention in rural than urban areas. This book derives from the major New Dynamics of Ageing research project Grey and Pleasant Land, which was an interdisciplinary investigation into older people’s participation in rural civic society in the south-west of England and Wales.The project focused in particular on older people’s connectivity to rural civic society and its impact on their quality of life. This ‘connectivity’ was the principal cross-cutting theme of the research, which also connected the manifold disciplines engaged in the project – from the social sciences, to the visual arts, to transport studies. Only a complex multidisciplinary project such as this one, employing a wide variety of research methods and approaches, could produce the rich insights into rural ageing that are to be found in this book. Furthermore, and this is one of the book’s great strengths, running throughout these pages is a compelling combination of theoretical insights with first-hand narratives by older rural dwellers themselves. This book represents a state-of-the-art introduction to ageing in rural areas, which ranges from the key conceptual underpinnings to practical everyday concerns, such as mobility, leisure participation and poverty. In addition, all of these contributions to understanding rural ageing are evidenced-based. Finally, the book provides a testimony to the considerable advantages, as well as the challenges, of doing multidisciplinary ageing research. It is a major addition to this series and to the field of social gerontology. Alan Walker University of Sheffield xv

ONE

Countryside connections in later life: setting the scene Catherine Hagan Hennessy, Robin Means and Vanessa Burholt

Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to describe the background and guiding interdisciplinary framework of a programme of research on ageing in rural areas of the UK that forms the basis of this book. The topic of this research is older people’s participation in rural community life, in particular, the ways in which rural elders are connected to their communities and their contributions to rural civic society. This focus brings together a number of established and emerging strands of gerontological interest – the social inclusion (and exclusion) of older people; their support networks; financial security; leisure participation; availability and access to services; transport and mobility; civic engagement in later life; and digital inclusion – all considered within the rural context. In this chapter, we outline the aims and organisation of this volume, highlighting the broad interdisciplinary approach that informed our study of how and in what ways older people are connected to civic society and their rural settings.We term these links ‘connectivity’, and the nature and impact of older people’s connectivities in rural communities form a thread that integrates the various disciplinary perspectives and elements of the research described in the chapters that follow.

Rural ageing in the UK context Despite increasing urbanisation globally, it has often been estimated that more than 60% of the world’s older population live in rural areas (Hermanova et al, 2001). In the majority of countries, it has been noted that rural areas continue to be disproportionately elderly (Kinsella, 2001) and the growth of the older segment of the population is occurring faster in rural than in non-rural settings. 1

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Worldwide, 9.7% of rural populations are aged 60 and over; in Europe, this figure is 22.9%, which is greater than the proportion of their counterparts (19.1%) living in urban areas (United Nations, 2009). Contemporary rural Britain reflects this demographic picture (Brown, 2010). Rural England is at the forefront of the demographic ‘age wave’, with a median population age in 2006 of 44.4 years, compared with 38.5 years in urban areas (Commission for Rural Communities, 2007, 2008); this is expected to increase to 50 years in rural areas over the next 25 years (Champion and Shepherd, 2006). Moreover, median age is increasing faster in rural than in urban locations, and rural communities, particularly smaller ones, now have higher proportions of people in the 40–64 and 65 and over age groups than do urban areas. According to estimates from the 2011 Census (Office for National Statistics, 2013), 21% of the population in rural areas of England are aged 65 and over, compared with 15.3% in urban areas. The ‘greying countryside’, as Lowe and Speakman (2006) have characterised it, is a result of trends in both in- and out-migration, principally, the ageing in place of those who relocated to rural areas as younger adults (Champion and Shepherd, 2006). Contrary to the prevailing stereotype of retirement to the countryside, the effect of older incomers on rural population ageing is relatively small, with retirees representing only some 10% of rural in-migrants. As we illustrate throughout this book, we encountered older people in our research who are native to their rural communities, and others more recently arrived in middle age or as retirees seeking a more relaxed lifestyle and surroundings. Some of the latter had lifelong ties to rural areas where they holidayed or were evacuated to as children during World War II and had nostalgically returned throughout their lives. Whatever the route that led these individuals to living later life in a rural location, their experience of growing older in today’s rural Britain takes place against a backdrop of changing lifeways, livelihoods and landscapes (Commission for Rural Communities, 2007). Far from reflecting the popular and literary representations of the timeless ‘rural idyll’ (Laing, 1992; Trezise, 2000), the landscapes and populations of many rural areas in the UK are acknowledged to be in a state of flux, with significant implications for the quality of life of older people (Scharf, 2006; Keating and Phillips, 2008). Issues such as incomer group pressures, minority group citizenship, gentrification and changes in land use are all recognised as having implications for ageing identities, attachment to place and participation in community life (Phillipson et al, 2001; Smith and Phillips, 2001; Burholt, 2006, 2012).

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Countryside connections in later life: setting the scene

Despite the increasing older population and the changing context of rural areas in the UK, however, the situation and experience of older people in the ageing countryside have been strikingly underresearched in comparison with those of urban elders (Wenger, 2001). For example, the Sage handbook of social gerontology (Dannefer and Phillipson, 2010) has extensive coverage of the impact of urbanisation and globalisation on the lives of older people but very little on rural ageing. Previous research on rural ageing has overwhelmingly focused on the problems encountered by rural older people and has typically neglected the positive aspects of rural living in older age. Existing studies show that older residents of rural communities report a variety of disadvantages, including loneliness, isolation, poor public transport and difficulties accessing health and social services (Black et al, 1994; Shucksmith et al, 1996; Giarchi, 2004, 2006; Walsh et al, 2012). In other words, much of what we know about older people in rural areas in the UK has focused on social exclusion from a largely social policy perspective (Shucksmith, 2003). However, basic research has been generally lacking on the numbers of older rural people experiencing disadvantage and their characteristics (Burholt et al, 2007) and there has similarly been a shortage of systematic research on interventions, policies and practices aimed at improving the quality of life of older people in rural areas in Britain (Philip et al, 2003). There has been an even greater paucity of studies that explore the positive aspects of rural living for many older people, including the contributions that older people make to rural community and citizenship (Burholt and Dobbs, 2013). LeMesurier (2006, p 133) indicated the broad terrain for enquiry on this topic when he emphasised ‘the key contribution of older people to the maintenance of a healthy civic society in rural areas through voluntary work, informal care and active involvement in a wide range of community groups’. He highlighted older people’s role as an important source of social capital in rural areas, creating and reinforcing networks of social connection, reciprocity and trust through their participation in local activities and groups (LeMesurier, 2003). These contributions are similarly acknowledged in Building a society for all ages (HM Government, 2009, p 10), the national strategy on ageing, in which it is asserted that ‘People in later life often provide the lifeblood of communities … this is particularly true in rural areas.’ In the research that underlies this book, we were equally concerned with both examining older people’s participation in and contributions to rural civic society and characterising the context of their circumstances that facilitated or acted as a barrier to their inclusion in community 3

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life. Our approach reflected Giarchi’s (2004, p 12) observation that ‘the dilemma in the countryside is that some older people are its greatest resource whilst others are its greatest concern’. Accordingly, as articulated by Moreton and colleagues (2005, p 15), the research challenge is to build a better evidence base about older rural people that investigates the reasons behind the differentiation of the rural experience and explores the contribution of older people as the ‘glue’ of their rural communities. A central focus of our research was an exploration of older people’s voluntary collective action around shared interests, purposes and values in organisations and activities, such as formal and informal associations and community groups. In the course of this research, we learned about individuals’ participation in diverse activities, ranging from membership on rural parish councils and in clubs, local seniors’ organisations and political, church and hobby groups, to their fundraising efforts for favourite charities and the kinds of neighbourly assistance that some routinely provided to other community members in need. We also developed an understanding of the factors that enabled or were obstacles to their involvement in the civic life of their rural communities, such as transport, finance, health or attitudes.

Social participation and civic engagement in later life The focus of our research on older people’s participation in civic society in rural areas is closely aligned with the burgeoning international interest in social participation and civic engagement in later life (Lehr, 2007; Kaskie et al, 2008). With the unprecedented growth in the number of older persons worldwide, societal strategies to ensure the quality of later life and meet the demands of ageing populations are increasingly focused on employing and fostering ageing individuals’ skills, experience and knowledge. ‘Civic engagement’ has been used to refer to a wide variety of activities and behaviours related to involvement in community and political affairs (Adler and Goggin, 2005), and, as described later, the term has been the subject of some debate among gerontologists. With these issues in mind, our use of the term reflects the following broad definition, which suggests the reciprocal benefits to the well-being of ageing individuals and their communities of continued social and economic participation in later life: ‘Late life civic engagement encompasses action wherein older adults participate in activities of personal and public concern that are both individually life enriching and socially beneficial to the community’ (American Society on Aging, 2007, p 1 as 4

Countryside connections in later life: setting the scene

cited in Delgado, 2009, p 33). Likewise, ‘social participation’ has been considered by gerontologists to encompass a range of interactions, and we follow Bukov et al’s (2002, p 510) conceptualisation of social participation as ‘socially oriented sharing of individual resources’, which suggests the reciprocal nature (and potential benefits) of these actions. As a counterpoint to the loss-deficit model of ageing, with its narrow focus on the health and social problems of later life, the concern with social participation and civic engagement among older people reflects the active ageing paradigm and is an expanding area of gerontological research (Holstein, 2006; Morrow-Howell and Freedman, 2006; Hennessy, 2010). In the US, in particular, developments to stimulate older people’s social participation and civic engagement have proliferated over the past several years, driven in large part by the projected needs, preferences and expectations of the post-World War II (1946–64) birth cohort, often referred to as the ‘Baby Boom’ generation (Morrow-Howell and Freedman, 2007). These include the desire or necessity of continuing to work, possibly in a new capacity or ‘encore career’, and pursuing meaningful opportunities for lifelong learning, volunteering and other civic service (Wilson and Simson, 2006). Interest in older people’s civic engagement includes developments linked to public initiatives in areas such as lifelong learning, social inclusion, environmental conservation and regeneration. The growing policy focus on older people’s engagement in civic society has two main aspects. The first is the positive effects on health and well-being of continued engagement in social and productive activities, including volunteering, learning and working (Rowe and Kahn, 1998; Luoh and Herzog, 2002; Calvo, 2006; Zedlewski and Butrica, 2007; Okun et al, 2013), as well as a wide range of other leisure and hobby pursuits (Doyle et al, 2010; Heo et al, 2010). Associated with these potential benefits of sustained engagement is the prospect of reducing the anticipated impact on service systems of an ageing population. The second aspect is the concern with investing in and harnessing the contributions of older people’s time, skills and expertise as a major source of societal capital and resource for community cohesion. Both of these elements have been a strong feature of the UK policy landscape, which has included the overall emphasis upon responsibilities of citizens to contribute to ‘the Big Society’ (Norman, 2010), as well as specific initiatives targeted at older people, such as Building a society for all ages (HM Government, 2009).

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As Martinson and Minkler (2006) point out, however, much of this research has centred on the topic of volunteering by older people and its associated benefits to health and social capital, neglecting the wider scope of social participation and civic activities, including, for example, political participation, engaging in community activism, care-giving, staying informed about community events and having informal community connections. Using a critical gerontology perspective, Martinson and Minkler also caution against the unquestioned support for promoting civic engagement among older people (as currently conceived) as a route to successful ageing, especially where such notions may serve to disenfranchise those without the resources or inclination to participate. Guided by this critical stance, our research examined a wide range of activities among older people that involve them with civic society in rural areas and the factors underlying their types and levels of social participation. As such, it has highlighted the role of the older population as positive societal resources in rural settings and aimed to increase our understanding of factors that promote community participation and inclusion of diverse groups of rural elders. The critical human ecology perspective applied to rural ageing by Keating and Phillips (2008, p 9) extends this attention to contexts by bringing together human ecology with critical gerontology to critically analyse ‘the ways in which contexts provide opportunities and constraints to individuals living in various settings’.This approach focuses on ‘person–environment fit’ (Scheidt and Noris-Baker, 2004), that is, the interface of personal and environmental resources and the extent to which these resources enable the participation of older people. It also emphasises the notion of agency, by which older people have the ability to actively influence their environments and contribute positively to them, an approach consistent with the assetbased perspectives to community described later. Moreover, the critical human ecology framework incorporates the emphasis from critical gerontology on subjective experience, in this case, on the meaning of growing older in rural settings. This framework has been used to identify factors related to the social, built and natural environments that contribute to older people’s perceptions of rural communities as ‘age-friendly’ (Eales et al, 2008). Eales and colleagues use the concept of ‘best fit’ to understand age-friendly rural communities as those with maximum congruence between the preferences and needs of older people and the resources of the community in which they live, and they underline the diversity inherent in the best-fit model. These

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Countryside connections in later life: setting the scene

tenets of critical human ecology served to inform the theoretical framework for our investigation.

Capturing the rural ageing dividend The perspective that informed our research also reflects current assetbased approaches to rural community development that emphasise social capital formation in rural regeneration and sustainable development based on identifying and capitalising upon existing community strengths (Kretzmann and McKnight, 1993; O’Leary, 2005). The need to incorporate older people’s productive capacity and to acknowledge economic, social and cultural roles in their communities has been increasingly articulated in government policies in the UK (Howse, 2003; Riseborough and Jenkins, 2004). As a result, previous initiatives, both urban and rural, have been criticised as tending to problematise older people by focusing on health and care support-related issues rather than on their contributions, skills and participation in relation to wider aspects of community life (Howse, 2003). A perspective on older people as sources of community capital reflects the ongoing debate surrounding rural economic policy in terms of whether or not conventional measures of rural productivity are, in fact, the most appropriate means by which to capture broader notions of ‘wealth’ in rural areas (Agarwal et al, 2004; Svendsen and Sorensen, 2007). For example, Bryden and colleagues’ (2000) work on the economic performance of rural areas encompasses such factors as networks, community and quality of life as active variables in addition to standard indicators such as incomes and market performance.Their study found that institutions and networks (often considered as social capital) were particularly important to rural economic performance and it is in these areas that older people are likely to have a significant role. A case in point is the contribution of older people to the viability of rural communities in their role as participants in many rural social enterprises (eg community transport schemes and community-owned village shops), where people aged over 50 dominate management boards and provide the majority of volunteer workers (Moreton et al, 2005). As discussed further in Chapter Two, in a kind of virtuous circle, older people in rural communities are both the beneficiaries of social enterprises and often the driving force behind these enterprises. Moreover, as Heenan (2010) has shown in a study of social networks in farming communities in Northern Ireland, even in rural areas where formal associational activities are extremely limited, older people 7

Countryside connections

are important producers of local social capital through the provision of material, instrumental and informational assistance to family and neighbours. Similarly, on rural small islands off the coast of Ireland, Burholt et al (2013) found that older people were actively engaged in the (re)production of a historical and current identity through the same means. For example, older people producing cultural artefacts helped to reinforce the imagined ‘rural idyll’ to tourists in search of the ‘authentic rural experience’. Other older people contributed through the transmission of historical and local information and traditional skills to other generations. Uncovering the contribution of older people to these less tangible facets of rural society was central to our research.

The Grey and Pleasant Land project This section of the chapter describes the background and structure of the Grey and Pleasant Land project (hereafter, GaPL), the interdisciplinary investigation into older people’s participation in rural civic society in England and Wales on which this book is based. The three-year project (2009–12) was fully titled Grey and Pleasant Land? An Interdisciplinary Exploration of the Connectivity of Older People in Rural Civic Society. The first part of the title is a play on the famous line from the poem ‘Jerusalem’ by William Blake, in which England is referred to as a ‘green and pleasant land’, and the project title reflected our research objective of interrogating whether rural settings are actually metaphorically ‘green and pleasant places’ for growing older (That is, to what extent are older people included in rural community life and what factors promote their inclusion?). The GaPL project was funded through the New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) programme, a major interdisciplinary research initiative sponsored by five of the UK Research Councils that ran from 2006 through 2013. In order to appreciate the rationale for the organisation and content of the GaPL project, it is necessary to explain the requirements for support under the NDA programme. Funded projects had to involve the participation of multiple disciplines that would jointly contribute to a substantive understanding of the research problem through the integration of disciplinary perspectives, methods and theories (Hennessy and Walker, 2011). As described in Chapter Eight, projects also had to demonstrate the active engagement of research stakeholders, including older people themselves and nonacademic partner organisations relevant to the area of investigation. The development of the GaPL project began with members of an 8

Countryside connections in later life: setting the scene

existing regional research network on rural ageing, who identified the topic of the research as older people’s inclusion in community life in rural areas, focusing on their engagement with civic society (Hennessy and the New Dynamics of Ageing Preparatory Network, 2008). The ensuing process of building various aspects of an interdisciplinary programme of work in this area eventually brought together a team of two dozen researchers at five UK universities in collaboration with a Canadian rural ageing research group. Team members contributed relevant specialisms in anthropology, visual and performative arts, economics, geography, gerontology, museum and heritage studies, informatics, media studies, psychology, sociology, and transport studies, combined with an expertise in working in and with rural communities. The contributions of these disciplinary inputs to the overall project framework will be emphasised throughout the following chapters. The GaPL project addressed the following principal questions in relation to the circumstances and experiences of civic inclusion among older rural people: • How and in what ways are older people connected to civic society in rural settings in England and Wales? • What is the impact of this connectivity on older people’s quality of life in rural areas? • How is later life experienced across diverse rural contexts and within subgroups of older people? An additional research question focused on the utility of an interdisciplinary perspective for investigating and representing rural inclusion among older people: • How can novel interdisciplinary approaches be used to capture and disseminate evidence about older people’s participation in and contributions to rural civic society, that is, as a source of rural community capital? In line with recommended interdisciplinary practice (Kessel et al, 2003; Bracken and Oughten, 2006), we employed cross-cutting theoretical constructs around which the various disciplinary perspectives and methods could cohere. The principal cross-cutting theme in this research was connectivity, which is a concept common to several of the participating disciplines. For example, from the perspective of information and communications technology (ICT), 9

Countryside connections

connectivity refers to networked communication via technology and digital inclusion (Narayanan et al, 2005), while from a social sciences perspective, connectivity is linked to constructs such as social networks (White and Harary, 2001), inclusion and social and cultural capital. Connectivity also encompasses the notion of spatial or physical connectivity in geography (Brierly et al, 2006) and transport studies, and is the conceptual basis for methods such as geographic information systems (GIS) mapping (Esri, 2006). It has also been applied as a key concept in analysing age-friendly communities (Menec et al, 2011). As such, the concept of connectivity served as a ‘heuristic metaphor’ (Klamor and Leonard, 1994) in this work, allowing for the systematic development of collective theorising around this shared notion. Drawing on a number of these disciplinary usages of the term, the working definition of connectivity that informed the research was ‘the link between individuals, groups or objects through some pattern, process or structure’. Each of the interlinked sub-studies (or ‘work packages’) that comprised the project elaborated on the particular nature and extent of connectivities (cultural, spatial, social, economic and technological) that were addressed in their research, as described in the subsequent chapters. An important focus of this work, therefore, was on the connectivity of older persons in rural civic society and how individuals’ circumstances, understandings and experiences of rural community life could be represented and communicated using interdisciplinary methods and formats. As described in Chapter Two, the concept of human capital was also central to our investigation.This has a number of components and interpretations such as ‘cultural capital’ and ‘social capital’, with the latter in particular being fine-grained into ‘bonding’, ‘bridging’ and ‘linking’ capitals (Putnam, 2000). While some interpretations of human capital focus on its potential to achieve citizenship goals (World Bank, 1999; Putnam, 1995, 2000; HM Government Performance and Innovation Unit, 2002), others note its potential for fractionation, contestation and subversion (Bourdieu, 1991; Moseley and Pahl, 2007). In embracing each of these perspectives, the theoretical constructs of human capital and connectivity were explored from a number of different disciplinary perspectives as a core through which each of the sub-studies developed. In so doing, we aimed to create a clear notion of ‘civic capital’ and its determinants among rural older people and make conclusions about its potential and limitations in explaining the contribution of older people to rural civic society.

10

Countryside connections in later life: setting the scene

Developing an interdisciplinary methodological framework A mixed-methods framework combining quantitative, qualitative and arts-based techniques and technologies to collect and analyse data was employed across the research programme.This set of research methods placed particular emphasis on understanding the circumstances of and subjective perspectives on older people’s connectivity in rural civic society. Methods included for gathering these data are described in detail in the following chapters and ranged from face-to-face and online surveys to focus group interviews, in-depth qualitative and narrative interviews, and ethnographic methods (participant observation, diaries, photography and video filming), as well as unobtrusive measures, including computer logs and the use of existing survey data sets for secondary analysis. The overall dominant paradigms lay within the social sciences but this was pursued in a way that respected and drew upon the significant insights available through the arts and humanities. In doing so, our work was aligned with Kivnick and Pruchno’s (2011, pp 142, 144) view of the value of the arts and humanities to gerontological discourse and knowledge-making through an approach that focuses on meaning and interconnection and ‘transcends the verbal, linear and measurable’. The use of arts-based methods in the research was likewise consistent with Leavy’s (2008, pp 2–3) notion of these as tools that ‘adapt the tenets of the creative arts to address social research questions in holistic and engaged ways in which theory and practice are intertwined’, and included a variety of representational forms, such as a performance script and film, photography, and collages to map and communicate the ageing experience within the rural landscape. In particular, our employment of visual methods endorses Hillyard’s (2007, p 136) assessment of their utility in recording and understanding the rural: ‘The addition of visual techniques to ethnography’s critical armoury may be one way to challenge our taken-for-granted perception of rural life and so appreciate the important nuances hitherto unseen’. It was in linking the methods and perspectives of the arts and humanities to the scientific usages of connectivity in our work that the benefits of the heuristic metaphor were particularly realised. This can be illustrated through the photography of James Ravilious (1939–99), who recorded the landscapes and lifeways of rural areas of the county of Devon in over 40,000 images taken during the 1970s and 1980s (Hamilton, 2007; Beacham and Ravilious, 2008). Many of Ravilious’s photographs are of older people and typically show them involved in farm work and the events and activities of their 11

Countryside connections Figure 1.1: ‘Judges assessing an entry: Hatherleigh Conservative Flower Show’

Photograph by James Ravilious © Beaford Arts digitally scanned from a Beaford Archive negative

communities. These photographs closely capture a number of the concepts and issues that were explored and interrogated within the context of contemporary rural Britain in the GaPL project. These included, for example: cultural capital (Figure 1.1); connection to the landscape and traditional lifeways (Figure 1.2); transport and access to services in rural areas (Figure 1.3); and social and cultural connectivity (Figure 1.4).

Figure 1.2: ‘Archie Parkhouse leading his sheep’

Photograph by James Ravilious © Beaford Arts digitally scanned from a Beaford Archive negative

12

Countryside connections in later life: setting the scene Figure 1.3: ‘Over 60s Club members waiting for the bus’

Photograph by James Ravilious © Beaford Arts digitally scanned from a Beaford Archive negative

More recently, in the Rural Grassroots Realities Project (2004– 07), older volunteers in rural West Oxfordshire used photography in combination with qualitative interviews to document their own dayto-day lives and those of more socially isolated older people in the area. This participatory action research produced a significant visual record of older rural residents’ situation and experiences of rural living and community inclusion, one that highlights the heterogeneity of

Figure 1.4: ‘Harvest Festival Service’

Photograph by James Ravilious © Beaford Arts digitally scanned from a Beaford Archive negative

13

Countryside connections

their individual circumstances, as well as the active part that many older people play in rural communities (Godel, 2007). In this vein, our choice of an eclectic framework was further informed by Mertens’s (2007) notion of ‘transformative mixed methodologies’, which offer the potential for re-examining and challenging dominant paradigms or discourses regarding communities through combining experiential perspectives and quantitative indicator data. As such, it reflected the critical human ecology perspective applied to research into rural ageing (Keating and Phillips, 2008), which likewise emphasises multi-methods approaches for capturing the context and conditions of older people’s lives in these settings.

Geographical location of the research and the Grey and Pleasant Land survey The research was principally carried out in six rural locations in the south-west of England and Wales, both bellwether areas for rural population ageing. The South West region has the oldest population structure of all regions in England, of which persons aged 50 and over comprised 38% in 2004 (Brown et al, 2005). The South West population is also growing faster than the UK population overall, is a principal destination of inter-regional migration at retirement and has the highest life expectancy of all regions (Rees, 2003). Over a third (36%) of South West residents in the 50 and over age group live in rural areas and often represent a high proportion of these populations. Rural Wales is experiencing similar demographic trends (Midmore et al, 1996; Hartwell et al, 2007), with the result that a higher proportion of the population in rural Wales is above retirement age (23%) compared to the non-rural population (19%), and a smaller proportion of rural residents (67%) than urban dwellers (82%) were born in Wales (National Assembly for Wales, 2002). What constitutes ‘rurality’ is a contested issue and, over time, definitions have been variously based on ‘places, spaces, areas, people and lifestyles’ (Ilbery, 1998, p 2). The case study areas for the research were selected by taking into account: social, cultural, political and economic differences; ‘lifestyle’ differences (eg retirement retreats or dynamic commuter areas) (Future Foundation, 2004); and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra, 2006) urban/rural definition of settlements. Other characteristics were also considered, such as the influence of the proximal cities or large towns, commonalities in rural areas (such as poverty and deprivation; nature of work), and the presence of older people. Taking all of these 14

Figure 1.5: Districts and local authorities in Wales and South West England showing the location of the study sites Countryside connections in later life: setting the scene

15

16 1032 10.8

1142

8

12.9

881

Llanfihangel Ystrad 74.5 26.3

6

1237

Nantmel 84.4 25.1

10.4

1083

7.8

1432

7.7

1522

Raglan 76.7 29.5

Trellech United 86.3 25.0

6.8/4.9

1269/1674

C Monmouthshire

Rhayader Mitchel Troy 60.7 77.5 32.6 24.5

B Powys

56.2 51.8 84.1 71.6 20.6 43.7 29.1 51.4 72.6 79.4 105.5 104.7 51.7 54.7 49.8 57.7 50 56.5 54.5 68.6 30.8 55.0 47.6 25.9 5.6 0 0 2.9 9.5 0 5.3 3.6 Village, hamlet Town and Village, hamlet Village, hamlet Village, hamlet Village, hamlet Village, hamlet Town and & isolated fringe & isolated & isolated & isolated & isolated & isolated fringe – dwellings – – less dwellings – dwellings – dwellings – dwellings – dwellings – sparse less sparse sparse less sparse sparse sparse sparse sparse

Llanarth 72.4 25.0

Ciliau Aeron 80.8 25.7

A Ceredigion

Sources: a Census 2001 (UV63) Tenure – households; b Census 2001 (KS02) Age structure; c WIMD 2008. The WIMD 2008 is constructed from eight different types of deprivation: income; housing; employment; access to services; education; health; community safety; and physical environment. Wales is divided into 1,896 Lower-Layer Super Output Areas (LSOA), each containing approximately 1,500 people. The most deprived LSOA is ranked 1, and the least deprived 1,896; d WIMD 2008. Proportion of the population in receipt of income-related benefits; e WIMD 2008 access to services domain indicator (in minutes); f WIMD 2008 access to services domain indicator (in minutes); g ONS VAT-based enterprises by broad industry group at ward level 2004; h ONS VAT-based enterprises by broad industry group at ward level 2004; i Defra (2006).

Defra rural definitioni

Ward % owner occupationa % aged 60 and overb Rank of Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD)c WIMD income domain scored Access to a food shope Access to transport nodesf % agriculture unitsg % hotels and catering unitsh

Case study area District

Table 1.1: Characteristics of the study sites in Wales

Countryside connections

 2.5 41.4  6.9 Village, hamlet & isolated dwellings – sparse

0.11

11274

11.1 70.3  5.4 Village, hamlet & isolated dwellings – sparse

0.15

9740

 1.4 35.7  7.1 Village, hamlet & isolated dwellings – less sparse

0.09

20798

 1.6 16.2  5.4 Town and fringe – less sparse

0.06

25284

Sources: a IMD 2007. The IMD 2007 is constructed from seven different types of deprivation: income; employment; health; education; housing and services; crime; and living environment. England is divided into 32,482 Lower-Layer Super Output Areas (LSOA), each containing approximately 1,500 people. The most deprived LSOA is ranked 1, and the least deprived 32,482. The IMD 2007 is not directly comparable to the WIMD 2008. LSOA Sturminster Newton Environs does not map exactly onto Stour Valley electoral ward and includes some surrounding wards. Painswick electoral ward contains three LSOAs; b IMD 2007. Proportion of the population in receipt of income-related benefits; c IMD 2007 access to housing and services domain indicator (in kilometres).

Defra rural definition

c

13 58.6  2.8 Village, hamlet & isolated dwellings – sparse

0.11

IMD income domain scoreb

Access to a food shop % agriculture units % hotels & catering units

10859

Bisley 84.8 27.6

C Stroud

Upton Painswick St Leonards 79.5 85.3 33.9 31.0 20076/ 17580 28352 23260/ 24397 27718 0.09/0.07/ 0.05 0.08 0.05 0.05  3.3  3.2 0.8/2.3/5.7  2.0 46.2 23.1 26.1 33.3  3.9  3.9  6.5 0 Village, Village, Village, hamlet & hamlet & hamlet & Urban >10k – isolated isolated isolated less sparse dwellings – dwellings – dwellings – less sparse less sparse less sparse

A B North Cornwall North Dorset Blisland and Stour The Altarnun St Breward Tremaine Marnhull Valley Stours 74.0 78.1 81.2 81.4 70.7 79.8 28.9 26.0 24.1 37.7 32.5 27.1

Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD)a

Ward % owner occupation % aged 60 and over

Case study area District

Table 1.2: Characteristics of the study sites in South West England

Countryside connections in later life: setting the scene

17

Countryside connections

factors into account, the characteristics of three ‘types’ of rural areas were identified and provided the basis for differentiating rural areas in the study. One of each ‘type’ of rural area was selected in South West England and one of each in Wales (see Figure 1.5; the characteristics of the areas are outlined in Tables 1.1 and 1.2): • Type A (North Cornwall and Ceredigion) – remote and deprived: remote, low incomes, ‘indigenous’, some tourism influence, house prices high relative to income, small dispersed settlements, marginal agriculture, ageing population. These hold many of the characteristics of Defra’s Rural 80 settlements. North Cornwall is dominated by Bodmin Moor and typically marginal agriculture. The area has relatively poor road networks compared to other districts in the region. Specific contiguous wards were chosen that best reflect the district characteristics set out earlier. These were Blisland and St Breward, Alternun, and Tremaine. In Ceredigion, Llanarth was selected as matching the majority of the criteria: a remote area with low incomes and difficult access to owneroccupied housing. Two contiguous wards were also chosen, these were Llanfihangel Ystrad and Ciliau Aeron. • Type B (North Dorset and Powys) – less remote and deprived: less remote but clearly rural, middle incomes, diversifying economy, some commuting, moderate house prices relative to incomes.These hold many of the characteristics of Defra’s Rural 50 settlements. North Dorset was chosen as case study area B. Here, the majority of settlements are classed as ‘less sparse’ rather than ‘sparse’.The area is located relatively close to major road networks and to the towns of Gillingham and Shaftsbury.Within North Dorset, the wards that were chosen were the Stours, Marnhull and Stour Valley, which matched the criteria. The county of Powys was selected in Wales as house price ratios are moderate, ranging from 3 to 3.5 times income.Within this county, Rhayader was selected as it is classified as ‘Town and Fringe – sparse’ (less remote than A-type areas) and less deprived than case study A areas. • Type C (Stroud and Monmouthshire) – relatively affluent and accessible: within the influence of the city region, low importance of agriculture and tourism, high incidence of commuting for work, affluent. These comprise many of the characteristics of Defra’s Significant Rural settlements. Stroud district in the centre of the county of Gloucestershire is well served by road and rail networks and is classed as Rural 50 (ie districts with at least 50% of their population in rural settlements and larger market towns) 18

Countryside connections in later life: setting the scene

and so is less rural than areas A and B. London is only 1 hour 30 minutes by train and Bristol and Swindon less than 30 minutes by car. Monmouthshire is considered a commuting area and within this county, Raglan was the only suitable rural study area, which is well served by dual carriageway ‘A’ roads linking it to the M4. In summary, Raglan has relatively high income levels, good access for commuting and relatively low deprivation levels. Two contiguous wards were chosen to best match the case study C criteria, Mitchell Troy and Trellech United. This typology ensured that a heterogeneous mix of rural settings in both Wales and South West England was included, thus facilitating comparisons among areas across the spectrum of rurality in both countries. In these six locations, a quantitative survey of the types of, levels of and influences on older people’s connections to and participation in rural community life was carried out with 920 participants, face to face in their own homes and in their first language (English or Welsh).The estimated response rate for households containing people aged 60 and over was 68%. The survey comprised sections on views of the local community, including: sense of belonging and issues of concern; kinds, extent and context of participation in activities within and beyond the community and perceived barriers to participation; social networks and availability of support; transport and access to services; use of media and telecommunications; health; and sociodemographics. Overall, the mean age of participants was 71.5 years. A majority (59.2%) were female, with fewer (40.8%) male participants. Most participants were married (69.3%) and over one fifth (21.2%) were widowed. A few had never married (4.0%) or were divorced or separated (5.5%). The majority of older people in the sample lived in households comprising the participant and a spouse (59.5%). Overall, the sample was similar to the population of people aged 60 years or more in England and Wales, but there was a greater proportion of married participants (69.3% versus 57.0%) and fewer widowed (21.2% versus 28.7%), never married (4.0% versus 6.8%) or divorced or separated (5.5% versus 7.5%) older people (Office for National Statistics, 2001). Furthermore, only 0.4% of the participants were living in residential care facilities, which is lower than the proportion of older people in England living in these types of supported living environments (estimated at 3.1% in England [Comas-Herrera et al, 2001]), and probably reflects the clustering of residential care homes in urban areas and service-rich rural areas (see Table 1.3). 19

Countryside connections Table 1.3: Characteristics of participants in each type of rural area Type of rural area Individual characteristics: Age Health statusa Gender (%) Male Female Marital status (%) Never married Married/with partner Widowed Divorced/separated Household composition (%) Alone With spouse only With others Residential care

A N = 303 M (SD) 70.9 (8.0)   2.2 (1.0)

B N = 304 M (SD) 71.6 (8.1)   2.1 (1.0)

C N = 313 M (SD) 71.9 (8.4)   2.0 (0.9)

All N = 920 M (SD) 71.5 (8.2)   2.1 (1.0)

43.0 57.0

42.8 57.2

36.9 63.1

40.8 59.2

 4.4 67.8 22.8  5.0

 3.7 72.6 17.9  5.7

 3.9 67.5 22.7  5.8

 4.0 69.3 21.2  5.5

33.0 55.8 11.2  0.0

27.6 60.5 10.5  1.3

30.4 62.0  7.7  0.0

30.3 59.5  9.8  0.4

Note: aRange 1–5: 1 = very good health and 5 = very poor health.

The survey both reflected a conceptual core for the GaPL programme as a whole and served as a platform to further investigate older people’s connectivities in rural areas using additional methods in the other sub-studies. Selected findings from the survey are presented in Chapters Two, Three, Four, Five and Seven of this volume.

Overview of the chapters Reflecting the perspectives and debates described previously, the research that we present in this volume is unique in offering an interdisciplinary lens to examine and represent key aspects of older people’s inclusion in and contributions to the life of their rural communities from a positive ageing paradigm. We explicitly employed this novel approach to support an ‘opportunity dialogue’ (Lloyd, 2005) regarding the impact of demographic ageing in rural areas and to highlight the role and potential of the older population as societal resources in rural settings. Our perspective purposively differs from dominant views of older people as occupying a category of rural ‘otherness’ based on their needs and position in a changing 20

Countryside connections in later life: setting the scene

countryside (Chalmers and Joseph, 2006). In line with this, our work has sought to realise Chalmers and Joseph’s (2006, p 398) recommendations for studies of contemporary rural ageing: ‘Two sets of actions are important in the context of new research about the rural elderly: challenging constructions of otherness and reducing barriers to inclusive rural communities’. Accordingly, the following chapters reflect these principal aims of this book: • To challenge problem-based views of ageing rural populations through findings on the principal barriers and facilitators to older people’s inclusion and opportunities for community participation in rural settings. • To demonstrate the value of an interdisciplinary perspective to fostering awareness of the circumstances and experience of older people living in the countryside and their contributions to rural community capital. • To provide recommendations for rural ageing stakeholders about how to promote older people as community assets in rural areas. Chapters Two through Eight expand on the components of the GaPL programme, elaborating on theory, methods, findings and outputs across the constituent sub-studies that investigated various aspects of older people’s connections to rural community. Chapter Two presents the conceptual framework that underpins and links these components together. In this chapter, Nigel Curry,Vanessa Burholt and Catherine Hagan Hennessy introduce theoretical perspectives on societal connectivity based on current concepts of human capital and discuss their comparative usefulness for exploring the nature and extent of older people’s connections to rural community life. Chapter Two foregrounds the various types of connectivity that are highlighted in the subsequent chapters, and the influence of these connectivities on participation in later life within rural settings. It also profiles the main findings from the survey in terms of civic engagement and volunteering within the six case study areas. The potential of older people’s social participation in leisure activities as a means of creating community capital is an expanding focus of research by gerontologists, though, to date, the leisure engagement of rural elders has received comparatively little attention. In Chapter Three, Catherine Hagan Hennessy,Yvette Staelens, Gloria Lankshear, Andrew Phippen, Avril Silk and Daniel Zahra examine older people’s connections to rural community life through their 21

Countryside connections

engagement in cultural and leisure activities.They consider older rural residents’ leisure participation and its determinants from a life course perspective, as well as the forms and uses of later life leisure within the rural community context.The chapter also describes a community oral history project designed to raise awareness of older people as rural social and cultural capital and to increase public engagement with this research, which formed part of this work. The ways in which older people experience connection to place has been a long-standing topic of research by both North American and British gerontologists. In Chapter Four,Vanessa Burholt, Nigel Curry, Norah Keating and Jacquie Eales use a multidimensional measurement of place attachment to examine the relationship between the types of belonging and outcomes for older people in rural areas in England, Wales and Canada. The chapter examines factors that predict the different types of attachment and how social attachment to the community (rooted in friends and family), aesthetic attachment (bonded by the beauty or peace and solitude of the surroundings) or attachment based on the appropriateness of resources are related to social cohesion and civic participation. The ability and means to get around in one’s community are critical concerns in relation to older people’s inclusion – particularly in rural areas – and gerontologists have traditionally focused on the availability of and access to transport in relation to this issue.Transport policies related to older citizens have similarly been concerned with identifying accessibility deficits and enhancing access to employment and ‘essential’ services, generally defined as meeting basic physiological and economic needs. In Chapter Five, Graham Parkhurst, Kathleen Galvin, Charles Musselwhite, Judith Phillips, Ian Shergold and Les Todres demonstrate the utility of an interdisciplinary perspective on the role of spatial connectivity to rural elders’ community participation. Going beyond the conventional focus on transport, they examine older people’s conceptions and concerns with a broader continuum of mobility issues related to their needs and aspirations for getting around and staying connected to their communities. Reflecting a concern with subjective and shared meanings of the countryside, Chapter Six presents research undertaken by an arts and humanities team that explored older rural adults’ connectivity with the physical, social and cultural landscapes in which they locate themselves, through the methodological technique of ‘deep mapping’. Deep mapping refers to the processes of engaging with and evoking place in temporal depth – weaving together multiple voices, impressions and images from conversational exchange and 22

Countryside connections in later life: setting the scene

other fieldwork interactions into a multimedia re-presentation of a particular environment. In this chapter Jane Bailey, Iain Biggs and Daniel Buzzo focus on older people’s links with and through their rural environments, evoking ‘place’ as the ground of these connections and the subject of their arts-based representations of this experience. In Chapter Seven, Shane Doheny and Paul Milbourne explore the relations between older people, poverty and social welfare in rural places in England and Wales, building on previous work on rural poverty that points to both the significance of older people within the poor population and the widespread denial of poverty in rural places. Focusing on the experiences of older people living in poverty, the chapter highlights the ways in which their narratives of everyday life are constructed as much in terms of connectedness as exclusion, with the local social and natural context influencing people’s constructions of their places and personal situations. In addition, the chapter explores the shifting welfare contexts of rural places, pointing to the extent of complexities in welfare provision for older people in these places, as well as older people’s attitudes towards and experiences of welfare support. Echoing the current drive for increased democratic engagement in the research sector, public involvement was a key element in the GaPL project, with its focus on the connectivity of older people living in rural areas in civic society. Chapter Eight, by Simon Evans, Ray Jones and Janet Smithson, describes our efforts to place connectivity with a range of non-academic partners, including older people at the centre of our research, documenting the particular challenges of public engagement in rural areas and our attempts to address these challenges through the use of web-based technologies to facilitate communication between the research team and other project stakeholders. The chapter offers reflections and recommendations for facilitating meaningful public engagement for rural stakeholders in complex, interdisciplinary research. Finally, in Chapter Nine, we consider the interdisciplinary collaboration on which the GaPL project was based, which brought together a large, multi-university research team around the topic of older people’s connectivity in rural civic society.The project contained seven different sub-studies, ranging from a community survey to a work package seeking to engage older people in the research through the Internet. Outputs have included peer-reviewed articles, websites and project newsletters, as well as a film and exhibitions. From the outset, the challenge of managing such diversity and encouraging interdisciplinary integration was recognised and ‘connectivity’ was adopted as a ‘heuristic device’ to help keep all the different elements 23

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of the project together. In this chapter, Robin Means,Vanessa Burholt and Catherine Hagan Hennessy argue that the exploratory power of connectivity makes it much more than a heuristic device. Drawing on the findings from across the project, the diverse ways in which rural elders connect are illustrated. References Adler, R.P. and Goggin, J. (2005) ‘What do we mean by “civic engagement”?’, Journal of Transformative Education, vol 3, no 3, pp 236–53. Agarwal, S., Courtney, P., Errington, A., Moseley, M. and Rahman, S. (2004) ‘Determinants of relative economic performance of rural areas’, final research report prepared for Defra, University of Plymouth and Countryside and Community Research Unit. Beacham, P. and Ravilious, J. (2008) Down the deep lanes, Oxford: The Bardwell Press. Black, S., Chapman, P., Clark, G. and Shucksmith, M. (1994) The good life: rural disadvantage and older people in Scotland, Edinburgh: Age Concern Scotland. Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and symbolic power, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bracken, L.J. and Oughton, E.A. (2006) ‘“What do you mean?” The importance of language in developing interdisciplinary research’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, vol 31, pp 371–82. Brierly, G., Fryirs, K. and Jain, V. (2006) ‘Landscape connectivity: the geographic basis of geomorphic applications’, Area, vol 38, no 2, pp 165–74. Brown, D.L. (2010) Rethinking the OECD’s new rural demography, Centre for Rural Economy Discussion Paper Series no 26, Newcastle: Centre for Rural Economy, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Brown, P., McCann, S., Shaw, M. and Verne, J. (2005) Second blooming: towards achieving a healthy and active mature population in the South West, Bristol: South West Public Health Observatory. Bryden, J., Atterton, J., Courtney, P., Hart, K., Munro, G. and Timm, A. (2000) ‘Differential economic performance in rural areas’, International Conference on European Rural Policy at the Crossroads, University of Aberdeen, Kings College,The Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research, June 29–July 1. Bukov, A., Maas, I. and Lampert,T. (2002) ‘Social participation in very old age: cross-sectional and longitudinal findings from BASE’, Journal of Gerontology, vol 57B, no 6, pp P510–17.

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Burholt,V. (2006) ‘“Adref ”: theoretical contexts of attachment to place for mature and older people in rural North Wales’, Environment and Planning A, vol 38, pp 1095–114. Burholt,V. (2012) ‘The dimensionality of “place attachment” for older people in rural areas of South West England and Wales’, Environment and Planning A, vol 44, pp 2901–21. Burholt, V. and Dobbs, C. (2013) ‘Research on rural ageing: where have we got to and where are we going in Europe?’, Journal of Rural Studies, vol 28, pp 432–46. Burholt, V., Windle, G., Naylor, D., Jones, B., Riley, B., Oades, J., Humphries, C., Kennedy, D. and Clifford-Jones, J. (2007) Looking to the future: ageing in rural communities, Bangor: Centre for Social Policy Research and Development, University of Wales. Burholt,V., Scharf, T. and Walsh, K. (2013) ‘Imagery and imaginary of islander identity: older people and migration in Irish small-island communities’, Journal of Rural Studies, vol 31, no 3, pp 1–12. Calvo, E. (2006) Does working longer make people healthier and happier?, Work Opportunities for Older Americans Brief, series 2, Boston: Center for Retirement Research, Boston College. Chalmers, A.I. and Joseph, A.E. (2006) ‘Rural change and the production of otherness: the elderly in New Zealand’, in P. Cloke, T. Marsden and P.H. Mooney (eds) Handbook of rural studies, London: Sage, pp 388–400. Champion, T. and Shepherd, J. (2006) ‘Demographic change in rural England’, in L. Speakman and P. Lowe (eds) The ageing countryside: the growing older population in rural England, London: Age Concern, pp 29–50. Comas-Herrera, A.,Wittenberg, R. and Pickard, L. (2001) Projections of demand for residential care for older people in England to 2020, Canterbury: Personal Social Services Research Unit, University of Kent. Commission for Rural Communities (2007) The state of the countryside 2007, Cheltenham: CRC. Commission for Rural Communities (2008) The state of the countryside 2008, Cheltenham: CRC. Dannefer, D. and Phillipson, C. (eds) (2010) The Sage handbook of social gerontology, London: Sage. Defra (Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) (2006) ‘Rural definition and local authority classification’.Available at: http://archive.defra.gov.uk/evidence/statistics/rural/rural-definition. htm#class Delgado, M. (2009) Older adult-led health promotion in urban communities: models and interventions, Plymouth, UK: Rowman and Littlefield. 25

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Doyle,Y.G., McKee, M. and Sherriff, M. (2010) ‘A model of successful ageing in British populations’, European Journal of Public Health, vol 22, no 1, pp 71–6. Eales, J., Keefe, J. and Keating, N. (2008) ‘Age-friendly rural communities’, in N. Keating (ed) Rural aging: a good place to grow old?, Bristol: The Policy Press, pp 109–20. Esri (2006) ArcGIS® schematics: dealing with connectivity, Redlands, CA: Esri. Future Foundation (2004) ‘Rural futures project: scenario building for twenty and fifty year futures’. Available at: http://www.relu.ac.uk/ links/RuralFuturesScenarioReport.pdf Giarchi, G.G. (2004) ‘Rural futures: what will it mean for older people?’, in A. Johnson (ed) Ageing in the countryside, report of proceedings of a conference to explore the impact of ageing on rural England, London: Age Concern England, pp 12–14. Giarchi, G.G. (2006) ‘Older people “on the edge” in the countrysides of Europe’, Social Policy & Administration, vol 40, no 6, pp 705–21. Godel, M. (2007) Get the picture: older people’s day to day lives in rural West Oxfordshire 2004–2007, Abington: Age Concern Oxfordshire. Hamilton, P. (2007) An English eye: the photographs of James Ravilious, Oxford: The Bardwell Press. Hartwell, S., Kitchen, L., Milbourne, P. and Morgan, S. (2007) Population change in rural Wales: social and cultural impacts, Research Report no 14, Cardiff: Wales Rural Observatory. Heenan, D. (2010) ‘Social capital and older people in farming communities’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 24, no 1, pp 40–6. Hennessy, C.H. (2010) ‘Civic engagement in later life and lifelong learning’, International Journal of Education and Ageing, vol 1, no 2, pp 153–66. Hennessy, C.H. and the New Dynamics of Ageing Preparatory Network (2008) ‘Developing interdisciplinarity: the experience of a preparatory network in the New Dynamics of Ageing programme’, paper presented at the 37th British Society of Gerontology annual conference, Bristol, September. Hennessy, C.H. and Walker, A. (2011) ‘Promoting multi- and interdisciplinary ageing research in the United Kingdom’, Ageing & Society, vol 31, no 1, pp 52–69. Heo, J., Lee, Y., McCormick, B.P. and Pedersen, P.M. (2010) ‘Daily experience of serious leisure, flow and subjective well-being of older adults’, Leisure Studies, vol 29, no 2, pp 207–25.

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Hermanova, H., Brown, D.K., Goins, R.T. and Briggs, E. (2001) ‘The first international conference on rural aging: a global challenge’, Journal of Rural Health, vol 17, no 4, pp 303–4. Hillyard, S. (2007) The sociology of rural life, Oxford: Berg. HM Government (2009) Building a society for all ages, London: The Stationery Office. HM Government Performance and Innovation Unit (2002) Social capital, London: HM Government. Holstein, M. (2006) ‘A critical reflection on civic engagement’, Public Policy & Aging Report, vol 16, no 4, pp 21–6. Howse, K. (2003) Community development and older people: a review, London: Beth Johnson Foundation. Ilbery, B. (ed) (1998) The geography of rural change, Harlow: Prentice Hall. Kaskie, B., Imhof, S., Cavenaugh, J. and Culp, K. (2008) ‘Civic engagement as a retirement role for ageing Americans’, The Gerontologist, vol 48, no 3, pp 368–77. Keating, N. and Phillips, J. (2008) ‘A critical human ecology perspective on rural aging’, in N. Keating (ed) Rural aging: a good place to grow old?, Bristol: The Policy Press, pp 1–10. Kessel, F., Rosenfield, P.L. and Anderson, N.B. (eds) (2003) Expanding the boundaries of health and social science: case studies in interdisciplinary innovation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kinsella, K. (2001) ‘Urban and rural dimensions of global population aging: an overview’, Journal of Rural Health, vol 17, no 4, pp 314–22. Kivnic, H.Q. and Pruchno, R. (2011) ‘Bridges and boundaries: humanities and arts enhance gerontology’, The Gerontologist, vol 51, no 2, pp 142–44. Klamor,A. and Leonard,T.C. (1994) ‘So what’s an economic metaphor?’, in P. Mirowski (ed) Natural images in economic thought: markets red in tooth and claw, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 20–51. Kretzmann, J.P. and McKnight, J.L. (1993) Building communities from the inside out: a path towards finding and mobilising a community’s assets, Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Institute for Policy Research. Laing, S. (1992) ‘Images of the rural in popular culture 1750–1990’, in B. Short (ed) The English rural community: image and analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 133–54. Leavy, P. (2008) Method meets art: arts-based research practice, New York, NY: The Guildford Press. Lehr, U. (2007) ‘A society for all ages: challenges and opportunities. Participation and social inclusion’, presentation at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Ministerial Conference on Ageing, Leon, Spain, 6–8 November. 27

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LeMesurier, N. (2006) ‘The contributions of older people to rural community and citizenship’, in P. Lowe and L. Speakman (eds) The ageing countryside: the growing older population in rural England, London: Age Concern, pp 133-46. Lloyd, P. (2005) ‘Ageing, older people and regions’, Conference on Building Cohesion in an Ageing Europe, Age Concern England, London, 23–24 November. Lowe, P. and Speakman, L. (eds) (2006) The ageing countryside: the growing older population in rural England, London: Age Concern. Luoh, M.C. and Herzog, A.R. (2002) ‘Individual consequences of volunteer and paid work in old age: health and mortality’, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, vol 43, no 4, pp 490–509. Martinson, M. and Minkler, M. (2006) ‘Civic engagement and older adults: a critical perspective’, The Gerontologist, vol 46, no 3, pp 318–24. Menec, V., Means, R., Keating, N., Parkhurst, G. and Eales, J. (2011) ‘Conceptualizing age-friendly communities’, Canadian Journal of Aging, vol 30, no 3, pp 479–93. Mertens, D.M. (2007) ‘Transformative paradigm’, Journal of Mixed Methods Research, vol 1, no 3, pp 212–25. Midmore, P., Haines, M. and Sherwood,A.-M. (1996) ‘A national policy for the Welsh countryside’, in P. Midmore and G. Hughes (eds) Rural Wales: an economic and social perspective, Aberystwyth: Welsh Institute of Rural Studies, pp 1–11. Moreton, R., Malhomme, E., South, L. and Taylor, P. (2005) Rural lifelines: older people and rural social enterprises,Woodstock, Oxfordshire: The Plunkett Foundation. Morrow-Howell, N. and Freedman, M. (eds) (2006) ‘Civic engagement in later life’, Special issue of Generations, Journal of the American Society on Aging, Winter. Morrow-Howell, N. and Freedman, M. (2007) ‘Introduction: bringing civic engagement into sharper focus’, Generations, vol 30, no 4, pp 6–9. Moseley, M.J. and Pahl, R.E. (2007) Social capital in rural places, a report to Defra, London: Rural Evidence Research Centre, Birkbeck College, University of London. Narayanan, A., Jain, A. and Boonder, B. (2005) ‘Providing rural connectivity infrastructure: ICT diffusion through private sector participation’, International Journal of Services Technology and Management, vol 6, nos 3–5, pp 415–36. National Assembly for Wales (2002) A statistical focus on rural Wales, Cardiff: The National Assembly for Wales. Norman, J. (2010) The Big Society: the anatomy of the new politics, Buckingham: The University of Buckingham Press. 28

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Office for National Statistics (2001) Census:Aggregate data (England and Wales) [computer file]. UK Data Service Census Support. Downloaded from: http://casweb.mimas.ac.uk/. This information is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence [http://www. nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/2]. Office for National Statistics (2013) Census 2011 data at output area level, Newport: ONS. Okun, M.A., Yeung, E.W.H. and Brown, S. (2013) ‘Volunteering by older adults and risk of mortality: a meta-analysis’, Psychology and Aging, vol 28, no 2, pp 564–77. O’Leary, T. (2005) Asset based approaches to rural community development, London: Carnegie UK Trust. Philip, L., Gilbert, A., Mauther, N. and Phimister, E. (2003) Scoping study of older people in rural Scotland, Edinburgh: Scottish Executive Social Research. Phillipson, C., Bernard, M., Phillips, J. and Ogg, J. (2001) The family and community life of older people: social networks and social support in three urban areas, London: Routledge. Putnam, R.D. (1995) ‘Bowling alone:America’s declining social capital’, Journal of Democracy, vol 6, no 1, pp 65–78. Putnam, R.D. (2000) Bowling alone. The collapse and revival of American community, New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Rees, P. (2003) ‘Demographic ageing: the broad context, regional diversity’, paper presented at the Regions for All Ages Conference, 11 March, Birmingham. Riseborough, M. and Jenkins, C. (2004) Now you see me … now you don’t. How are older citizens being included in regeneration?, London: Age Concern England. Rowe, J.W. and Kahn, R.L. (1998) Successful aging, New York, NY: Pantheon. Scharf,T. (2006) Rural disadvantage: quality of life and disadvantage amongst older people – a pilot study, Cheltenham: Commission for Rural Communities. Scheidt, R. and Noris-Baker, C. (2004) ‘The general ecological model revisited: evolution, current status and continuing challenges’, in H.W. Wahl, R. Scheidt and P.G. Windley (eds) Annual review of gerontology and geriatrics: focus on aging in context: socio-physical environments, New York, NY: Springer Publishing, pp 34–54. Shucksmith, M. (2003) Social exclusion in rural areas: a review of recent research, London: Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

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Shucksmith, M., Chapman, P. and Clark, G., with Black, S. and Conway, E. (1996) Rural Scotland today: the best of both worlds?, Avebury: Aldershot. Smith, D.P. and Phillips, D.A. (2001) ‘Socio-cultural representations of greentrified Pennine rurality’, Journal of Rural Studies, vol 17, no 4, pp 457–69. Svendsen, G.L.H. and Sorensen, J.F.L. (2007) ‘There’s more to the picture than meets the eye: measuring tangible and intangible capital in two marginal communities in rural Denmark’, Journal of Rural Studies, vol 23, no 4, pp 453–71. Trezise, S. (2000) The West Country as a literary invention: putting fiction in its place, Exeter: University of Exeter Press. United Nations (2009) World population ageing 2009, New York, NY: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. Walsh, K., O’Shea, E. and Scharf, T. (2012) Social exclusion and ageing in diverse rural communities: findings of a cross-border study in Ireland and Northern Ireland, Galway: Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, National University of Ireland. Wenger, C. (2001) ‘Myths and realities of ageing in rural Britain’, Ageing & Society, vol 21, no 1, pp 117–30. White, D.R. and Harary, F. (2001) ‘The cohesiveness of blocks of social networks: node connectivity and conditional density’, Sociological Methodology, vol 31, no 1, pp 305–59. Wilson, L.B. and Simson, S.P. (eds) (2006) Civic engagement and the baby boomer generation: research, policy, and practice perspectives, London: Routledge. World Bank (1999) ‘What is social capital?’, PovertyNet. Available at: www.worldbank.org/poverty/scapital/whatsc.htm Zedlewski, S.R. and Butrica, B.A. (2007) Perspectives on productive ageing: are we taking full advantage of older adults’ potential?, Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

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TWO

Conceptualising rural connectivities in later life Nigel Curry,Vanessa Burholt and Catherine Hagan Hennessy

Connectivity from a governance perspective The way in which people connect with each other in particular places (such as rural areas) has been discussed and evaluated in many different ways. The dominant contemporary characterisation among policymakers and politicians the world over tends to be a functionalist one: people connecting together offer great potential for social integration, the development of collective values and social cohesion (Forrest and Kearns, 2001; Wilkinson, 2008). It is assumed that stronger integration and greater social cohesion will make society a better place (Jaffe and Quark, 2006). In relation to older people, this rationale is reflected, for example, in the national strategy on ageing for the UK (HM Government, 2009), which promotes building links between people of different generations as a means of strengthening bonds within communities. Governments produce guidance manuals on how to promote a sense of belonging in local communities (Department of Communities and Local Government, 2009) and government agencies develop measures to show how well connected communities are, with variables relating to trusting people, helping in the community, volunteering and generally being good citizens (Grootaert et al, 2004; Economic and Social Data Service, 2011). This notion of social connectivity is a useful one for governments and tends to be a common policy objective, even where motives for introducing it might differ. There are a number of different political traditions that can lead to the common policy outcome of increased social connectivity. In the North American neo-liberal tradition, social connectivity shows how people have the ability to look after themselves and avoid the ignominy of dependence upon the state (Cruickshank, 1996; Wilkinson, 2010). It allows the development of personal freedoms, particularly where community action can release 31

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communities from publicly provided services over which they have little control (Lemke, 2001). Individual rights take over from state controls to allow individuals to reshape their lives (Rose, 1999). In the UK, promoting increased social connectivity has allowed successive governments of all major political parties over the past 20 years to advocate (and develop policies for) ‘stakeholding’ societies, ‘active citizens’, ‘third way’ politics and the Big Society. Such independence from the state has also been advocated as a means of reducing exchequer cost (Taylor, 2003) and the size of government (Barnes et al, 2007), and is seen as a political justification for policies concerned with empowering communities. In this UK context, two different political motivations have dominated. The first has been a recognition that the costs of welfare provision, particularly for older people in an ageing society, are simply too large to be sustainable. The argument is that moving decisions that used to be the province of the state into the community sector saves money for the Treasury and allows central government to become smaller (Hunt and Wickham, 1994). Habermas (1984) calls this responsible participation, where increased community connectivity is seen as a responsibility rather than an opportunity. Furthermore, in principle, it also makes communities conform more closely to state objectives (Cochrane, 2003). However, separately, there has been a genuine state desire to make communities more connected so that they are better equipped to play an active role in their own government and development (Dean, 1999). Dryzek (2000) has termed this deliberative democracy and it was seen as part of the move to ‘modernise local government’ under the Blair administrations in the UK. One of its main purposes has been to try and get more people working together to have a greater influence over public decisions.

Policies and action for connectivity among older people These political traditions exhorting community connectedness have found their way into a range of policies for older people. The crossgovernment strategy document Opportunity age (Department for Work and Pensions, 2005) stressed the need for more active involvement of older people in their communities, both in terms of local decisionmaking and local action. In 2005, the Audit Commission’s revised Comprehensive Performance Assessment for England underlined the importance of older people as active citizens. In relation to the Assessment, ‘social cohesion’ has been considered particularly 32

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important for rural areas (Blackman et al, 2006) because of the relative difficulty in accessing a range of services and because the proportion of older people is higher in rural areas than urban ones and is growing more rapidly (Age Concern et al, 2005). For Wales, The strategy for older people 2008–2013 (Welsh Assembly Government, 2008) calls for stronger participation among older people at the local level, through older people’s ‘champions’. Local coordinators have been appointed at the local authority level under this strategy to facilitate the engagement of older people: ‘A primary focus of the first phase of the Strategy was on establishing processes to facilitate the engagement of the over 50s; an expression of citizenship through participation’ (WAG, 2008, p 12). The second phase of this strategy proposes enhancing the participation of older people in society at all levels of government, particularly in the planning and development of local services, as a means of promoting social inclusion. Partly in response to such policy exhortations, the growth in community connectedness has been particularly visible among older people, with the development of a large number of seniors’ networks and older people’s forums concerned to develop mutual support mechanisms and to make older people politically more ‘visible’ (South West Seniors Network et al, 2011). In 2008, it was estimated that there were about 400 older people’s forums nationally in the UK, with about 100,000 members, many supported through Help the Aged’s Speaking Up for Old Age programme and a number of Age Concern initiatives (Crawley and Edwards, 2008). Much of this activity is now overseen by Age UK and its local branches, the new organisations created through the amalgamation of Help the Aged and Age Concern. In Wales, the Welsh Assembly Government notes that ‘A wide range of forums has been developed in different areas in Wales to represent the concerns of the over 50s’ (WAG, 2008, p 18).These have been founded within local authorities and by voluntary organisations, the latter of which have provided a range of support mechanisms for older people at the local level. Despite this, in Wales, there is some concern as to their effectiveness: ‘While mechanisms for gathering views and “giving voice” to older people are widespread, concerns were expressed about how receptive organisations (at all levels) were to listening to those voices’ (Porter et al, 2007, p 42). In a South West England case study of such forums, Crawley and Edwards (2008) note the types of activity undertaken (see Table 2.1). Older people also tend to dominate parish councils in rural areas, although, as Kambites and Moseley (2007, p 14) note, for England, this 33

Countryside connections Table 2.1:The main activity of older people’s forums in the South West Activity Giving older people a voice Providing older people with advice and information Acting as a signposting service to show older people where they could get help and support Keeping older people informed about government policy Publishing a regular newsletter Offering social activities

Response (%) 84 82 70 69 68 16

Source: Crawley and Edwards (2008).

can make them unrepresentative of the wider community, ‘skewing overall community impact’. This problem has been found in Wales, too (Windle and Porter, 2008), and of particular relevance to the debate on the representativeness of rural participation is the difficulty of playing a part in civic organisations that older people who do not have access to their own transport encounter (Porter et al, 2007).

Civic engagement among rural elders While a range of policies focuses on the ways in which older people can connect with their communities, how these policies manifest through civic engagement requires consideration. Civic engagement refers to a range of activities, including voting, political campaigning and community work, such as informal care and volunteering (Ramakrishnan and Baldassare, 2004; Martinson and Minkler, 2006). More commonly, authors have used the term ‘civic engagement’ synonymously with ‘volunteerism’, thus reducing the range of connectivity that could be addressed through civic and political participation to ‘caring’ or other types of unpaid work in, or for, community groups and organisations (Martinson and Minkler, 2006). Some critical gerontologists have suggested that the focus on volunteerism (at the expense of a wider range of civic activities) has resulted from a deliberate repositioning of civic engagement during periods of socio-political retrenchment. This shift of focus guarantees that the spotlight is firmly on moral obligations and a responsibility placed upon older people to give something back to the community, thus ensuring that there is an army of labour to fill gaps in service provision that have arisen because of underfunding in public services (eg Biggs, 2001).

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In addition to the potential for older volunteers to provide services that offer alternatives to public welfare provision, such action under the community connectivity umbrella has been seen more widely to offer the potential to be beneficial to older people. Barefoot et al (1998), for example, have shown that the connectivity that such localism brings has significant ‘health protective effects’ among elders in general (they studied 55–80 year olds), and Woolhead et al (2004) consider connectivity to enhance ‘dignity’ in later life. Despite the drive to promote ‘productive ageing’ and volunteerism (Age UK, 2012, 2013), and the large volume of literature which suggests that there are positive benefits of engaging in voluntary activities, such as delayed mortality, higher levels of well-being and benefits to the volunteer’s family (Morrow-Howell et al, 2003, 2009; Harris and Thoresen, 2005; see also Chapter One), Cox (2011) estimates that volunteering (across all ages) is decreasing in the UK. More specifically, she found that the hours spent volunteering decreased between 1997 and 2005 (from 16 to 11.9 hours per week) and that rates of volunteering were lower in 2010 (25%) than in 2007/08 (27–9%) (Cox, 2011, p 34). While the literature relating to volunteering in rural areas is limited, there are indications that older volunteers make substantial contributions to rural community life. For example, Moseley (2009) describes a number of case studies and initiatives in which older people demonstrate civic participation through volunteering. Appleton community shop, for example, seven miles from Oxford, is a social enterprise with seven unpaid directors, the average age of whom is 60. It is run by 90 volunteers, 70 of whom are retired or not otherwise employed. They serve in the shop, purchase produce to be sold there, clean and perform administrative tasks. Some bake bread on the premises. An older woman who chairs the parish council organises and replenishes the volunteer pool. Moseley observes that the shop is used by the whole community but frail and disabled people are made particularly welcome, given a helping hand in the shop and allowed to buy very small quantities. The shop is the hub of what goes on in the village; community spirit has been enhanced through the network of volunteers, drawn from all social groups. Many of the volunteers, Moseley observes, enjoy increased social interaction and enhanced self-esteem. These findings are reflected in a larger study (Withers and Fisher, 2011) of the role of volunteers aged 50 and over in 15 rural community-owned shops in Somerset and Dorset. In half of these shops, older people comprise over 70% of the volunteer force. They are instrumental in the day-to-day running of the shop and, in some 35

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locations, are involved in a range of additional specialist roles. Older volunteers in this study viewed the shop as a focal point of community life and virtually all felt that their volunteering was ‘highly beneficial’ in terms of their social contact and sense of community belonging. The majority also believed that their volunteering fostered their sense of worth and well-being. In the Grey and Pleasant Land (GaPL) study, nearly two fifths (38%) of participants claimed to have done voluntary or charity work as a form of civic engagement. Nearly one half (47%) of rural elders claimed to have undertaken activities that actively ‘assisted others’ in the 12 months prior to the survey. However, not all older people are able to (or want to) take part in voluntary activities, with those who are younger, healthier, wealthier and more educated more likely to do so (Erlinghagen and Hank, 2006; Hank and Erlinghagen, 2010). In the GaPL study, the level of voluntary or charity work was lowest in the most rural of the case study areas (30% of respondents in England and 19% in Wales) but this is likely to be explained by a lack of opportunities for such work as much as any inclination not to become involved. Of those that said they provide assistance to others, married people were significantly more likely to bestow support than those who were widowed or single. Not surprisingly, this kind of connectivity decreased with increasing age and declining health, and increased the higher the level of educational qualifications a person had and the higher the occupational status they had enjoyed in employment.There were also differences in levels of civic engagement according to income, with higher rates of participation reported by those on higher incomes, and this issue is explored in more depth in Chapter Eight. While a majority of the literature on civic engagement focuses on volunteerism, there is somewhat limited evidence concerning the other types of civic engagement whereby older people actively connect to the socio-political rural community environment. For example, studies have indicated that in Europe and the UK, older people are more likely to vote than younger people (Goerres, 2007; Melo and Stockemer, 2012). In the GaPL study, a greater proportion of rural elders voted in the 2005 general election than in the population as a whole. Thus, in England, 61.3% of the population voted, but in this survey, 76% of English rural elders did. In Wales, this difference was less: 62.6% of the population voted and 66.7% of the Welsh survey rural elders did (House of Commons, 2013). In both England and Wales, turnout was highest in the most affluent, least remote case study areas (79% in England and 71% in Wales). 36

Conceptualising rural connectivities in later life

While differences in civic engagement between generations have been investigated, how these differences (or, indeed, similarities) manifest in rural areas is under-researched. Research has shown that middle-aged people (35–64 years) are more likely to sign petitions than older people, while younger people are more likely to take part in political demonstrations (Melo and Stockemer, 2014). Although commentators have noted that deviations from the average ages of protestors vary according to the issues at stake (Walgrave and Klandermans, 2010), they make no reference to how differences in civic engagement may differ by age and location. The GaPL study tried to address the deficit in knowledge concerning older people’s civic engagement in rural areas, including, for example, their activities through community organisations and associations (see Figure 2.1). In Chapter Four, local concerns or contentious issues (such as the development of wind farms and people moving into the area) are discussed in terms of the potential to provoke oppositional behaviour. For example, there may be collective attempts by older people to influence planning or policy in order to protect the local rural community or environment from change. In the study, one fifth (20%) of rural elders made use of local councillors Figure 2.1: Levels of involvement of rural elders in a selected range of community organisations (percentage involved in any one group) 50 45

41

40 35 30

31 27

% 25 20 15 10 5

18

18

16 10

7

7

5

5

4

0

e ip ty ol e) dy up cil up up up on rsh gro gro chem Offic gro oun gro Scho ciati l par l bo o c a a n n f w rity nity tch s ost on sso tic tio ity tio P ’ a poli fessi a e o cha mu va mun rva s r c e t a of ro en Pl y or Com ity W Sav onse om rese sid nch or p un (eg e c or c gs p ar e t a R m r n m Br nion lun ign tu din Vo Co mpa Na Tow Buil eu ad Ca r T

37

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to help them with particular issues and nearly as many had contacted their local Member of Parliament (MP) within the 12 months prior to the survey (17%) or been involved in a campaign (18%). Furthermore, several participants had attended a public meeting of some sort, such as a nature conservation group (16%) or a building preservation group (10%), or claimed to have been involved with their parish (England) or community (Wales) council (10%). The reasons why rural elders did not do more in terms of community activity are set out in Figure 2.2, which suggests that most rural elders are quite happy with the amount of active helping that they already do, and by far the most important barrier to more community activity is a lack of interest in doing so – a preference not to participate rather than a constraint to participation. Chapters Three to Eight are concerned with (in varying degrees) the civic engagement and/or social participation of older people. However, in order to inform our understanding of these forms of connectivity, we attempt also to explain why some groups of older people mobilise while others remain or become disengaged. Four decades ago, Granovetter (1973) suggested that the strength of connectivity – the ties between people within a network – impact upon mobility opportunity, spread of information and community Figure 2.2: Barriers to participating in community activities (percentage of all who responded to this question) 30 25 20 % 15 10 5 0

fe rt ey ce ed lth me ted on nsa olv spo f ti den hea u res v i n m f o e n a g n f i n t i k tr lin co se ko ns t in Lac to of Fee tho Lac No ss atio k t e h c i t c La wi Lim f ac on ko t c e a g L n’t Do

38

Conceptualising rural connectivities in later life

organisation. This suggests that in order for us to understand social participation and civic engagement, it is necessary to consider the bonds (strong ties) and bridges (weak ties) between older people in rural areas. Putnam (2000) also talked about bonding and bridging ties in his thesis on social capital and this is one of the frameworks we consider to explain connectivity in rural areas. However, Granovetter (1973, p 1360) also pointed out that ‘a fundamental weakness of current sociological theory is that it does not relate micro-level interactions to macro-level patterns in any convincing way’. The multidisciplinary nature of the GaPL team has meant that we have focused on insights into macro phenomena (such as political and economic structures, operationalised through pension provision – see Chapter Seven) alongside micro-level data that offered illuminating ideas about what happens in small groups or localities (such as The Other Side of Delphy Bridge in Chapter Six). Thus, we needed a framework that could help us explain the interactions between these levels of operation. While we use Bourdieu’s (1985) notions of ‘capitals’ to examine the exercise of power in social contexts, we also draw on the critical human ecological framework (Bronfenbrenner, 1986; Keating and Phillips, 2008) to undertake a holistic approach to examining rural areas in terms of the ways in which these impact upon older people, and vice versa, in the development of connectivity.

Social capital – challenging functionalist limitations Putnam’s (2000) concept of social capital has been much cited and has led to a veritable industry of applied research (Adkins, 2008). This literature has examined the potential of the citizenry to ‘bond’ closely together and to extend the hand of friendship by ‘bridging’ the gaps between communities (Putnam, 1995, 2000). However, this integrative and functionalist view of the growth of convergent connectivity values (Siisiäinen, 2000) has been found by some to be ‘uncritical’ (Fulkerson and Thompson, 2008), with little basis in theory (De Fillipis, 2001) or evidence (Woolcock, 2001). Research by Coffé and Geys (2006), for example, has held up for question Putnam’s conclusion that older people tend to have a higher level of social capital than other age groups and therefore can necessarily be assumed to be leaveners of community connectivity. Their study of social capital in 307 Flemish municipalities demonstrated instead that the proportion of the population aged 65 and over has a negative effect on a municipality’s level of social capital, a finding that they explain as a result of the uncertain status of older people in Flemish society. 39

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Certainly, from studies in rural communities, this very positive view of connectivity among people who live in proximate spaces can be challenged. Lee and Newby (1983) suggest that there is no a priori reason why people living next to each other should connect at all. This issue is given fuller consideration in Chapter Four in the context of what it means to ‘belong’ to a community. In many cases where they do, Browning et al (2000) suggest that it is more commonly through a ‘negotiated coexistence’ than any spontaneous community cohesion. There is a large literature, too, on organised community conflict (Proctor, 2006), often born of disputes over the very physical space that is shared. However, there are other potential sources of conflict in rural areas that arise from ‘the variegated human constituent of rural areas’ (Philo, 1992, p 200). In this respect, a connected rural community presents the rural idyll but within dominant modes of power relating to sexuality, gender, class and disability, as well as age. Wilkinson (2008) has studied these connectivities specifically in the context of rural Canada and has found differences between two types of bonding capital: that which originates at the individual-household level and that which originates at the community level. He found that connections tend to be higher at the individual-household level where there are children in the family and where family incomes are high. For community connectivity, the geographical location of the community seemed to be an important influence. These influences over connectivity, particularly in relation to geographical place, are again explored more fully in Chapter Four. Alternative realities may also exist for distinct groups of people for whom connections to, or apartness from, others in the community are based on aspects of their identities. A focus in geography on ‘rural others’ has given us an insight into the distinctive nature of rural lives for women (Little and Austin, 1996; Hughes, 1997; Little, 1997a, 1997b, 1997c), gays and lesbians (Kramer, 1995;Valentine, 1997; Little, 2006, 2007; Browne, 2011), people from black and minority ethnic groups (Agyeman and Spooner, 1997; Kinsman, 1997), Travellers (Halfacree, 1996; Davis, 1997; Sibley, 1997), and people from alternative subcultures, such as those seeking to be self-sufficient or pursue other ‘radical’ rural lives (Halfacree, 2006, 2007). Others have argued that the lack of research on rural ageing suggests that age in itself may be sufficient to constitute a neglected ‘rural other’ (Burholt and Dobbs, 2012). Some people may actively reject the community ‘belief system’ in the place in which they reside, as Mason (2000) has shown for small villages: people actively may wish not to connect. 40

Conceptualising rural connectivities in later life

Whereas others identified with particular groups may experience discrimination, insecurity or ‘dropping out/introversion’ (Halfacree, 2007), and this can have an impact on their experience of connectivity or conflict in rural areas. Also, others may indulge in neighbouring, or connectivity, for self-interested reasons (Keller, 2003), joining in for what they can get out of it, rather than what they can contribute. Whatever the motivation for connecting or choosing not to, the ‘reach’ of connectivity, suggests Mann (1970), is likely to be limited. Our ability to make evidence-based assertions about a social capital approach to the connectivity of older people in rural areas has been limited by the fact that the majority of this research has been carried out in urban communities (Heenan, 2010), with little of it informed by a gerontological perspective (Smith et al, 2002). Emerging studies in this area have variously focused on different aspects of social capital; however, they have tended to be consistent with Carr’s (2005, p 91) view of the social capital framework as an important tool in ageing research due to its potential to conceptualise the ‘positive aspects of the reciprocal benefits between older people and society’. Walsh and O’Shea’s (2008) study of an ‘active retirement’ group in a rural location in the Republic of Ireland, for example, reflects Putnam’s emphasis on the role of formal associations in the production of social capital. Effects of the group’s volunteering activities were found to include perceived benefits to individual health and well-being, as well as creating a source of social connections and resources that bridged diverse groups of older people, including the majority and Traveller communities. This interpretation of these forms of connectivity reflects a purely functionalist view, with benefits accruing to all, albeit in different measure. Heenan’s (2010) investigation of social capital and older people in farming communities in Northern Ireland, on the other hand, focused on the role of older people in reciprocal exchanges of assistance and resources within and between local farming families in an area with few formal associations or groups. Despite their general lack of participation in organised group-based activities, participants reported a strong sense of community. This was attributed to the shared values, aspirations and identity of the farming community, and ‘an unspoken code of practice based on tradition, cooperation and neighbourliness’ (Heenan, 2010, p 43). While usefully capturing older people’s contribution to the production of rural social capital, this study likewise represents a functionalist perspective that offers little insight into the situation of those who may be unable or disinclined to participate in these social and material exchanges. As Johansson et al 41

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(2012, p 45) point out, the ‘normative position’ towards social capital as a social good ignores ‘the possibility that high levels of social capital within groups might be either a cause or symptom of social division and exclusion’. An additional shortcoming of the functionalist social capital approach to connectivity is that although it is concerned with people’s connections with each other, it does not address people’s connections with places. Forrest and Kearns (2001) draw a distinction between neighbourhood (an attachment to local places) and neighbouring (an attachment to local people) and seek to show that the former becomes more important with affluence as people buy into neighbourhoods for their environmental and aesthetic qualities rather than necessarily their ‘people’. For some older people, aesthetically pleasing environments may help to restore, during retirement, some of the vitality that may have been slowly eroded during years of engagement in the workforce (Burholt and Naylor, 2005). Furthermore, the functional aspect of the environment with regard to providing a familiar location to reduce the amount of effort expended in everyday tasks has also been cited as an explanation for the development of connectivity to a place (Kahana et al, 2003). Similarly, physical insideness (Rowles, 1983) or place dependence (Williams and Vaske, 2003; Raymond et al, 2010) are both concerned with an attachment that is developed through a familiarity with the environment. Thus, here, connectivity is with place as physical environment rather than community.

Structuralist views of connectivity: Bourdieu From the largely empirical positions of connectivity in practice, the functionalist view of convergent connectivity has limitations in its explanatory power as a conceptual model. Other writers, however, have sought to explain both convergent and divergent notions of connectivity. In a more structuralist than functionalist tradition, Simmel (1908), for example, offers the notion of sociation as a general description of connectivity, the precept of which is that human interaction offers the potential to be negative as well as positive, but also neutral or indifferent. Thus, connectivity can be conflictual as well as consensual (but no less ‘connected’ as a result) and Simmel even suggests that conflictual connectivity brings about change more successfully (it leads to dialogue and reciprocal action) than consensus, which tends to lead to conservatism or even prejudice. Both are more likely to lead to action than no connectivity at all, however, which is often associated with inaction, indifference and ‘not taking part’. 42

Conceptualising rural connectivities in later life

Bourdieu (1988) discusses this form of connectivity in the context of ‘disinterestedness’. Other useful conceptualisations have come from Pierre Bourdieu. These are helpful for our purposes in this chapter as a relationship with Putnam’s consensual views of social capital can be described, although Bourdieu’s conceptualisations are more critically situated. The two approaches have been commonly compared (Portes, 2000; De Fillipis, 2001; Taylor, 2003). While Putnam’s view of social capital is as a convergent cornerstone of community development, Bourdieu’s (1985) notions of ‘capitals’ concern the exercise of power in social contexts; in this power-relations context, they have the potential for both positive and negative impacts (Coleman, 1988), much in the way that Simmel’s sociation allows. Thus, older people are able to exercise power within their communities in both positive (eg by being an active member of the parish council) and negative (eg by ‘turning their back’ on their resident community and refusing to take part) ways. As Siisiäinen (2000, p 10) expresses it: ‘Putnam’s idea of social capital deals with collective values and societal integration, whereas Bourdieu’s approach is made from the point of view of actors engaged in struggle in pursuit of their interests’. In reviewing Bourdieu’s thinking about capital, Siisiäinen (2000, p 10) also notes that ‘Bourdieu’s formulations around capital leave plenty of room for different interpretations’. This allows us to use them here as a conceptual framework around which the various components of the GaPL project cohere. Bourdieu’s capitals have conceptual value in that they are both critically constructed and differentiated into different types. Because society has many different parts to it (Bourdieu called these fields), Bourdieu deployed the notion of four different types of capital to help explain where individuals or groups were situated within these different parts of society. These types of capital were termed economic, cultural, social and symbolic. Where people (or actors) are situated in different parts of society is influenced by the amount of power they hold in each of these types of capital and the sharing of power that results. Simply put, a person with high levels of economic capital will have a significant number of economic possessions (for older people, these, where they exist, are commonly capitalised into property, savings and final salary pensions) that allow access to a range of benefits in society, both material and non-material. It is essentially a command over material resources, and can be observed to be very variable among older people in rural areas, as Chapter Seven shows. Cultural capital has three main elements to it. It exists, first, in the way we have developed from childhood in terms of what we have 43

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learned and picked up along the way. This ‘embodied’ capital rests in the socialised properties of the self. Rural elders are clearly a product of the life that has gone before them. Second, it is manifest in articles and objects that are deemed to have a cultural value. This ‘objectified’ capital can be found in paintings, music and the like, but also in customs and traditions (see, eg, Burholt et al, 2013). In particular, it can be represented by physical places and the environment that give a place its character and identity. As a subset of cultural capital, Karol and Gale (2004) term this ‘environmental’ capital. Third, cultural capital as ‘institutionalised’ capital is manifest in cultural attainment, such as professional and academic qualifications (Bourdieu, 1977). Many older people sustain their cultural capital in retirement, becoming known as the ‘retired bank manager’, and being active in alumni associations associated both with their education (school and university) and their profession if they had one. Pellerin and Stearns (2001) interpret such displays of cultural capital as a form of defence against threats to ‘status honour’ posed by membership in a devalued social group, such as ‘older people’.The extent to which older people do or do not sustain such cultural capital into retirement describes their differential power relations in respect of this particular capital. Social capital, in turn, is considered by Bourdieu (1980) to relate to the size and quality of the social group connections that an individual has and that (s)he perceives that (s)he can reliably draw upon. These can include formal memberships of groups and informal relationships, but all offer the potential to change the social status of the individual. The quality of social capital in this category is considered to reflect the status or standing of the groups to which the individual belongs (eg a particular voluntary body). Symbolic capital really concerns who people are (and, indeed, what places are) and what their differences in society are perceived to be. It is commonly considered as the resources of an individual (or a place) that arise as a result of honour, prestige, position and status. Unlike economic capital (which can exist in its own right as, eg, money), cultural capital (which can exist as, eg, paintings, landscapes or qualifications) or social capital (which can exist in the form of a voluntary organisation), symbolic capital remains only perceptual – it is something that we, or others, feel that we are (Joppke, 1986), or the meanings that we attach to places and environments. Of course, the other capitals can have a perceptual component as well, but, importantly, symbolic capital is only perceptual. This symbolic capital is used to help determine the other types of capital – it acts as a kind of filter for them.This is what Bourdieu (1991) terms symbolic power. 44

Conceptualising rural connectivities in later life

Furthermore, this symbolic power is influenced, in turn, by how well we are informed about things. Each of the four capitals has informed research focusing on older people, although, as stated earlier in this chapter, this research has generally been orientated towards the urban experience and has often lacked an explicit gerontological perspective. Social capital (at both the individual and community level) has been the most extensively used of the forms of capital in studies focusing on older people, in particular, as a predictor or mediator of health and quality of life outcomes (Andrew, 2005; Boneham and Sixsmith, 2006; Nilsson et al, 2006; Nyqvist et al, 2006, 2012; Aida et al, 2009, 2013; Ichida et al, 2009; Forsman et al, 2011; Poulsen et al, 2011, 2012; Bojorquez-Chapela et al, 2012; Sirven and Debrand, 2012; Cramm et al, 2013; Fonchingong, 2013), social participation, including volunteering (Warburton and McLaughlin, 2005; Okun and Michel, 2006; Kim et al, 2007; Collom, 2008; Choi and Chou, 2010; Son et al, 2010; Theurer and Wister, 2010; Hodgkin, 2011; McNamara and Gonzales, 2011), and use of the Internet (Russell et al, 2008; Sum et al, 2008; Pfeil et al, 2009). Economic capital, on the other hand, has typically been examined in association with social capital in these studies, operationalised as some measure of the older person’s income or economic security (eg Karlsdotter et al, 2011; Chemaitelly et al, 2012). Aspects of the multifaceted concept of cultural capital that have been variously considered in the gerontological literature include attendance at religious activities (McNamara and Gonzales, 2011), educational status and level of knowledge of a foreign language (Arun, 2012), participation in adult education classes (Formosa, 2006), knowledge and practice of traditional craft forms (Wilcox et al, 2007; Burholt et al, 2013), and knowledge and understanding of contemporary art (Goulding, 2013). The remaining form of capital – symbolic capital – has been examined, for example, by Traphagan (2000) in his study of religious ritual among rural Japanese elders, which he posits as serving to represent and reproduce the power of older male community residents within age-stratified social structures. The practice of tai chi among a group of English middle-class older adults at risk of falls has similarly been analysed as a method of producing symbolic capital, which allows these individuals to resist identification with advanced old age (Scourfield, 2006). Hunt’s (2009) study of older couples retiring to take up kiwifruit farming in rural New Zealand likewise uses the concept of symbolic capital to demonstrate the function of this activity in the development of post-retirement identities and the maintenance 45

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of social status in later life. Burholt et al (2013) also explore the use of symbolic capital in terms of contributing to delineating the ‘authenticity’ of claims to islander identity on small rural islands off the coast of Ireland. A number of other studies have specifically examined the various types of capital in relation to the health, well-being and participation of older people in rural settings (eg Liu and Besser, 2003; Warburton and Stirling, 2007; Nummela et al, 2008, 2009; Walsh and O’Shea, 2008; Heenan, 2010; Wanless et al, 2010; Norstrand and Xu, 2012). These four capitals can be used in a range of combinations to achieve an aggregate position for an individual in society, placing them in a particular social field. Thus, a person’s cultural capital might be high, but her/his economic capital might be low, and so forth. Silva and Edwards (no date) provide an aggregate example of this balance between the capitals, suggesting that teachers might have high cultural capital and low economic capital, and ‘industrialists’ might have the opposite.This places each of these two groups in different social fields. Goldthorpe (1996) suggests that economic capital is the most powerful of these as at least a degree of it is evident before the others are activated. Coleman (1990), however, suggests that social capital, in certain circumstances, can act as a substitute for economic capital. All undoubtedly impact on each other: institutional cultural capital in the form of education and qualifications is likely to impact upon economic capital (and vice versa). Different studies have found different types of capital dominating in different circumstances: for example, social capital dominated over cultural capital in one Australian case study (Bennett et al, 1999), the opposite of that which Bourdieu (1988) found to be the case in his studies in France. In this context, it does not mean much to consider one type of capital on its own as they are all interrelated. The empirical measurement of Bourdieu’s capitals is less straightforward than that of Putnam, as Bourdieu himself considered them to be heuristic (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Critically, these capitals are found differentially within groups and individuals and these differing amounts add up to the capital profile of such individuals or groups. Further, each of the capitals influences the others, as their relationship and relative importance changes over time. These are represented in Figure 2.3.

46

Conceptualising rural connectivities in later life Figure 2.3: Bourdieu’s four capitals make up, in different proportions, the capital profile of individuals and groups of rural elders Social capital: resources based on group membership, relationships, networks of influence and support.

Cultural capital: knowledge, information, memory and heritage. It is made up of three parts.

Economic capital: the command over material resources.

The CAPITAL PROFILE of groups or individuals.

Embodied: acquired and ‘inherited’ properties of the self. Objectified: found in artefacts, customs, traditions and place, the environment, and the landscape. Institutionalised: a currency of recognition (eg qualifications).

Symbolic capital: Resources available to an individual on the basis of honour, prestige or recognition – who people perceive themselves to be: status. What people perceive places to be: environment? This can be embodied, for example, in housing or cars.

The human ecological approach Bourdieu’s four capitals are useful at explaining how people develop connectivities within their communities through the use of the ‘assets’ that they may possess (be they social, economic, cultural or symbolic). While these make passing reference to the physical place in which connectivities might develop (through objectified capital), this is concerned with people’s perceptions of place as a contributory factor to connectivity. A human ecological approach can complement this social capitals approach by undertaking a more systematic assessment of place or environment (rather than just the perceptions of them) in terms of the ways it affects people, and vice versa, in the development of connectivity (Bronfenbrenner, 1986). Keating and Phillips (2008, p 7) suggest that rural ageing can be viewed through the lens of human ecology and critical gerontology and explains that ‘lives lived in rural areas evolve over time in interaction with specific contexts’. 47

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From the critical human ecology perspective, place, policy and practice fundamentally impact upon the ageing experience, while, simultaneously, individuals shape, correct or adapt their environments in both the physical and socio-cultural milieux in which they are situated. Rural connectivities are influenced by (but not entirely dependent upon) the macrosystem. This is essentially the cultural context in which individuals live. Specifically, for rural elders, media representations of rurality, national ideologies, values and attitudes regarding, for example, in(ter)dependence, autonomy in later life or discrimination and governmental policies can all be macrosystem influences over connectivity within rural communities. Also, the exosystem can have an influence on connectivity. This comprises contexts for individuals that are external to their direct experiences but nevertheless have an influence over them. Thus, for example, church attendance can impact upon an individual even if they do not go to church themselves, through the committed attendance of their partner. The exosystem as external influence in respect of place connectivity could include the availability of services for older people in rural areas, and the physical accessibility and safety of the environment, irrespective of how much use is made of these resources. The mesosystem is the direct set of experiences themselves – the contexts in which the development of connectivity takes place. In the case of rural elders, these might embrace their neighbours and their social networks (and perceptions of the significance of personal actions to these networks). The microsystem represents an individual’s personal space and comprises individual and neighbourhood characteristics in which the most personal connectivities take place. Connectivities are very much ‘two-way’ in this context. Here, an individual’s conceptualisation of belonging and their roles or individual characteristics become important. Finally, the chronosystem is the temporal context of the relationship between the development of the connectivity of a family or individual and the environment in which they are situated. Time transitions (retirement, becoming ill, family death) will influence family and individual connectivity development in different ways. At its most comprehensive, the chronosystem can include the whole of the life course. Things that have happened in people’s lives have a profound influence on the extent and nature of their connectivity. These experiences are commonly expressed as autobiographical and sociobiographical experiences.

48

Conceptualising rural connectivities in later life

nt; values; ideo logi onme es nvir e (m y c i ac l r nity (exosyste u po m m m) o C

isti

hb

ou

rho

er

N eig

(microsystem)

cs

Ind iv

acte ri

cs sti

al c idu

m) te

Fam i

friends (meso nd sys a ly har

Sociocultural

) tem ys os

Na tio na l

Figure 2.4: Ecological model for connectivities

o d char

ac

t

Environmental

The passage of time (chronosystem)

This critical human ecology perspective allows us to wed methodologically different approaches to study rural connectivities, so that both phenomenological approaches and empirical investigations can be explained with the model. For example, some phenomenological approaches to rural connectivity stress the personal nature of an innate drive to ‘be’ or ‘belong’. Thus, older people seek to achieve (assemble) those things that match their own internal representation of belonging as an ambition or goal (Probyn, 1996; Miller, 2006; Mee and Wright, 2009). Alternatively, other authors argue that rural communities (as a particular type of shared space) can be understood as ‘a social construction about human connection’ (Liepins, 2000, p 29, emphasis added), or that connectivity is the product of the construction of self-identity in relation to the social world (eg Scannell and Gifford, 2010).Taking the latter perspective, activities may be pursued that help define a person through their behaviours (such as religious activities, beneficence and civic engagement) (see also Relph, 1976; Canter, 1977; Taylor et al, 1985), while the social network is used as a reference group to validate self-identity and behaviours as judged by ‘significant others’. 49

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By using the human ecological framework, the phenomenological or philosophical perspective of being and belonging can be used to provide the starting point for an older person’s rural connectivities (incorporated into the microsystem), or alternative systems may be used to explain how the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem and macrosystem influence socially connected behaviours and ‘sense of belonging’ to a rural community experienced by the older individual. This human ecological approach is explored more fully in an empirical context in Chapter Four.

Conclusion Because of the complexities of the Bourdieusian constructs of capitals, and the potential for the ecological approach to explain the dynamic interplay between people and their surroundings, the chapters in this volume offer an emphasis on one or more forms of connectivity.While Chapter Three explains connectivity through leisure participation using social capital theory, and Chapter Four uses a critical ecological perspective to explore place connectivity, the remaining Chapters Five through Seven are less explicit about the theoretical approach they have used to explore the data. To a certain extent, this reflects the scientific disciplines of the academics and researchers. For example, the outputs from the GaPL project include artworks (Chapter Six) and a museum installation (Chapter Three), which are not bound by the social-scientific drive to progress gerontological theory per se, but instead concerned about theorising through the shared concept of ‘connectivity’. Thus, in Chapter Nine, we revisit the theorising around this concept from each chapter and explore to what extent social capital theory and the critical ecological approach help us to understand the connectivity of older people in rural areas. References Adkins, L. (2008) ‘Social capital put to the test’, Sociology Compass, vol 2, no 4, pp 1209–27. Age Concern, Help the Aged, Defra (Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and the Commission for Rural Communities (2005) Delivering for older people in rural areas: a good practice guide, London: Age Concern. Age UK (2012) Agenda for later life 2012: policy priorities for active ageing, London: Age UK. Age UK (2013) Agenda for later life 2013: improving later life in tough times, London: Age UK. 50

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Walgrave, S. and Klandermans, B. (2010) ‘Open and closed mobilization patterns: the role of channels and ties’, in S. Walgrave and D. Rucht (eds) The world says no to war: demonstrations against the war in Iraq, London: University of Minnesota Press, pp 169– 93. Walsh, K. and O’Shea, E. (2008) ‘Responding to rural social care needs: older people empowering themselves, others and their community’, Health & Place, vol 14, no 4, pp 795–805. Wanless, D., Mitchell, B.A. and Wister,A.V. (2010) ‘Social determinants of health for older women in Canada: does rural–urban residency matter?’, Canadian Journal on Aging, vol 29, no 2, pp 233–47. Warburton, J. and McLaughlin, D. (2005) ‘“Lots of little kindnesses”: valuing the role of older Australians as informal volunteers in the community’, Ageing & Society, vol 25, no 5, pp 715–30. Warburton, J. and Stirling (nee Fahey), C. (2007) ‘Factors affecting volunteering among older rural and city dwelling adults in Australia’, Educational Gerontology, vol 33, no 1, pp 23–43. Wilcox, D.C., Wilcox, B.J., Sokolovsky, J. and Sakihara, J. (2007) ‘The cultural context of “successful aging” among older women weavers in a northern Okinawan village: the role of productive activity’, Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology, vol 22, no 2, pp 137–65. Wilkinson, D. (2008) ‘Individual and community factors affecting psychological sense of community, attraction, and neighbouring in rural areas’, Canadian Sociological Association, vol 45, no 3, pp 305–29. Wilkinson, J. (2010) ‘Personal communities: responsible individualism or another fall for public [man]?’, Sociology, vol 44, no 3, pp 453–70. Williams, D.R. and Vaske, J.J. (2003) ‘The measurement of place attachment: validity and generalizability of a psychometric approach’, Forest Science, vol 49, no 6, pp 830–40. Windle, G. and Porter, A. (2008) ‘Policy for older people in Wales’, in T. Maltby, P. Kennett and K. Rummery (eds) Social policy review 20: analysis and debate in social policy, 2008, Bristol: The Policy Press, pp 93–110. Withers, G. and Fisher, D. (2011) Older people and community-owned shops: the value of volunteering, Woodstock: Plunkett Foundation. Woolcock, M. (2001) ‘The place of social capital in understanding social and economic outcomes’, Isuma: Canadian Journal of Policy Research, vol 2, no 1, pp 1–17. Woolhead, G., Calnan, M., Dieppe, P. and Tadd, W. (2004) ‘Dignity in older age: what do older people in the United Kingdom think?’, Age and Ageing, vol 33, no 2, pp 165–70.

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Rural connectivity and older people’s leisure participation Catherine Hagan Hennessy,Yvette Staelens, Gloria Lankshear, Andrew Phippen, Avril Silk and Daniel Zahra The leisure participation of older people has been an enduring research topic in gerontology, with current interest focused on the health and well-being benefits of leisure engagement as part of ‘active ageing’. This attention reflects growing epidemiological evidence on the positive impact of continuing participation in older age in activities such as hobbies, cultural pursuits and volunteerism (Schooler and Mulatu, 2001; Crowe et al, 2003;Verghese et al, 2003; Greaves and Farbus, 2006; Wang et al, 2006; Cohen et al, 2007; Chaves et al, 2009; Doyle et al, 2010; Heo et al, 2010). The role of leisure as a source of identity and creativity is also a related contemporary emphasis in ageing research that explores how leisure is used to maintain, develop or actualise valued aspects of the self (Fisher and Specht, 1999; Kim et al, 2002; Timmer et al, 2003; Reynolds, 2010). Another nascent area of research, particularly in the field of leisure studies, is the potential of later life leisure participation as a means of creating social capital (McCormick and McGuire, 1996; Glover and Hemingway, 2005; Maynard and Kleiber, 2005; Son et al, 2010). Son et al’s (2010) qualitative study of the Red Hat Society®, an international leisure club for women aged 50 and over ‘dedicated to fun and friendship’, exemplifies this theoretical approach to leisure. This research concluded that within the Society, opportunities for creating bonding capital are provided through local chapters in which members organise social activities and celebrations and provide mutual assistance, often offering both instrumental and emotional support to members experiencing difficulties such as health problems or bereavement. Bridging with the larger community is afforded through members’ engagement in volunteering and other civic activities on behalf of the Society. However, although demonstrable social benefits are generated for individual members and for the community through these uses of older women’s leisure, the authors suggest the limits of social connectivity engendered by these activities due to the social 63

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homogeneity of the Society (ie predominantly white and middle class). In this way, the social capital perspective on leisure provides a means of examining the potential and bounds of connectivity to community produced through these pursuits. In this chapter, we examine older people’s connections to rural community life through their engagement in cultural and leisure activities, including participation in individual pastimes as well as collective pursuits as part of groups and associations. In doing so, we draw on a number of existing conceptual frameworks, especially social capital theory, to consider older rural residents’ leisure involvement and its determinants, as well as the forms and uses of later life leisure within the rural community context. In the final section of the chapter, we describe interdisciplinary participation in the design of outputs from a community oral history project on older people’s memories of their leisure that formed part of this work. These outputs, including a series of exhibitions and an oral history website, were designed to raise awareness of older people as rural cultural capital and to increase public engagement with this research.

Older people’s leisure in rural settings According to a review by Riddick (2010) of the gerontological literature on leisure in later life, the lack of attention given to diverse groups of older people, particularly marginalised populations, is one of the important limitations of this research. Among those groups identified as comparatively neglected in studies of older people’s leisure are rural elders. A handful of early studies examining the leisure participation of older rural residents in the US appeared in the 1950s (Mayo,1951; Stone and Slocum, 1957), after which research on the subject was sporadic over the next several decades (see, eg, Youmans, 1962; Kivett, 1985; Mobily et al, 1986; Henderson and Rannells, 1988). In the UK, Hill (1979), emphasising the importance of a lifecycle approach to leisure, investigated the leisure behaviour and perceived opportunities for leisure outside of the home among different age groups in village communities in Norfolk. Among those residents aged 60 and over, out-of-home leisure typically centred on local walks, pub visits and village hall activities, and lack of access to transport limited opportunities for leisure participation. Another contemporaneous study (Long, 1980) examining leisure in the Highlands and Islands region of Scotland characterised older people’s leisure participation as involving activities predominantly centred around the home (such as

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reading and gardening), but also found significant interest in arts, crafts and community social events. These studies typify the approach to investigating leisure in later life that has focused on the persistence and predictors of patterns of activities and interests from earlier life stages into older age (eg Strain et al, 2002; Agahi et al, 2006; Fortuijn et al, 2006; Janke et al, 2006, 2011; Gagliardi et al, 2007). This strand of research has chiefly been informed by gerontological perspectives such as continuity theory (Atchley, 1989), which posits age-related changes in activity as functional adaptations to changing life circumstances, and theories of behavioural and socio-emotional selectivity (Baltes and Carstensen, 1996), which emphasise individuals’ strategic choice of activities as reflecting their perceived limitations of personal resources, including energy and time. Consistent with this, the socio-spatial diversity in older people’s leisure – where and with whom individuals engage in particular leisure activities – has been a significant focus in this research (Gagliardi et al, 2007), with a number of studies examining the influence of rurality on activity patterns (Fortuijn et al, 2006; Su et al, 2006; Van der Meer, 2008; Theriault et al, 2010; Conde, 2012). More recently, innovation theory (Nimrod and Kleiber, 2007; Nimrod, 2008) has been used to explore individuals’ adoption of new leisure activities as a means for realising personal development and reinventing self-identity in older age, and this type of perspective has also informed research conducted in rural settings (McCormick et al, 2008). Social capital theory is the latest framework to be employed in studies of rural older adults’ leisure, emphasising the part that community ties and networks play in providing leisure opportunities and the reciprocal role of leisure in enabling the formation of social bonds. From the expanded perspective on the social capital approach that incorporates human ecology’s attention to the role of environment and place (as outlined in Chapter Two), these studies can be seen as furthering our understanding of the processes and circumstances through which connectivities are developed beyond the level of the individual, to family and friends and the community at large. McCormick and McGuire (1996), for example, compared the leisure experiences of two subgroups of older residents – local natives and incomers – in a rural area in the southern US. Among older indigenous residents, leisure interaction had declined due to social changes, such as the disappearance of the shared agricultural livelihood that had previously provided a coordinating structure for community life and the demise of the village businesses that had served as an important focal point for 65

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community social interaction. In contrast, among the more affluent older incomers to retirement enclaves in the region, social leisure was the primary means for creating and maintaining community through a wide range of seasonal celebrations and other social functions, as well as participation in various civic and charitable activities.These findings highlight the Bourdieusian perspective on social capital described in Chapter Two, in that leisure reflected and reinforced socio-structural differences between these two groups of older rural residents, with the wider benefits of the bonding social capital created generally limited to the incomer population. The specific influence of rural place type on the development of social capital through leisure in later life has also been considered in a number of studies. Qualitative research examining the leisure participation of women in the Baby Boomer generation across a continuum of rural communities in Australia (Campbell, 2013) showed a relationship between place type (including rural interface, rural village and remote rural farms), participation and the associated potential for generating social capital through these activities. Community leisure participation was found to be inhibited by factors such as the presence of a large commuter population in the rural interface, and, in contrast, was valued and facilitated in the other more rural community types, where residents had a keen appreciation of the mutual benefits of strong social networks in out-of-the-way places. Other Australian research (Davis et al, 2012) on the types and levels of later life social and civic involvement in declining, stable and growing rural communities has likewise demonstrated place-related variation in participation and the value that older residents put on community engagement. Finally, other research from a social capital perspective that examined the individual and community benefits of older rural adults’ leisure activities as volunteers, hobbyists and amateurs (Heley and Jones, 2013) has challenged the Putnamesque emphasis on voluntary activity and associational membership as the principal routes to generating social capital for the wider community. Heley and Jones argue that the value of the ‘serious leisure’ occupations of the older rural residents in their study – which included avidly pursued avocational interests and pastimes, as well as formal volunteering – all had some contribution to make to the sustainability of rural community life. In particular, the capacity for serious leisure to produce experiences that enhanced the study participants’ sense of belonging and identity was emphasised, and that for many of them, this connectivity was explicitly linked to the rural: ‘[being] frequently framed within a broader narrative and 66

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imaginary of the rural community, the rhythms of rural life, and the materiality of rural space and rural institutions’ (Heley and Jones, 2013, p 16). In the following sections of this chapter, we examine the forms and patterns of involvement in cultural and leisure activities of older rural residents, and consider the function of these activities at both the individual and community levels. We ask in what ways and to what extent older people participate in and contribute to these activities in rural communities. We also consider the factors that promote participation in these activities and what the principal barriers are to leisure participation for those growing older in these rural areas.

Methods To address these questions, we draw on both quantitative and qualitative data on leisure participation from the GaPL survey conducted with 920 persons aged 60 and over (described in Chapter One), and from 70 oral histories that provided a life-course account of individuals’ involvement in cultural and leisure activities (TrappFallon, 2002; Genoe and Singleton, 2006). The survey included questions asking about participation in 22 different types of hobbies and leisure pastimes, including activities carried out in the home (eg watching television, cooking) or other locations (such as performing arts, participating in sports) and outdoors (eg gardening, walking in the countryside). For each of these activities, respondents were asked about the frequency of their participation (‘most days’, ‘at least once a week’, ‘at least once a month’), how far they travelled to take part in the activity (‘at home’, ‘less than a mile away’, ‘1–5 miles away’, ‘6–10 miles away’, ‘more than 10 miles away’) and whether they normally engaged in the activity by themselves or with others. Other questions in the survey covered participation in activities as part of civic and other groups and associations, and the findings for these items are presented in Chapter Two. The oral histories were collected from 58 older white British rural residents (35 women, 23 men) of one of the GaPL project study sites in South West England (North Cornwall), and a convenience sample of 12 members of the Gypsy Traveller community (eight women, four men) living in the counties of Devon and Somerset.The interviewees ranged in age from 60 to 90 years old. Gypsy Travellers are the largest minority ethnic group in the contemporary South West (Levinson and Silk, 2007), and their inclusion in the study sample reflects the GaPL project objective to investigate later life across diverse groups 67

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of older people in rural areas. Despite being a fixture of the British countryside since their arrival in the 16th and 17th centuries, the ethno-cultural groups1 that are collectively referred to here as ‘Gypsy Travellers’ have remained inconspicuous and largely unintegrated into the life of the settled majority community (Greenfields, 2010). Older Gypsy Travellers have been described as ‘an invisible population within a marginalised community’ (Age Concern and Help the Aged, 2009). The Gypsy Traveller participants in our study included individuals with a range of experiences of the traditional nomadic Gypsy Traveller way of life, from those who had travelled throughout the majority of their lifetime to those who had spent periods of varying length alongside the settled community. These participants represented a variety of living situations, including currently residing in trailers (mobile homes) on private or public encampment sites or living in permanent housing. The oral histories were collected through face-to-face interviews conducted in the participants’ homes or other preferred location. Elicitation techniques, including the use of prompts (for example a list of activities that they might have taken part in) and reference to photographs, were employed as aides-memoires to facilitate the interview process. These methods have been recommended by Snelgrove and Havitz (2010) as improving recall in gathering retrospective accounts of past leisure events and experiences. The transcribed interview material was subjected to thematic analysis (Caelli et al, 2003), focusing on life-course continuities and discontinuities in cultural and leisure pastimes and involvements. The narrative accounts obtained from the oral histories covered the participants’ leisure experiences at various stages over the life course. The findings presented in this chapter, however, focus on their leisure activities in older age.The results from the qualitative analyses reported in the following combine findings for interviewees from both the majority and Gypsy Traveller communities except where indicated to identify differences between the two groups or to highlight cultural context.

Participation in cultural and leisure activities: results from the GaPL survey As shown in Figure 3.1, watching television, reading, listening to the radio and cooking were the leisure activities that over half of all respondents reported engaging in on most days. Other frequent daily leisure pursuits included doing crossword puzzles and using the 68

Rural connectivity and older people’s leisure participation Figure 3.1: Frequency of participation in hobbies and leisure activities Most days

At least once a week

At least once a month

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 Tel Pets e G vis Re arde ion adi ng ning bo Co oks ok Co in un try Ra g sid dio Cr e wa oss lks Co Com word s un try pute sid rs et Spo rip s rts (w DIY a Ph tchi oto ng) Spo gra p rts (pa Sew hy rtic i ipa ng tin Kn g) itti ng Per for Oth Ot min er her g a ou rts t Co door llec t Pai ing nti Dr ng aw ing

0

computer. While it may be assumed that these activities were homebased, other activities that took advantage of the outdoor rural setting were also frequent pastimes. For example, 47% of respondents reported taking walks in the countryside or making countryside trips either most days or at least once a week. Not unexpectedly, participation in these activities decreased across the successive age groups, with a significant decrease in the mean number of activities for each [F(2,907) 58.7, p < .001]. Activity type and frequency of participation were also significantly associated for all age groups, suggesting that respondents of all ages took part in different activities with different regularity and that these patterns changed with age. For example, the 60–69-year-old group engaged in more physical activities, such as gardening, more frequently (‘most days’, z = 4.4) than the older groups (‘most days’, 70–79, z = –0.6; 80+, z = –0.4). Little difference was found, however, in the regularity of less physically strenuous activities between the age groups. For all the age groups, there was a significant relationship between the type of activity and the distance respondents reported that they travelled to take part in the activity. Thus, the distance travelled to 69

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participate in an activity differed by activity type, and also across age groups for each activity. For example, individuals in the 60–69 (1–5 miles, z = 27.5) and 70–79 (1–5 miles, z = 21.4) age groups travelled further to go walking in the countryside than those in the 80+ age group (1–5 miles, z = 11.9).The proportion of activities that respondents engaged in at home was higher for older groups, with the 80+ age group reporting the highest levels of in-home leisure. Finally, for all age groups, whether a person participated in an activity alone or in the company of others was significantly related to the type of activity. The majority of this effect appears to be due to more 60–69 years olds taking part in activities overall than those in the older age groups (70–79 and 80+), and particularly in more solo activities. There are also some specific differences across activities and age groups, for example, although all age groups reported going on countryside trips with others, individuals in the 80+ group take part in these trips with others less frequently (z = 7.1) than do the younger age groups (60–69, z = 10.0; 70–79, z = 9.5). These findings suggest that in common with other groups of older people, the levels of leisure participation of these rural elders showed an overall decline with age (Van der Meer, 2008), and particularly in more physically demanding activities. Furthermore, there is a shift with age in the location of the activities that the respondents took part in, with home-based activities becoming more important in the overall activity pattern of the oldest age group (Fortuijn et al, 2006; Nilsson et al, 2006; Gagliardi et al, 2007).

Continuity, change and innovation in later life leisure The life-course accounts of leisure participation collected in the oral histories demonstrated a variety of socio-structural, cultural and place influences on the respondents’ leisure interests and activities across successive life stages (Hennessy et al, 2011). Among the factors identified as shaping their ‘leisure lives’ were, for example, material circumstances, gender role norms, on- and off-time life events, and differential access to leisure opportunities due to location, or in the case of Gypsy Travellers, as a result of exclusion from the ‘settled’ or majority community. In older age – the focus of this chapter – the respondents’ activities and pastimes were described in terms of the adaptive continuity of previous leisure pursuits and interests within the context of their present life circumstances, including residence in a rural setting.

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The interviews revealed diverse and sometimes extensive leisure repertoires in older age, with respondents typically describing a core of leisure pastimes that were part of lifelong interests and activities. Some examples of leisure continuity mentioned by interviewees from the majority community included: “I have always been interested in football”; “I’ve always had an interest in cooking”; “I used to sit there for hours [as a teenager] writing, writing. I kept that up. I am still doing creative writing”; “I’ve always gone to the pub, always enjoyed going to the pub. I’ve always enjoyed pub quizzes and things like that”; “Leisure has always been theatre, museum visiting … it’s a continuing theme”. Gypsy Traveller respondents likewise identified long-standing leisure pastimes, which typically reflected their focus on the extended family group and the Gypsy Traveller community. Consistent with this cultural orientation to leisure, their accounts of leisure activities included a strong emphasis on socialisation within the wider familial and Gypsy Traveller community context. Frequently mentioned lifelong pursuits included pastimes such as attending fairs to meet up with other family members, participating in or watching traditional entertainment, and doing handicrafts: “I still like watching step dancing and the accordions going. I’ve always liked music. I still do now.” “I’ve always knit and I’ve always hand-sewed … Gran learnt us ‘cause she made all our nightdresses and petticoats back then…. So I could knit and I could sew.” Despite significant continuities in their leisure habits, the interviewees generally characterised later life as a period of transition in their leisure activities. A range of patterns of leisure participation was identified in these qualitative accounts, including expansion or reduction of activities or concentration on a number of selected pastimes (Nimrod et al, 2009). The interviewees described these changes in their leisure as the result of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Among individuals in the majority community, many emphasised new opportunities with retirement or other changes in social role to participate in leisure activities, consistent with their abilities and interests. Interviewees frequently explained that they now had the time and/or resources to cultivate new interests, resume previous leisure pastimes or intensify their involvement with existing activities. This new or renewed leisure engagement was variously described in terms of personal enjoyment and fulfilment, as reflecting 71

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a drive for creative expression, or as ‘my time’ after a lifetime of work and family responsibilities. As one woman explained: “I’ve taken up the hobby of card-making. I do quite a lot of those. I made nearly all the Christmas and the birthday cards. So it’s just a leisure thing and it’s creative and I like creating things.” Another interviewee described his leisure participation upon entering ‘proper retirement’: “I became busy. I became a member of U3A [University of the Third Age]. I’m membership secretary of the U3A. I then joined various classes – Spanish, science, history. I was also the show secretary for the [regional] Agricultural Show. I am also an active Freemason.” For others, leisure offered an opportunity for reinventing themselves in a new phase of their lives (Nimrod and Kleiber, 2007). For example, in a number of cases, women explained that their husbands’ leisure interests had tended to dictate their leisure pursuits as a couple. With the end of the marriage through divorce or widowhood, however, these women now felt more able to enjoy leisure activities that were consistent with their own interests and preferences: “Once I got divorced, I went riding again. There was a little walking group that I joined when I first ended up on my own.” “One of the things [I did] was to learn to play bridge, which I thought would have been nice for me as I was on my own then. I did play-reading, then I went to a folk group.” Older adults accommodate to changes in personal health and well-being by reducing, giving up or substituting less demanding activities for previous leisure pastimes (Duke et al, 2002; Nimrod and Hutchinson, 2010) and this strategy was similarly identified by our study participants as a response to chronic illness and functional limitations. Consistent with the findings from the GaPL survey described earlier, many interviewees described cutting down on their overall levels of leisure activity with age and impairment, particularly of more vigorous physical pursuits. For example, a 73-year-old man who had taken up bowling at age 60 and, until recently, had played twice a week for the premiere county team explained: “I have had to [stop playing bowls] because of my hands. They have gone stiff 72

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and I can’t hold the ball.” With the onset of this disability, however, he had intensified his involvement in his other less physically demanding leisure pursuit – draughts – which he now plays online with competitors in other countries, as well as with a group of other local men. Providing care for other family members with health problems or looking after grandchildren were likewise common external triggers for changes in previous patterns of leisure or expectations for leisure in later life (Dunn and Strain, 2001). One woman from the majority community explained: “Things have changed here because now we’ve got the grandchildren. I fully intended going [to play bowls] but never got round to it…. Both parents work so, you know, a telephone call and I go across to the school.” Care-giving and other family responsibilities were similarly identified as a constraint on leisure among the Gypsy Travellers – albeit one that was willingly accepted – and women’s accounts in particular emphasised cultural gender norms that prioritised duties to extended family members over individual considerations, including personal leisure interests and activities (Greenfields, 2010): “The older I’ve got, I seem to have less time…. Going back about seven years, it started changing around that time because me sister died and up until then, I was really into gardening. I have fits and starts now. Me mother and father was ill and I was the main one to do the caring.” Among the Gypsy Traveller interviewees, ending life on the road and moving into settled accommodation was also frequently emphasised as a defining event that changed their traditional lifestyle and narrowed opportunities for leisure within their community. While leisure innovation in later life was reported in many of the narratives of the Gypsy Travellers, overall, there was a strong focus on the reduction of participation in valued communal social and leisure activities that have accompanied shifts in socio-cultural and economic practices as Gypsy Travellers increasingly experience pressures to adopt a settled lifestyle in rural Britain.The sense of resignation associated with these changes in livelihoods and lifeways and their implications for leisure is expressed in the following interviewees’ comments: “We travelled the country till me husband took ill and we settled down and I ended up here.”

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“There’s nothing – I sold me horses and lost everything…. I go to Bingo two or three times a week. Nobody tries to stop me. I go and that’s that.”

Creating rural community connections through leisure participation The leisure accounts of these older rural residents revealed considerable evidence of individuals’ agency in using their leisure pursuits to adapt to personal circumstances in later life. These strategies can be understood at the level of the individual as part of the identity work involved in adjusting to changes in social roles, health status, interests and other factors, as previously described (Kelly, 1983; Dionigi, 2010). At the same time, these leisure activities in older age – including new and continuing or reworked leisure involvements – can be viewed as the ground in which social ties and exchanges are cultivated and maintained with other members of the community. One man in his late 60s, for example, recounted how in an effort to occupy his spare time following a divorce, he had started taking part in choral singing in his village pub. Drawing on a repertoire of songs that reflected the area’s rural heritage, he and his friends had formed a popular group that was now a significant draw for tourism, as well as a source of community pride and support for local cultural traditions. In another instance, a woman who was a relatively recent incomer to the area described how she used her enjoyment of gardening – despite her self-professed lack of talent for it – as a means of integrating herself into rural community life: “I’ve joined the Garden Club. I’m not a very good gardener, but I love it.” Among the interviewees from the majority population, many individuals were actively engaged in community activities, volunteering for charities or other groups, serving on organisational bodies like parish councils, helping with fundraising, and acting in a variety of other roles and capacities. A number of these older adults reported multiple or serial involvement in various groups and associations, with some describing a pattern of long-standing participation in rural community activities: “I’ve always done books on wheels, which is delivering library books and collecting them from people who are housebound.”

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“I became secretary to the local fisherman’s association, which involved buying a lot, all their gear. I’m now treasurer of the local billiards club.” As Heley and Jones (2013) demonstrated in their study of serious leisure among older rural residents, many activities that have community benefits were described by interviewees as undertaken as much for personal enjoyment as for any intended result. One man, for example, explained how his hobbyist involvement in woodturning had expanded over time to include voluntary work around this interest: “We have competitions. They give you a brief and we are told what you’ve got to make, so you make it. We have demonstrations by professional turners and we now have our own training programme.We get scouts in twice a year.We get money from the Wood Turning Club of Great Britain, … to train scouts for what we call young training days.” For others, while involvement in community groups was on a smaller scale, they experienced satisfaction in being able to make some contribution, however small: “I collect when they [the local older people’s social group] have a jumble sale. I’ve got all those glasses. I’ve just washed all those, ready for the next sale they do. And it helps when they go for trips or have a dinner.” Not all older rural residents were similarly inclined to take part in social or civic groups, however, with some explaining that they had ‘never been a joiner’ and at least one expressing dislike of the membership of their village’s club for older people. However, as Heley and Jones (2013) emphasise, many of the activities described by the individuals in our study – baking cakes for village fetes, creating gardens, providing neighbourly assistance to other older people – can be understood as producing or maintaining community ties and contributing to rural community identity and atmosphere. Among the Gypsy Traveller interviewees, particularly among the older individuals in our sample, leisure activities were principally described as family- or group-oriented, serving to reinforce and maintain social connectivity within their ethno-cultural community. Within this group, there was a range of levels of individuals’ participation in mainstream community activities depending upon 75

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their personal history of contact with or integration into the majority community. For example, among those who lived in the settled community, one man who was an avid gardener had participated in his village’s annual flower show for many years, and another interviewee had “joined one or two groups in the village … [a village cleanup campaign] and things like that”. While this involvement offered opportunities for bridging across the Gypsy Traveller and majority communities, like most of the other interviewees, these individuals explained that their cultural identity frequently had to be negotiated (or hidden) in social engagement with non-Gypsy Travellers. Other individuals’ leisure activities, on the other hand, had extended links to the wider community by explicitly promoting Gypsy Traveller cultural heritage and other causes. One woman, for example, explained how she and her husband had extended his business of making and restoring traditional caravans and wagons into other leisure activities centred around sharing information about their traditional culture with the wider community: “We started to make it into a bit of a museum by having all the information written by the wagons and people could come in and have a look around and we also had the workshops where [my husband] was working and people could see him working … and they could see him either making wheels or restoring wagons. Eventually, we had so much demand we made it into a visitors’ centre.”

Barriers to rural leisure participation As well as identifying personal factors related to changes in or continuation of leisure patterns in older age, interviewees described various types of barriers to participation specific to the rural context. As in rural areas elsewhere (Dobbs and Strain, 2008;Walsh et al, 2012), these older people cited difficulties with access to transportation as one of the main perceived barriers to community inclusion. Limitations in public transport services in these rural locations and the general lack of transport options for those without a car or who cannot drive were described by some as a significant constraint on their leisure participation. One 77-year-old woman who had never driven explained the restrictions that limited public transport services in a rural setting place on her leisure:

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“I do go out, but it is a bit more difficult because we used to have buses that actually came into the hamlet, but they have stopped now.We have to get to the main road in order to get a bus. So that’s made life pretty difficult really.” Another woman in her late 70s who lived alone and had developed macular degeneration had been passionately involved in community choirs most of her adulthood. Despite being an incomer to a small rural community, she had developed a network of ‘very good friends’ in her immediate neighbourhood through participation in various community activities. Her inability to drive and her unwillingness to impose on anyone to give her a lift to choir practice, however, has prevented her from continuing to take part in this valued activity: “There are some choirs, the [regional] Bach choir, that I would very much like to join, but I can’t drive at night and they rehearse at [two distant towns] or somewhere, so that is no good. They are very good actually.” Limited access to public transport has also been identified as a barrier to leisure participation for older Gypsy Travellers in rural areas of Britain in previous research (Greenfields, 2010) and was similarly mentioned by a number of our interviewees as a constraint on their leisure. As one woman remarked: “I love walking around antique fairs. If I could have my choice, that would be my hobby. If I could drive myself, I would go to the one at Exeter and down at Newton Abbott. They have them all over now. Not so much to buy, but to look at all the antiques and older things, things I seen when I was a child and can remember. I do like that.” In addition to barriers related to transport, other aspects of rural community infrastructure were also highlighted as affecting older people’s leisure prospects. Community hubs and venues such as the pub, village shop, meeting hall and post office are recognised sources of rural community cohesion (Hilton, 2005; Action with Rural Communities Network, 2009; Canduela et al, 2012), and the interviewees described these as important locations for the creation and renewal of social ties in their rural areas.The narratives of residents of communities where local services and amenities were intact or

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flourishing illustrated how these could support leisure opportunities, as in the following comment: “We go every week – we’ve got a little art club in the Memorial Hall. And quite a lot of people go. It was just a set few, you know, and then [name], who’s the leader, he went to the Women’s Institute and gave a demonstration and then quite a lot of other people joined. We’ve got as many as we can actually seat at the moment. Around 20…. The post office has got a little coffee shop … and they have an art exhibition every month for different people and different art groups. It’s our art club one [exhibition] that has been there.” This positive description contrasts with the sense of community decline and diminution of possibilities for social exchanges expressed by some individuals in rural places in which infrastructure was being lost: “We loved it [living in a rural place], but it is getting more difficult.We lost our post office and that is now in the village hall. We lost the shop, our last shop, that is in the village hall….You can get your newspapers and your milk, bread and anything else you need. [But] it is run as a business not a voluntary thing.” As reflected elsewhere in this volume, another factor related to interviewees’ perceptions of the changing nature of rural community life and its consequences for social relations – including leisure opportunities – was the issue of natives versus incomers in rural areas (Cloke and Little, 1995; Halfacree, 2012). Our sample for the oral histories included older people indigenous to the rural study areas, as well as those who had relocated to these communities at different points in their lives, many of whom were now long-time residents. Most incomers felt that they had eventually been assimilated over time into village life, although this may have involved a gradual process, as one woman described: “We were the first that bought a second home and came to live [in this area]. And if you went to a coffee morning [they said] you don’t put the cream that way or the jam that way and we do it this way … they didn’t accept you very well. But other people have come and it is quite general 78

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now.They [native residents] don’t take any notice, but they didn’t like it.” For other incomers, social participation had not extended to the larger community, as in the case of one man, who explained: “We are still very, very social but not with the natives”. His view of the area did include a sense of latent helpfulness from local residents: “Normal farming traditions with country folk [where] if you get stuck with a car, your neighbour will get out his tractor, sort it out … you’re interlinked in that way”. However, he did not consider that as a basis for further engagement in the local community outside of his circle of friends and immediate neighbours, because, as he put it, “there is not much I could offer to the guys who live around here”. Indigenous residents or those who had lived in the area for many years, on the other hand, frequently expressed a sense of nostalgia for what they remembered as the tightly knit rural community of a time before the influx of outsiders: “I mean, you would never believe how it has changed…. So many people from away. Some will speak [to you], some won’t speak. You haven’t got that lovely community like when we were younger.” “Now there’s so many incomers that the community is literally nil.” These and other interviewees’ comments around issues of social anchorage based on length of residence and familiarity with/ involvement in a rural community (Davis et al, 2012) endorse Bailey and Biggs’s (2012, p 324) observation that ‘the transplanted/native relationship is … of particular relevance to conceptions of connectivity’ in rural areas, and suggest possible limits to the formation of bridging social capital through later life leisure where these distinctions are pronounced. As mentioned earlier, for the Gypsy Travellers in this study, intergroup relations with the ‘settled’ community were often seen as problematic and this featured prominently in their narratives as a barrier to leisure participation throughout their lives. Although there were varying degrees of involvement in leisure activities with the local community, interviewees’ experience of discrimination towards them by the majority population was frequently given as a reason for reluctance to engage with leisure activities or services for older people 79

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available outside of their own community. As one woman remarked: “Even now, in this day and age, people don’t like us.” For many of these rural elders, this social exclusion coupled with the inexorable loss of the traditional travelling life rooted in the rural landscape were potent influences on their perceived leisure opportunities, as expressed in the following comment: “I’d love a horse, but we can’t have one where we are … this ain’t our way of life. We love to roam. Some days, we feel like we’re cornered. Now, you can’t even stop in a layby.We’re here, but our hearts want to be in the pine woods somewhere.”

Discussion The findings from this mixed-methods study of older people’s leisure in areas of rural Britain highlight the factors influencing the types and patterns of individuals’ participation in these activities and the diversity and intensity of rural elders’ leisure repertoires in these settings. Through the qualitative interviews, later life was shown to be a period of continuing or renewed interest in leisure pursuits that involved adaptations to individuals’ circumstances and abilities in older age – including living in a rural place. As well as providing a source of interest, meaning and enjoyment on a personal level, engagement in these activities in later life could and did also function as a means of creating and fostering connections within and among groups at the rural community level and beyond. A number of barriers to older people’s leisure involvement – and, with it, the potential for realising the individual and societal benefits of leisure in later life – were identified in this research. These reflect findings from other research on the social inclusion of rural older people in the UK, and include the state of rural community infrastructure, particularly transport (Scharf and Bartlam, 2006; Dwyer and Hardill, 2010), to support community connectivity and the dynamics between groups of rural residents based on culture or local identity (Cloke and Little, 1995; Bailey and Biggs, 2012). In the next section of this chapter, we describe interdisciplinary outputs based on this research, designed to raise awareness of older people’s leisure as a rural community resource through showcasing contemporary and historic leisure pastimes and practices among this cohort of older rural residents. We conclude the chapter with a final section on the implications for policy and practice of this work. 80

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Rural Memories of Leisure Lives: interdisciplinarity towards public engagement A key aspect of the New Dynamics of Ageing programme is promoting the engagement with project findings of research stakeholders and other interested groups, including the general public. To this end, the GaPL research activities on older people’s leisure participation included a community oral history project – Rural Memories of Leisure Lives – that featured travelling exhibitions and a website produced from the oral history material. These project outputs involved the collaboration of the team’s social scientists with academics and practitioners in museum and heritage studies, as well as informatics. The aim of the exhibitions and the website was to utilise the research findings of the Rural Memories of Leisure Lives project to create impact through knowledge transfer. This approach reflects those used by other oral history projects to achieve knowledge transfer to the broader community through exhibitions and the use of digital technology (Robertson, 2006; Wilson, 2011).

The exhibitions Two exhibitions were developed from the 70 oral histories collected in the project. The first, Born in the Wheel of a Wagon, highlighted culture and leisure among elders in the Gypsy Traveller community in the counties of Devon and Somerset, and was produced as the postgraduate student degree project for the University of Bournemouth’s Museum Studies Programme 2011 annual exhibition. The second, Tin Can Tommy and Rusty Bum (titled after the names of two popular childhood games described by the oral history participants), was developed as an output of an intergenerational arm of the project in North Cornwall that trained primary school children aged eight through 11 as cointerviewers (with the researchers) for the oral histories. Both these exhibitions were grounded in pedagogic principles that emphasise visitors’ motivations and perspectives on their museum experience (Birney, 1988; Combs, 1999; Packer, 2008) and design elements that enhance learning. Several dimensions of the visitor experience of exhibits reported by Pekarik et al (1999) were relevant to our purpose of promoting awareness of older people as rural community resources and fostering community solidarity. Among these were ‘imagining other times and places’, ‘gaining information or knowledge’, ‘enriching my understanding’, ‘recalling my travels/childhood experiences/other memories’, ‘seeing my children learning new things’ and – key to 81

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our focus on rural connectivity – ‘feeling a sense of belonging or connectedness’. The exhibitions aimed to create these experiences through presenting aspects of cultural heritage, both tangible (physical artefacts) and intangible (social and cultural knowledge and practice), associated with leisure over the lifetimes of local older rural residents. The ‘first voice’ accounts (Galla, 2008) on which the exhibitions were based also served to reflect some of the diversity of the originating communities that make up the contemporary English rural landscape (Smith, 2009). In order to create stimulating exhibits, a strong visual element was also included through the use of photographs that anchored and highlighted the interviewees’ experiences (Kelly, 2010). These were selected from a series of self-authored portrait photographs taken of the subjects, with each sitter deciding how and where they wanted to be depicted within the context of their interview. The resulting images for the Gypsy Travellers (Figure 3.2) included, for example, a smoker with a cigarette, a great grandmother in her pinny with three generations of her family grouped around her and a campaigner for Gypsy Traveller rights in the iconic symbol of life on the road, her exquisitely decorated best caravan. Examples of images of the North Cornwall interviewees featured in the Tin Can Tommy and Rusty Bum exhibition are shown in Figure 3.3.These included: a man who in his retirement, developed a serious Figure 3.2: Examples of Gypsy Traveller leisure portraits

(continued)

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Rural connectivity and older people’s leisure participation Figure 3.2: Examples of Gypsy Traveller leisure portraits (continued)

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(continued)

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new interest in art history, amassing a large collection of books on the subject; a woman who had been awarded with an MBE for her lifelong fundraising for disability charities through her baking; and a man who, for many years, had raised money for community organisations through building floats for local carnivals and fairs. With the participants’ permission, these photographs, audio clips from the interviews, personal mementos and other ephemera that illustrated their stories were also incorporated into the exhibitions. The exhibitions were mounted within focal points of the rural communities in which the oral histories had been collected, for example, a community hall, a local museum, an arts centre and a large annual county agricultural fair.

The website In addition to the exhibitions produced from the oral histories, a website (http://www.gplvoices.org.uk) incorporating this material was developed as another tool for sharing these older rural residents’ accounts of their lifetime leisure pursuits in a public and accessible form. In order to aid with this accessibility, the site divided the 85

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oral histories into the locations where they had been collected and profiles of the interviewees. Separate web pages were presented for each individual as a summary of the interviews alongside an image archive of each individual.This allowed people interested in the work to explore the findings of the research in a ‘user-friendly’ manner if they had a particular interest in a specific study area (eg if it was their own community) or an individual.

Creating connectivities The Rural Memories of Leisure Lives project, with its emphasis on the participation and contributions of older community members, was conceived as a platform for promoting the experience, skills and knowledge of these citizens as a critical aspect of community capital significant to the sustainability of rural areas. Giving visibility to these community assets through the exhibitions and the website was intended to generate interest, respect and a shared sense of pride among local residents. A number of particular benefits were highlighted by the students who participated in the creation of these project outputs, including the fostering of new connectivities through enhanced intergenerational and cultural awareness. In the case of the museum studies students tasked with presenting a story of the ‘leisure lives’ of Gypsy Traveller elders as part of their exhibition coursework, the learning process involved challenges to their preconceptions about this rural minority group and increased their understanding of intangible heritage as cultural capital. This is reflected in comments from student feedback on their experiences: “The subject initially put me outside of my comfort zone … being a culture that I have not had a good experience with in the past. In hindsight, I feel slightly ashamed of my previous attitudes towards the travelling community, treating them as one whole group.” “they have a stronger sense of ‘community’ and look out for each other, that, in my view, is not present in non-travelling communities.” For one student, the experience resulted in an additional and unexpected outcome:

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“On seeing the exhibition, my father started talking to me about the Gypsy-run carnival that used to visit the farm when he was a child and how he would always look forward to seeing them arrive. This was something I have never heard him say before and in such a positive manner.” Similarly, children from the primary school involved in the intergenerational aspect of the oral history project expressed increased awareness and appreciation of the community’s older residents as a result of their participation in this work. Research team members showed the children how their interviews were used in the development of the website and helped them explore the site on their own with the class laptop computers. The children enthusiastically navigated around the site, looking up pages for the different individuals they recognised from their families and community. In a follow-up focus group, many of them remarked that from the interviewing and the website content, they had learned things that they never knew about older people in their village – including close relatives – whom they had known for years: “I thought it would be like the things that you hear when you are with your grandparents … but then when we went and did the interviews, they told you loads of different things. Things that you wouldn’t have expected.” “My favourite part of the interviewing was when I interviewed my Nan. It was interesting because she was the only one out of all the people I interviewed who liked computers.” Our experience with young people using the website suggests the value of this project output as a catalyst for intergenerational awareness and engagement through promoting new conversations within the community, and reinforces theories from other authors (eg Uhlenberg, 2000; Harley and Fitzpatrick, 2009) about the potential of technology for bridging intergenerational boundaries.

Conclusions This research on later life leisure in rural areas contributes to our understanding of factors and processes at the individual and community levels that influence older adults’ participation and rural 87

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connectivity. In doing so, it suggests how their social inclusion through leisure can be supported by the local community, as well as how this involvement, in turn, can facilitate community-building. Key to these processes is the availability of appropriate leisure opportunities for older rural residents with diverse needs and preferences, as well as venues and services that support these activities. As LeMesurier (2011, p 51) notes, the opportunity context of rural communities must be able to accommodate the leisure resources offered by older residents in ways that are mutually beneficial: ‘In developing rural voluntary services new ways need to be developed to appeal to older people’s interests and capitalise on their ability to contribute to rural infrastructure’. In the face of current retrenchment of public funding for important supports for leisure in older age in rural areas, innovative solutions are required. The Upstream project in rural Devon provides one such example of a successful community-driven social enterprise for engaging older rural residents at risk of isolation through creative and stimulating social activities (Jones, 2009). As a partnership involving community organisations and statutory and voluntary agencies, the project assists villages and market towns to maximise the use of existing facilities and community resources to ensure the social inclusion of older people. Finally, this work also suggests the value of raising public awareness that the ‘bank’ of rural community capital is well stocked by the past and current leisure activities of older people from different backgrounds. Activities that draw on and showcase the contributions of older adults’ leisure can be an important tool for bridging community groups across cultures, interests and generations. Note 1. The individuals in our study sample included Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers, and excluded other ‘elective’Travellers such as New Age Travellers.

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Packer, J. (2008) ‘Beyond learning: exploring visitors’ perceptions of the values and benefits of museum experiences’, Curator:The Museum Journal, vol 51, no 1, pp 33–54. Pekarik, A.J., Zahava, D.D. and Karns, D. (1999) ‘Exploring satisfying experiences in museums’, Curator: The Museum Journal, vol 42, no 2, pp 152–73. Reynolds, F. (2010) ‘“Colour and communion”: exploring the influences of visual art-making as a leisure activity on older women’s subjective well-being’, Journal of Ageing Studies, vol 24, no 2, pp 135–43. Riddick, C.C. (2010) ‘Gerontology-leisure research: the past and the future’, in B. Humberstone (ed) Third age and leisure research: principles and practice, LSA publication no 108, Eastbourne: Leisure Studies Association, pp 1–20. Robertson, M.H. (2006) ‘The difficulties of interpreting Mediterranean voices: exhibiting intangibles using new technologies’, International Journal of Intangible Heritage, vol 1, pp 26–34. Scharf, T. and Bartlam, B. (2006) Rural disadvantage: quality of life and disadvantage amongst older people – a pilot study, London: Commission for Rural Communities. Schooler, C. and Mulatu, M.S. (2001) ‘The reciprocal effects of leisure time activities and intellectual functioning in older people’, Psychology and Aging, vol 16, no 3, pp 466–82. Smith, R. (2009) ‘Finding the “first voice” in rural England: the challenges of safeguarding intangible heritage in a national museum’, International Journal of Intangible Heritage, vol 4, pp 13–25. Snelgrove, R. and Havitz, M.E. (2010) ‘Looking back in time: the pitfalls and potential of retrospective methods in leisure studies’, Leisure Sciences, vol 32, no 4, pp 337–51. Son, J.,Yarnal, C. and Kerstetter, D. (2010) ‘Engendering social capital through a leisure club for middle-aged and older women: implications for individual and community health and well-being’, Leisure Studies, vol 29, no 1, pp 67–83. Stone, C.L. and Slocum, W.L. (1957) ‘A look at Thurston County’s older people’, Pullman State College of Washington Bulletin, no 573, p 32. Strain, L.A., Grabusic, C.C., Searle, M.S. and Dunn, H.J. (2002) ‘Continuing and ceasing leisure activities in later life: a longitudinal study’, The Gerontologist, vol 42, no 2, pp 217–23. Su, B., Shen, X. and Wei, Z. (2006) ‘Leisure life in later years: differences between rural and urban elderly residents in China’, Journal of Leisure Research, vol 38, no 3, pp 381–97.

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Theriault, D.S., Shores, K.A., West, S.T. and Naar, J.J. (2010) ‘The association of location and social context with physical activity enjoyment in a population of able bodied rural aging women’, Annals of Leisure Research, vol 13, nos 1/2, pp 4–26. Timmer, E., Bode, C. and Dittman-Kohli, F. (2003) ‘Expectations of gains in the second half of life: a study of personal conceptions of enrichment in a lifespan perspective’, Ageing & Society, vol 23, no 1, pp 3–24. Trapp-Fallon, J.M. (2002) ‘Searching for rich narratives of tourism and leisure experience: how oral history could provide an answer’, Tourism and Hospitality Research, vol 4, no 4, pp 297–305. Uhlenberg, P. (2000) ‘Integration of old and young’, The Gerontologist, vol 40, no 3, pp 276–9. Van der Meer, M.J. (2008) ‘The sociospatial diversity in the leisure activities of older people in the Netherlands’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 22, no 1, pp 1–12. Verghese, J., Lipton, R.B., Katz, M.J., Hall, C.B., Derby, C.A., Kuslansky, G., Ambrose, A.F., Sliwinski, M. and Buschke, H. (2003) ‘Leisure activities and the risk of dementia in the elderly’, New England Journal of Medicine, vol 348, no 25, pp 2508–16. Walsh, K., O’Shea, E. and Scharf, T. (2012) Social exclusion and ageing in diverse rural communities: findings of a cross-border study in Ireland and Northern Ireland, Galway: Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, National University of Ireland. Wang, J.Y., Zhou, D.H., Li, J., Zhang, M., Deng, J.,Tang, M., Gao, C., Li, J., Lian,Y. and Chen, M. (2006) ‘Leisure activity and risk of cognitive impairment: the Chongqing ageing study’, Neurology, vol 66, no 6, pp 911–13. Wilson, M. (2011) ‘“Tale-enders”: gathering the narrative heritage of Welsh cricket’, The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum, vol 1, no 3, pp 83–90. Youmans, E.G. (1962) Leisure-time activities of older persons in selected rural and urban areas of Kentucky, Progress Report 115, Lexington, KY: Kentucky Agriculture Experiment Station.

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Connecting with community: the nature of belonging among rural elders Vanessa Burholt, Nigel Curry, Norah Keating and Jacquie Eales Place attachment is a particular type of connectivity that could be described as the ‘glue’ that connects people to places. The study of place attachment stems from phenomenology and builds on the philosophical premises concerning the sense of belonging and beingin-the-world. Typically, this approach shies away from reductionist or psychometric approaches to the study of place attachment and uses qualitative data to examine this concept. Although such qualitative approaches provide useful conceptions around place attachment, qualitative data are not readily empirically generalisable. Because a central aim of social gerontology has been to apply research to improve the lives of older persons, this chapter draws on quantitative survey data from the Grey and Pleasant Land (GaPL) project conducted in England and Wales (described in Chapter One) to construct a multidimensional measure of place attachment and to examine how older people develop a connection with their place of residence. In so doing, its aim is to strengthen the empirical research base on placebased connectivity. In this chapter, we review the literature on place attachment and then empirically test conceptual models based on the literature to identify the predictors of, and the pathways to, place attachment. These analyses contribute to a small body of literature on the place attachment of older rural adults (Rowles, 1988, 1990; Burholt and Naylor, 2005; Burholt, 2006, 2012; Keating et al, 2011), and we reflect on the applicability of our findings to those from Canadian rural communities that formed a parallel project to the UK research.

What is place attachment? A number of different degrees of connectivity to the community as locale are described in the literature and several authors have 95

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considered the multidimensional nature of place attachment. Mohan (2011), for example, notes its heterogeneity: from complete disengagement to full commitment; from activity in some spheres but not in others; and participation at some times but not at others. Scheff (2011) notes its extremes as being ‘complete alienation’ on the one hand and ‘complete solidarity’ on the other – from high levels of social capital to fractured communities. Some people are just happy ‘being’ in a place without necessarily being actively involved in it (Forrest and Kearns, 2001; Hidalgo and Hernandez, 2001), possibly because they do not share common values with others in the community (Gilbert, 1996). Some may ‘opt out’ of their local places, actively seeking privacy (Fiorina, 1999; Bailey, 2000), and yet others can be disruptive or ‘antisocial’ within their locale (Proctor, 2006; Nan, 2008). In terms of more positive commitment to locale, older people can ‘belong’ to a community, without necessarily being active within it (Keating and Eales, 2011). This can arise, for example, where physical attachment (see following discussion) is stronger than social attachment to place (Hagerty et al, 1996; Mee and Wright, 2009), or where the psychological need to belong is strong (Hagerty et al, 1992; Tomaka et al, 2006). Active civic engagement is possibly the most ‘intense’ form of connectivity to the community as locale (Bagnall et al, 2003) through activities such as volunteering and support work (Hall, 1999; Keating and Eales, 2011), whether for altruistic (Sullivan, 2001) or self-interested (Keller, 2003) motivations. Studying place attachment as a distinct type of connectivity is important because older people are more likely to remain in place, and less likely to migrate or relocate, than other age groups (Lawton, 1990).The connections formed between people and places have been identified as key elements of quality of life and well-being in later life (Rowles, 1988; Keating and Phillips, 2008). Understanding the development of place attachment may be particularly important for older people living in rural areas. In later life, there is an increased likelihood of physical or cognitive impairment that may precipitate a move to a supported living environment (such as residential care or sheltered housing in the UK) (Burholt, 1998). In some rural areas, care homes or other forms of specially designed housing for older people may be located several miles away from the person’s community, for example, in service-rich areas (Burholt, 1998; Wenger and Keating, 2008). Consequently, moving to a supported living environment may entail the severance of a strong place-based bond for older people in these contexts and result in separation anxiety or grief following relocation (Bowlby, 1969; Hazan and Shaver, 1994; Burholt, 2012). 96

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Therefore, understanding the process by which place attachment has developed may provide information that could be used to address the subsequent social, physical or psychological needs of older people. Connectivity is a complex construct, with four domains consistently described in the literature. These components of place attachment can be described as: physical; social or cultural; psychological or personal; and temporal. In the next section of the chapter, the state of knowledge of each of these domains is described. Undoubtedly, the strength of connectivity or place attachment within each domain could be considered as a continuum, and different people will be at different points on each continuum at different times during their lives.

Physical place attachment The physical element of place attachment has been variously described as: nature bonding and aesthetic attachment (Burholt, 2006, 2012; Raymond et al, 2010); place dependence (Williams and Vaske, 2003); physical insideness (Rowles, 1990); or attachment by virtue of the appropriateness of resources (Burholt, 2006, 2012). First, dealing with nature bonding (Raymond et al, 2010) and aesthetic attachment (Burholt, 2006, 2012), we find that landscape values such as beauty, recreation and therapeutic values are highlighted as contributors to place attachment. In Canada and Norway, empirical research has indicated that wilderness (naturalness) and aesthetic value are strong predictors of place attachment (Kaltenborn and Bjerke, 2002; Eales et al, 2008; Brown and Raymond, 2007). Even in agricultural landscapes, the degree of wilderness of the landscape, the presence of well-preserved human-made elements, the percentage of plant cover, the amount of water, the presence of mountains and colour contrast are important in judging the visual quality of a setting (Arriaza et al, 2004). These characteristics are essential for restorative experiences (Ottosson and Grahn, 2005; Hartig, 2007) and some authors have suggested that this positive effect on well-being may account for the development of aesthetic place attachment (Kaplan, 1995). For example, Kaplan (1995, p 173) posits: The environment must have extent. It must, in other words, be rich enough and coherent enough so that it constitutes a whole other world … a restorative environment must be of sufficient scope to engage the mind. It must provide

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enough to see, experience, and think about so that it takes up a substantial portion of the available room in one’s head. Similarly, some authors suggest that visitors to natural settings are motivated to interact with these environments by the prospect of specific psychological and physiological benefits (Kyle et al, 2004). Consequently, the recreational value of a landscape as the setting for outdoor activities has also been related to aesthetic place attachment (Raymond et al, 2010). However, a majority of research on the role of leisure and recreational activities in the development of place attachment has been conducted with younger people (for example Williams and Vaske, 2003), employees in the leisure industry (see Kyle and Chick, 2007) or tourists and visitors (for example Moore and Graefe, 1994; Hwang et al, 2005; Wynveen et al, 2012) and has neglected to explore recreation in relation to older people and aesthetic attachment to place. Attachment to place by virtue of its aesthetic qualities can be disrupted by relocation, but also by changes to the physical fabric of the environment through natural events, such as landslides (Brown and Perkins, 1992), or human intervention, such as the development of renewable energy projects (Vorkinn and Riese, 2001; Devine-Wright and Howes, 2010). In the same manner that relocation may abrogate connectivity to a place, changes to the environment may also threaten aesthetic place attachment. Research has shown that many people who show greater concern for the environment demonstrate higher levels of aesthetic place attachment (Vorkinn and Riese, 2001; Brehm et al, 2006; Raymond et al, 2010; Devine-Wright and Howes, 2010; Scannell and Gifford, 2010). The association between environmental concerns and place attachment has not been explored with older people. Turning to other types of place attachment that are related to physical aspects of the environment, we consider place dependence, physical insideness and attachment by virtue of the appropriateness of resources. These types of physical place attachment highlight the importance of place in providing a setting that is conducive to wellbeing through supporting physical activities (see also Sixsmith, 1986; Gustafson, 2001; Hidalgo and Hernandez, 2001). Ecological theories of ageing can be used to provide an explanation for these types of attachment to place. These theories suggest that individuals become aware of the suitability of their immediate environment if they experience ill health and decreased functional ability that affects their capacity to manage daily life within the community. For example, Peace 98

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et al (2011) argue that, over time, people’s attachments to particular locations may be compromised either by declining competence or changes in the environment, a reflection of earlier arguments by Lawton (1974, p 258) that ‘the less competent the individual in terms of personal disability or deprived status, the more susceptible is his behaviour to the influence of immediate environmental situations’. The correspondence between functional ability and environmental press (or the demands placed on a person by the environment) is also called person–environment fit (Kahana et al, 2003). In this respect, the role of the community is vital in providing amenity-oriented basic physical conditions in which people may perform everyday tasks within a familiar setting. For older people in poor health, the availability and quality of local services such as suitable local housing, shops, services and public transport become vitally important (Oswald et al, 2005; Keating et al, 2013). In summary, two types of physical attachment to place are identified in the literature.The first could be described as an aesthetic attachment to place, influenced by the visual qualities of an environment, the degree of wilderness or naturalness, its recreational value, and an individual’s level of concern for the environment. The second could be described as an amenity-oriented attachment to place, influenced by health and access to and quality of local services.

Social or cultural place attachment The social or cultural domain of place attachment has been described as activities or actions (Relph, 1976; Canter, 1977), social insideness or integration (Rowles, 1990; Burholt, 2006), and family or friend bonding (Raymond et al, 2010). Activities, actions or involvement emphasise social interactions within a community. In contrast, social insideness, integration and family and friend bonding focus on the quality and meaning of these interactions. Here, we consider definitions of social place attachment, the role of social networks, the length of residence, civic participation and neighbourhood cohesion in relation to this type of connectivity. Social attachment to place is one of the earliest types of connectivity referred to in the literature. Early sociological studies viewed place attachment in terms of an individual’s sense of commitment to his or her local neighbours, friends and families: in other words, how rooted they are in their social network (Gerson et al, 1977; Mesch and Manor, 1998).

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The idea of ‘belonging’ comes from this tradition and is defined by Hagerty et al (1992, p 173) as ‘the experience of personal involvement in a system or environment so that persons feel themselves to be an integral part of that system or environment’. From a symbolic interactionist perspective, belonging is a product of the construction of self-identity in relation to the social world (Scannell and Gifford, 2010). Thus, individuals are socially connected or attached to their communities because they represent or reflect who they are. Social attachment relates to the activities that help define a person through their behaviours (such as religious activities, beneficence and civic engagement) (see also Relph, 1976; Canter, 1977; Taylor et al, 1985) and the (re)actions of the social network towards these activities through recognition and reinforcement (Burholt, 2012). Given that social attachment to place is influenced by social networks, it is important to consider social capital (as outlined in Chapter Two) in relation to social attachment to place. Three types of connectivity are described within the concept of social capital: bonding, bridging and linking (Putnam, 2000; Field, 2003). In this respect, social capital can be considered as the study of social networks, norms, trust and reciprocity in: the informal realm (bonding capital); the community or generalised realm (bridging capital); and the institutional realm (linking capital). Lewicka (2005, p 156) states: While social capital resonates with aspects of concepts such as place attachment, place identity and sense of place, it is not ‘place-bound’. Nonetheless, the neighbourhood or community is a context in which social capital can be fostered, accessed or destroyed and in which norms and behavioural manifestations of trust, reciprocity, civic engagement and mutual support can reside. Although social capital encompasses some types of connectivities, the specific mechanism by which it relates to the development of social attachment to place is not addressed within this framework (Lewicka, 2005; Burholt, 2012).While one may postulate that the different types of capital may influence social attachment to place in different ways, Lewicka (2005, p 160) notes that ‘greater exploration is required of moderators and mediators along the pathways between social capital … and the environments in which people live’. In this respect, in this chapter, we seek to establish the influences of bonding capital (social networks and neighbourhood cohesion) and bridging capital (civic participation) in the development of social attachment to place. 100

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Social place attachment emphasises the role of social connectivity, which develops within the community context over the course of residence within that place. In early research, ‘length of residence’ was used as a proxy for place attachment (Relph, 1976); however, more recently, social or cultural attachment to locale has been shown to be influenced by length of residence in the community (Sampson and Groves, 1989; Hay, 1998; Milligan, 1998). Furthermore, stable communities predict greater levels of place attachment (Sampson, 1988) while a lack of attachment is associated with transient populations (Augé, 1995). This suggests that the proportion of longstanding residents within a community has an influence on the degree of social attachment expressed in particular locations. While length of residence may predict social place attachment, this single item is not sufficient to encapsulate the phenomenon in its entirety. As noted in Chapter Two, the fact that people live close to one another does not, of itself, suggest any active interaction between them. Furthermore, evidence from rural Canada shows that people who move to a rural community at retirement may have chosen it for its amenities and have high levels of commitment to the place and to building connections there (Keating et al, 2013). Length of residence therefore suggests no particular commitment, either positive or negative, to the community. Length of residence does not necessarily imply active interaction within the community. However, there is evidence that the greater the sense of belonging, the greater the likelihood that people will be actively involved in their locale (Hagerty and Williams, 1999). In this respect, activity and involvement are independent concepts that may predict social attachment to place. For example, civic participation or bestowing (Curry and Fisher, 2013) is a particular type of activity whereby a person makes an active contribution to making their locale a better place to be. Some authors suggest that civic participation is particularly high where bonding capital is strong (Bagnall et al, 2003). In Poland, Lewicka (2005) found that stronger place attachment was related to higher levels of community participation and that this relationship was influenced by bonding capital (neighbourhood ties). However, the direction and pathways of causality are often unclear in social capital research as most of the studies are cross-sectional (Lochner et al, 2003). Consequently, there could be alternative causal pathways: for example, increased civic involvement could lead to strengthening of social attachment to place. As has been noted in Chapter Two, civic participation is at the core of government policies in England and Wales for active community involvement, and its relationship to attachment to place is therefore important to understand. 101

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Social networks and civic engagement and their role in social attachment to place may be influenced by perceived neighbourhood cohesion. Forrest and Kearns (2001, p 2128) note that ‘a society lacking cohesion would be one which displayed … low levels of social interaction between and within communities and low levels of place attachment’. Smith (2001) suggests that there are three ‘progressive’ qualities that impact upon community life – tolerance, trust and reciprocity – which together represent ‘cooperativeness’ (Ridley, 1997). However, in examining the full range of virtues that impact upon neighbourhood cohesion, negative qualities (which we term here ‘animosity’) must be added. While information on social networks may indicate the level of contact between friends, neighbours and families within a particular locality, the perception of local neighbourhood cohesion and the level of tolerance, trust, reciprocity and animosity may provide a better indication as to the strength of local ties and relationships. For example, the degree of animosity within a community will impact upon social belonging. As Moseley and Pahl (2007, p 28) have noted of the Yorkshire mining community in their study, ‘Factions, cliques and “war lords”. Nothing appears to destroy social capital quite as effectively as a culture of factionalism and local infighting.’ On the other hand, trust allows cooperation and community cohesion. As Fukuyama (1995, p 26) expresses it: ‘Trust is the expectation that arises within a community of regular, honest and cooperative behaviour, based on commonly shared norms, on the part of other members of that community.’ Similarly, a cohesive effect could be attributed to perceived reciprocity within a community.Taylor (2003) considers reciprocity to be a combination of short-term altruism and long-term self-interest, or what De Tocqueville (2000) calls ‘self-interest rightly understood’. In this sense, an individual provides a service to others within the community with the expectation that the kindness will be returned at some undefined time in the future. Putnam (2000) suggests that it is not necessary to know someone within the community to display reciprocity towards them. Tolerance, which is about being open, respecting and listening (Walzer, 1997), can exist outside of trust and reciprocity (Halpern, 2005). Onyx and Bullen (2000) suggest that tolerating difference is a key component of community involvement, but one characteristic of closely ‘bonded’ communities is that they can be intolerant of others within the wider community. Taking all of these facets together, we would expect perceived neighbourhood cohesion to impact upon social attachment to place. 102

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In summary, the literature suggests that social attachment develops over time because individuals feel that their identity is represented in their social activities within the community, or recognised and reflected upon by their social networks.Therefore, social attachment to place is likely to be influenced by length of residence, social networks, civic engagement and perceptions of neighbourhood cohesion.

Psychological and temporal place attachment The psychological domain is concerned with the meaning of place and how this affects self-identity or psychological well-being (Gustafson, 2001; Williams and Vaske, 2003; Burholt, 2006; Raymond et al, 2010). The temporal domain refers to the strength of attachment that an individual feels with regard to autobiographical memories (Rowles, 1983; Lewicka, 2008) or sociobiographical memories (Fried, 2000; Lewicka, 2008), which relate to a historical ‘sense of place’ (Burholt, 2006, 2012). Autobiographical memories promote an attachment to the area in relation to the location of one’s childhood, raising a family, working in the area, visiting the area over a period of time or the location of significant life events or transitions (such as births and deaths). Sociobiographical memories foster a sense of belonging or attachment to the community because of: family lineage; ethnic or cultural identity (Burholt, 2006); territorial identity (Fried, 2000); or historical use of the land (Beckley, 2003). The literature cited earlier suggests that place attachment is the product of complex interactions and is dynamically shaped by several interacting subsystems (Burholt, 2012). The ecological framework considered in Chapter Two hypothesises the relationships between activities and roles and external environments as operating at four levels: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem and macrosystem (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). In the analysis presented in this chapter, we explore place attachment as a concept that is influenced by (but not entirely dependent upon): the macrosystem and national ideologies of in(ter)dependence and autonomy in later life; the exosystem in the availability and quality of services for older people in rural areas and the number of local concerns; the mesosystem in social networks (and the significance of personal actions to these networks) and perceptions of neighbourhood cohesion; the microsystem through individual and neighbourhood characteristics; and the chronosystem in the development of attachment to place over time. Using a measurement of place attachment that was developed specifically for use with older people living in rural areas of England 103

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and Wales, we use mediation analysis to test pathways to three types of place attachment: aesthetic attachment, social attachment and attachment based on amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment. Specifically, we address the following questions: how does length of residence influence social attachment to place? Do social resources, civic engagement and neighbourhood cohesion influence social attachment to place? In what kinds of settings do we find people who are more or less aesthetically attached to where they live? Do environmental concerns or recreational activities influence aesthetic attachment to place? How does health impact on amenity/ environment-oriented physical attachment? Does access to and quality of services influence amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment?

Methods In the GaPL survey described in Chapter One, attachment to place was assessed by using a measure comprising three sub-scales developed specifically for use with older people living in rural areas (Burholt, 2012). The three sub-scales assess: social attachment (the importance of social interaction and community participation in creating a sense of belonging); aesthetic attachment (relating to beautiful scenery, peace, quiet and a feeling of space); and amenity/environmentoriented physical attachment (relating to access to services and the environment, and formal and informal social support). In each subscale, higher values represent a stronger attachment to place (social attachment: M = 68.1, SD 21.1; aesthetic attachment: M = 89.6, SD 15.1; and amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment: M = 65.5, SD 22.3). As explained in detail in Chapter One, the survey was conducted in six case study areas that were chosen to cover examples of three different types of rural community. The two Type A communities (North Cornwall and Ceridigion) were the most remote and deprived; the Type B communities (North Dorset and Powys) were less remote and less deprived than Type A; and Type C communities (Stroud and Monmouthshire) were relatively affluent and accessible. Participants in Type A communities had the greatest levels of aesthetic attachment to place; those living in Type C communities had the greatest levels of social attachment to place, but the lowest levels of amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment to place; while participants living in Type B communities had the greatest levels of

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amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment to place and the lowest levels of aesthetic attachment to place. The Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS-6) was used to indicate the level of social resources. This measure was developed specifically for use with older populations and has been widely used to measure social integration and to screen for social isolation (Lubben et al, 2006).The scale consists of an equally weighted sum of six items used to measure network size, kinship ties (How many relatives do you see or hear from at least once a month? How many relatives do you feel close to such that you can call on them for help? How many relatives do you feel at ease with that you can talk about private matters?) and nonkin ties (the same three questions replacing the word ‘relatives’ with ‘friends’). The scale ranges from 0 to 36, with lower scores indicating fewer social resources (M = 22.2, SD 9.1). Participants in Type C areas (affluent and accessible) had significantly greater levels of social resources than those living in Type A or B areas. The breadth of civic engagement was assessed by counting the number of civic associations (from a list of 11) with which each participant reported being involved. The list comprised participation in residents associations, Community Watch, schools, town parish or community councils, political parties, trade unions or professional associations, campaigns, nature conservation groups, buildings preservation groups, community groups, and voluntary or charity groups. The count of civic engagement ranged from 0 to 11. On average, older people in this sample were engaged in two civic associations (M = 1.5, SD 1.7). Participants in Type A areas were engaged in significantly fewer activities than those living in Type B and C areas: this is possibly because there were fewer opportunities for participation rather than a lower propensity to engage. A measure of neighbourhood cohesion was adapted from Sampson et al (1997). Participants were asked to what extent they agreed with each of five statements: ‘People around here are willing to help their neighbours’, ‘This is a close-knit community’, ‘I feel safe to go out on my own after it gets dark’, ‘People in this community can be trusted’ and ‘People in this community generally get along together’. The range was 5–20, in which higher scores represented greater levels of perceived social cohesion. On average, participants in each area had very high levels of perceived neighbourhood cohesion (M = 16.7, SD 2.3). Participants were asked to rate their level of local concerns regarding 16 potentially contentious issues (such as development of wind farms and people moving into the area) on a four-point Likert-type scale 105

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from ‘Not at all important’ to ‘Very important’. A count of ‘Very important’ concerns resulted in a scale with a potential range of 0–16, with higher scores representing a greater number of local concerns. On average, participants were very concerned about two local issues (M = 2.1, SD 2.2). The level of concern was lowest in Type C areas and greatest in Type A areas. Length of residence was captured by the number of years that participants had lived in their communities. This was operationalised as less than one year, 1–5 years, 6–10 years, 11–20 years, 21–30 years, over 30 years, and always. On average, the participants had lived in their communities for 11–20 years; however, those living in Type C areas were more likely to have lived in their communities for 21 years or more. Access to services was captured by questions that asked participants to assess the extent to which they experienced difficulty accessing a General Practitioner (GP), hospital, supermarket, bus stop, police station, bank, automated teller machine (ATM), leisure centre, cinema, petrol station, library and museum (see also Burholt and Windle, 2006; Scharf and Bartlam, 2006). Using these 11 variables, a count was created of the number of services that the participant found quite difficult or very difficult to access. The mean score was 0.8 (SD 2.1), indicating that, on average, participants had difficulty accessing one service. Participants rated the quality of eight services on a three-point scale ranging from 1 (‘good’) to 3 (‘poor’). The eight services were: doctor, hospital or other health service; policing; public transport; food shops; post office; banks and building societies; community centre; and leisure facilities or sport facility. A mean average score was computed to represent the quality of services, where higher scores represented services of lower quality (M = 1.8, SD 0.4). Services in Type A areas were rated as the worst quality, while those in Type B areas were rated as the best quality. We adopt an analytical technique for mediation analysis that can simultaneously test the effects of multiple variables (‘multiple mediation’) and can determine the relative magnitude of the specific indirect effects of the mediators in relation to each other (Preacher and Hayes, 2008). Using multiple mediation, we test three models to determining the pathways to place attachment. In Model One, we test whether social resources, civic engagement and neighbourhood cohesion mediate the effects of length of residence on social attachment to place. In Model Two, we test whether local concerns and recreational activities mediate the relationship between 106

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community type and aesthetic place attachment. In Model Three, we test whether access to services and the quality of services mediate the relationship between health and amenity/environment-oriented attachment to place. In each model, we seek to determine the individual mediating effects of each variable after controlling for age, gender, education, marital status and the remaining mediators. Control variables were only included in the model if they demonstrated a significant effect on attachment to place during the exploratory analysis prior to modelling (not shown in this chapter). Thus, the direct, indirect and total effects of X on Y is calculated by partialling out the effects of the controls.1

Results: evidence of attachment of older adults in rural UK communities Figure 4.1 shows the statistical mediation model in which we expected length of residence to be associated with social attachment to place (as this type of attachment is likely to develop over time).We hypothesised that this association would be mediated by social resources (actual levels of social contact with family and friends), civic engagement and neighbourhood cohesion. Gender was entered into the model as a control and demonstrated that women have a significantly stronger social attachment to place than men. The model indicates that social resources mediate the relationship between length of residence and social attachment to place. Both civic engagement and social cohesion are significant predictors of social place attachment: greater levels of civic engagement are associated with greater levels of social attachment to place, and, similarly, a stronger sense of neighbourhood cohesion is associated with a stronger social attachment to place. However, neither civic engagement nor neighbourhood cohesion mediated the relationship between length of residence and social attachment to place. Both civic engagement and neighbourhood cohesion can be considered as independent predictors of social attachment to place. Figure 4.2 shows the final statistical mediation model for aesthetic attachment to place. During the exploration of the data using regression analysis, we found that recreational activities (walking in the countryside, countryside trips and other outdoor activities) were not associated with aesthetic attachment and these were omitted from the final model. Aesthetic place-based attachment is predicted by place. People living in Type A communities expressed a greater level of aesthetic attachment than those living elsewhere. The relationship between Type A communities and aesthetic attachment to place is 107

Countryside connections Figure 4.1: Statistical mediation model for social place attachment (A)

Length of residence

2.189***

Social place attachment

Gender

(B)

Social resources 0.533***

0.641***

Length of residence

Gender –7.112***

Social place attachment

1.617*** 0.051 0.055

2.281**

Civic engagement

2.074***

Neighbourhood cohesion

Notes: ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05.

Figure 4.2: Statistical mediation model for aesthetic place attachment (A)

Type A community

(B) 0.491**

Type A community

3.979***

Local concerns

3.583**

Notes: ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05.

108

Aesthetic place attachment

0.807***

Aesthetic place attachment

Connecting with community: the nature of belonging among rural elders

mediated by local environmental concerns. Older people living in Type A communities had greater levels of concern about changes to their communities than those living elsewhere. Expressing concerns about changes to the community was also associated with greater levels of aesthetic attachment to place. In our third mediation model, we anticipated that health would be associated with amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment to place. The model includes quality of services and access to services as mediators (with gender and age as covariates). Figure 4.3 indicates that health was associated with amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment to place, with those in poor health more likely to have a strong attachment in this domain. Both access to services and quality of services mediate the relationship between health and amenity/ environment-oriented physical attachment to place. The mediation pathways are as follows: poor health predicts greater levels of difficulty with access to services, and, in turn, a greater level of difficulty with services increases attachment to place. As noted in the section entitled ‘Physical place attachment’, the congruence between the environment and the resident is more important as mobility becomes restricted Figure 4.3: Statistical mediation model for amenity/ environment-oriented physical attachment to place (A)

Self-assessed health

3.663***

Amenity/environmentoriented physical attachment

Age, gender

(B)

Gender

Access to services 0.312***

Self-assessed health

–5.187***

Age

0.501***

1.027**

Amenity/environmentoriented physical attachment

4.026*** 0.066***

Quality of services

–11.001***

Notes: ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05.

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(Kahana, 1982;Tinker, 1997). Although access to services was difficult for those in poor health, the ability to access services (albeit restricted) served to strengthen an attachment to place. On the other hand, those who were in poor health were more likely to rate the quality of service as poor. Rather than strengthening place attachment, a rating of poor services weakened place attachment. Therefore, increased difficulties in accessing services serve to strengthen one’s attachment to place, while a poor rating of the quality of services has the opposite effect. Two controls were included in this model: gender and age. Women were more likely to express amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment to place than men, while greater age also increased the strength of this type of place attachment.

Discussion: attachment and connectivity The results presented here demonstrate that types of connectivity with place can be systematically identified and measured and that people develop different levels and forms of attachment. Our mediation models bear considerable similarity to hypothesised conceptual models of place attachment that were developed from the literature.Thus, the three-dimensional model of place attachment, and the pathways to each type of attachment that have been described, suggest that the connections that older people make with the communities in which they reside may have distinct origins and meaning. Keating and Phillips (2008, p 7) suggest that rural ageing can be viewed through the lens of critical human ecology and explain that ‘lives lived in rural areas evolve over time in interaction with specific contexts’. From the critical human ecology perspective, place, policy and practice fundamentally impact on the ageing experience, while individuals simultaneously shape, correct or adapt their environments. Here, we revisit each of the models of place attachment and describe these using an ecological model. In this respect, we suggest that certain constellations of characteristics and interactions between subsystems in the ecological model predispose people to certain forms of place attachment. As noted in the section entitled ‘Physical place attachment’, environmental psychology stresses the functional aspect of the location, specifically with regard to the provision of an environment in which people may perform everyday tasks within a familiar setting (Oswald et al, 2005). According to person–environment fit theory, an emotional relationship is formed between an older person and the environment in the context of an intimate familiarity with the 110

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location (Rubinstein and Parmelee, 1992). Consequently, we expected amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment to place to be correlated with health. Kahana (1982) argues that the congruence between the environment and the resident is more important as people age, as the choice between environments (or the ability to access other environments) decreases as mobility becomes restricted. The results showed that poor health, increased age and being female were all associated with increased importance of amenity/environmentoriented physical attachment to place. An amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment to place is predicted by several individual (microsystem) characteristics, that is, age, gender and health. In our model, poor health is the primary predictor of this type of attachment. Yet, amenity/environmentoriented physical attachment may also result from living in a place that has amenities such as attractive housing and recreational opportunities. The Canadian rural study found that a ‘good fit’ for younger active in-migrants came from having access to golf courses, boating, good restaurants and shops (Keating and Eales, 2011). Although amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment may appear to be fundamentally different in Wales and England than in Canada, it may have the same basis inasmuch as it stems from the role of the environment in the construction of a positive self-image. Rapoport (1982) has suggested that environmental evaluation is largely affected by images and ideals. In this respect, social normative expectations concerning independence, activity and autonomous behaviours could impact upon a person’s view of their environment. The results from the GaPL study suggest that striving to maintain independence in a community despite poor health means that the physical attributes of the community, such as the barriers to, and the facilitators of, independence, become vitally important. We would suggest that in the face of poor health, the imperative to retain independence crowds out other types of place attachment, as competent functioning in the environment and how this is reflected in one’s self-identity become the most important aspects of daily living. An alternative expression of connectivity in relation to amenity/ environment-oriented physical attachment was observed in the Canadian study. In this study, we could postulate that the social normative expectations for active (healthy) young in-migrants were engagement in leisure activities (such as golfing and boating) and other consumption-oriented activities (such as shopping and dining) (Keating and Eales, 2011). Whereas amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment in Wales and England lends some support to a 111

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degenerative discourse on ageing, the Canadian study suggests that this type of attachment can result from challenging or resisting the stereotypical negative ageing discourse. Wearing (1995, p 272) notes that engaging in leisure activities ‘emphasises what a person can do rather than what they are no longer physically capable of doing’ and may serve to distance a person from a ‘negative’ self-identity. For older people in poor health in England and Wales, resistance to the imposition of a negative stereotype was expressed through functional competence in daily activities. For those in good health in Canada, this was expressed through leisure and consumption activities.Thus, in both settings, the personal experience of health is further influenced by the exosystem through the availability of services and the quality of these services in maintaining functioning and behaviours that correspond to a positive self-image, which influences the expression of connectivity in relation to amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment. Similarly to amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment to place, social attachment to place is also concerned with the validation of self-identity and behaviour. Social attachment to place is a type of connectivity that is concerned with love and belonging. We anticipated that length of residence within a community would affect social attachment to place; however, we were also keen to examine the influence of social resources, civic engagement and neighbourhood cohesion on the relationship between length of residence and this type of connectivity. Women expressed greater levels of social attachment to place than men. Other research has shown that women tend to evaluate relationships with a wider network of people than men, with the latter tending to focus on the importance of relationships with a partner (De Jong Gierveld, 1986; Tijhius et al, 1999). For women who are able to build and maintain a wide network of friends and neighbours, ‘social attachment’ binds them to the place in which they live. In this respect, individual characteristics located in the microsystem of the human ecology model influence social place attachment. In addition to being influenced by individual characteristics, social attachment to place is also affected by the chronosystem: we found that longer residence in a community is associated with greater levels of social resources and stronger social place attachment.This suggests that the psychological investment required to cultivate ‘social attachment’ and social relationships within a community develops over time (Hay, 1998; Williams and Vaske, 2003). Social resources include family and friends to whom older adults have social ties, and, over time, place 112

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attachment appears to be nourished by the daily encounters with those in the social network (Brown et al, 2003). This may be because one’s social network provides a reference group that one can use to validate self-identity and behaviour as judged by ‘significant others’. Thus, belonging is a product of the construction of self-identity in relation to the social world (eg Scannell and Gifford, 2010). Consequently, and with reference to the concept of social capital, one could suggest that bonding capital is important in forming a social attachment to place. However, bonding capital is not limited to the influence of social networks, and in our analysis, we also established that neighbourhood cohesion had an independent impact on social place attachment. Furthermore, civic engagement (or bridging capital) was also influential in the development of this form of connectivity. While we find an interaction between the chronosystem and mesosystem, whereby length of residence influences social networks, no such relationship is found for social cohesion or civic engagement. While we have argued that amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment and social attachment to place are a product of the construction of self-identity in relation to the social world, in the introduction to this chapter, we argued that a sense of attachment to aesthetically pleasing environments may develop because of their restorative and therapeutic effects or because they provide settings for recreational activities. Stronger aesthetic place attachment was expressed by older people living in the most remote rural communities that were typified by features that appealed to tourists (Type A) than by those living elsewhere. In this respect, immediate environmental characteristics located in the microsystem of the human ecology model influence social place attachment. However, we found that recreational activities did not have a role in the development of this type of place attachment. Therefore, other elements of the environment may be relevant to developing an aesthetic sense of attachment. We found that threats to the environment (reflected in the number of local concerns) mediated the relationship between community type and aesthetic place attachment, whereby those that showed greater concern for the environment demonstrated higher levels of attachment. Local concerns may be part of the exosystem in the ecological model, as the older person has played no role in the construction of experiences, but these experiences have a direct impact on the individual’s microsystem. Therefore, it is important for rural planners to understand the role of aesthetic place attachment in older people’s lives.

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Although we do not have any data to confirm or refute the restorative or therapeutic effects of the environment, the effects of natural environments on relieving stress and fatigue have been discussed extensively elsewhere, albeit generally for younger populations (Ottosson and Grahn, 2005; Hartig, 2007). Aesthetically pleasing environments may deliberately be selected as post-retirement destinations to help to restore vitality, which may have been eroded slowly during years of engagement in the workforce (Burholt and Naylor, 2005; Burholt, 2012). In rural areas where aesthetic attachment is strong, potential disruption and threats to the natural environment may serve to strengthen place attachment and may result in protective behavioural responses. In contrast, in areas where aesthetic place attachment is weaker (and perhaps social attachment or amenity/ environment-oriented physical attachment are stronger), industrial interventions and other threats to the landscape may be more palatable to local residents as they do not threaten their sense of belonging to their community and potentially their well-being (Devine-Wright and Howes, 2010). In terms of the ecological framework, this clearly demonstrates how different systems may impact upon each other. The exosystem (local concerns) has the potential to influence the microsystem (local immediate environment). However, the interaction between these two subsystems may invoke oppositional behaviour. For example, there may be collective attempts to alter the exosystem in order to protect the microsystem from change, thus safeguarding aesthetic place attachment and the psychological benefits that ensue.

Conclusions This chapter has taken an important step forward in promoting our understanding of the connectivity of older people to the places in which they live, considering not only the predictors of particular types of place attachment, but also the pathways to attachment. It is important to distinguish between the types of connectivity concerning older people and their communities as each bond is the product of complex interactions and is dynamically shaped by several interacting subsystems. Starting from a theoretical understanding of the different types of place attachment, we have demonstrated empirically that there are distinct pathways to three kinds of connectivity between older people and the places in which they live: social attachment to place, aesthetic attachment to place and amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment. Using a measurement of place attachment that was 114

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developed specifically for use with older people living in rural areas of England and Wales, our mediation analysis has demonstrated that place attachment is influenced by (but not entirely dependent upon): the macrosystem and national ideologies of in(ter)dependence and autonomy in later life; the exosystem in the availability and quality of services for older people in rural areas and number of local concerns; the mesosystem in social networks (and significance of personal actions to these networks) and perceptions of neighbourhood cohesion; the microsystem through individual and neighbourhood characteristics; and the chronosystem in the development of attachment to place over time.We have demonstrated that amenity/environment-oriented physical attachment to place and social attachment to place are concerned with the validation of self-identity and behaviour(s) and are products of the interaction between the macrosystem, mesosystem and microsystem. Furthermore, we have demonstrated that aesthetic attachment is an experiential attachment primarily operating within the microsystem (that is between the individual’s immediate environment and personal psychological well-being), but is also a product of the interaction between the exosystem and microsystem. Understanding the connection between older people and their communities also provides us with some notion of the threats to attachment to place for older people in rural areas. We noted in the the section entitled ‘What is place attachment?’ that in later life, there is an increased likelihood of physical or cognitive impairment that may precipitate a move to a supported living environment (such as residential care or sheltered housing in the UK). In rural areas of the UK, specially designed housing or facilities for older people may be located several miles away from the person’s community. The rupturing of the bond between an older person and their community may have a negative impact on well-being. Understanding in which way a person is connected to a particular place may help us to address the subsequent social, physical or psychological needs of older people who have relocated, but, in addition, recognising the process by which place attachment has developed elucidates potential threats to place attachment other than migration. For example, amenity/environmentoriented physical attachment may be jeopardised by poor access to and quality of rural services; social attachment to place could be endangered by the relocation of key members of an individual’s social and support network; while aesthetic place attachment can be threatened by rural development and change. While this chapter has given us some indication of the pathways to place attachment for older people in rural areas of Wales and England, 115

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there are some limitations to the research presented here. As the research has been conducted in Wales and England, the model should be tested with data from other countries to ascertain its applicability in other cultural contexts. For example, we have noted how amenity/ environment-oriented physical attachment may manifest in Canada. The multiple mediation models provide examples of pathways to types of place attachment, and other models may fit the data better. For example, we could have chosen to use some of the mediating variables (such as social cohesion) as outcome variables and types of attachment as mediators.We did not do this because we have sought to test a theoretical model with empirical data from Wales and England. Finally, we have used cross-sectional data and therefore cannot be sure of the direction of causality. Further research using longitudinal data will provide an opportunity to test these causal pathways with more conviction. Note 1. Because assumptions of normality are questionable, we bootstrap the indirect effects of the independent variables on each type of place attachment using the SPSS version of Preacher and Hayes’s (2008) macro for multiple mediation. The bootstrap estimates presented here are based on 5,000 bootstrap samples. We use 95% bias corrected and accelerated (BCa) confidence intervals (CIs) to determine significant mediation effects: mediators are considered to have a significant effect only when the 95% BCa CI for the point estimate does not include zero.

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Keller, S. (2003) Community: pursuing the dream, living the reality, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kyle, G. and Chick, G. (2007) ‘The social construction of a sense of place’, Leisure Sciences, vol 29, no 3, pp 209–25. Kyle, G.T., Mowen,A.J. and Tarrant, M. (2004) ‘Linking place preferences with place meaning: an examination of the relationship between place motivation and place attachment’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol 24, no 4, pp 439–54. Lawton, M.P. (1974) ‘Social ecology and the health of older people’, American Journal of Public Health, vol 64, no 3, pp 257–60. Lawton, M.P. (1990) ‘Residential environments and self-directedness among older people’, American Psychologist, vol 45, no 5, pp 638–40. Lewicka, M. (2005) ‘Ways to make people active: role of place attachment, cultural capital and neighborhood ties’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol 25, no 4, pp 381–95. Lewicka, M. (2008) ‘Place attachment, place identity, and place memory: restoring the forgotten city past’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol 28, no 3, pp 209–31. Lochner, K., Kawachi, I., Brennan, R. and Buka, S. (2003) ‘Social capital and neighborhood mortality rates in Chicago’, Social Science & Medicine, vol 56, no 8, pp 1797–805. Lubben, J., Blozik, E., Gillmann, G., Iliffe, S., Von Renteln Kruse, W., Beck, J.C. and Stuck, A.E. (2006) ‘Performance of an abbreviated version of the Lubben Social Network Scale among three European community-dwelling older adult populations’, The Gerontologist, vol 46, no 4, pp 503–13. Mee, K. and Wright, S. (2009) ‘Geographies of belonging: guest editorial’, Environment and Planning A, vol 41, no 4, pp 772–9. Mesch, G.S. and Manor, O. (1998) ‘Social ties, environmental perception, and local attachment’, Environment and Behavior, vol 30, no 4, pp 504–19. Milligan, M. (1998) ‘Interactional past and potential: the social construction of place attachment’, Symbolic Interaction, vol 21, no 1, pp 1–33. Mohan, J. (2011) ‘Mapping the Big Society: perspectives from the Third Sector Research Centre’, Research Paper 6. Available at: http://tsrc. ac.uk/Publications/tabid/500/Default.aspx Moore, R.L. and Graefe,A.R. (1994) ‘Attachment to recreation settings: the case of rail-trail users’, Leisure Sciences, vol 16, no 1, pp 17–31. Moseley, M. and Pahl, R.E. (2007) Social capital in rural places a report to Defra, London: Rural Evidence Research Centre, Birkbeck College, University of London. 120

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FIVE

Beyond transport: understanding the role of mobilities in connecting rural elders in civic society Graham Parkhurst, Kathleen Galvin, Charles Musselwhite, Judith Phillips, Ian Shergold and Les Todres

Introduction This chapter argues for an understanding of connectivity through mobility by elders living in rural areas that goes beyond the traditional transport planning focus on the supply of and demand for transport services. This involves consideration of not just physical movement, but also all the other ways in which older people can be ‘mobile’ for connectivity and the wider benefits and meanings mobility brings, for example, video-calling grandchildren using computer software, finding out about shopping delivery services for use in bad weather or compiling a scrapbook about a past alpine holiday. Following a brief review of methods, a conceptual framework for mobility that can be applied across the life course is presented. The following section applies this framework as a context to understanding some of the key mobility policy and practice challenges for the promotion of the connectivity of rural elders, which relate to the availability of mobility options – cars in particular – and the associated issues of accessibility and mobility-linked social exclusion. It is concluded that the more holistic appraisal of mobility for older citizens brings important conceptual benefits. A picture emerges of rural areas being ‘carintensive’, but less car-dependent than identified in previous studies, with accessibility for connectivity also relatively unproblematic for the majority, although with minorities representing important exceptions. Practical relevance is drawn out for planning and urban design, as well as for health and social care professionals.

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Methods The analysis draws on the quantitative survey described in Chapter One and two qualitative data-collection activities conducted specifically for the mobility and transport study that was part of the Grey and Pleasant Land (GaPL) project: 45 semi-structured interviews, for which the participants were selected to represent a range of mobility lifestyles; and 10 phenomenological interviews, with participants selected according to varying health and mobility statuses. The GaPL survey contained a series of mobility-related questions that addressed travel patterns and behaviours, mode choice (including over time), and whether mobility played a role in either exclusion from, or engagement with, the local community. Participants in the semi-structured interviews were mostly recruited from volunteers identified through the quantitative survey, but due to the low representation in the quantitative survey sample of a particular group of interest (people who had recently given up car-driving), seven further participants were recruited from outside of the quantitative survey sample. Potential interviewees were initially contacted by letter or email, with arrangements for home-based interviews made by phone. Interviews were typically undertaken on a one-to-one basis (but occasionally with couples) and were recorded digitally and transcribed. Age group (60–69, 70–79 and 80+) and gender were also approximately matched between the six locations. The interviews focused on mobility issues, both at a personal level and for the wider community of older people, and lasted around an hour on average. Although most participants had a car available in the household, some participants were active cyclists or mobility scooter users, others were ex-drivers, users/non-users of public transport, or people who had relocated in order to achieve better access to services and facilities. Questions were arranged around five themes: exploring the meaning and importance of current mobility; the benefits and disbenefits of the most commonly used mode(s) of travel; the impacts of losing access to a car (when relevant); personal mobility biographies; and a forward-looking theme covering sustainability issues related to travel.The data were analysed using a framework based on the research questions, assisted by the use of NVivo software. Participants in the phenomenological interviews were all recruited from volunteers identified during the quantitative survey. The interviews lasted between one and three hours and focused on what it was like to live in their locality of residence. The mobility aspects explored trips regarded as necessary (‘have to’, ‘must do’) and desired 126

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(‘want to’) by the participants, with the questioning intended to allow understanding of the meaning of transport in people’s lives and the meaning of mobility within the context of rural space to emerge.The analysis of this group of interviews was also phenomenological in orientation, following a sequential approach that began with holistic and background understanding, followed by the identification of discrete ‘meaning units’, and then these were finally transformed into more general expressions about the essence of that meaning. Todres and Galvin (2012) provide further detail of the phenomenological approach.

From transport to connectivity As a particular focus of academic transport studies and practical transport policy, the mobility needs of older citizens in rural areas have traditionally been dominated by disciplinary perspectives that have emphasised economic-efficiency principles, which hold space and distance to be inefficient inconveniences to be overcome (for example Moseley, 1979; Nutley, 2003). Such accessibility planning approaches have their value, particularly for highly functional journeys, such as journeys for medical treatment, or goods movements that are lifecritical, such as the restocking of food stores.They also draw empirical support from studies showing that travellers often exhibit attitudes and behaviour that place importance on the money costs of travel, place a disproportionate weight on time spent waiting for transport services and often demonstrate preferences for faster journey times, particularly in the context of routine travel (for example TRL and Partners, 2004). However, this approach encourages a simplistic classification of trips, drawing on a limited range of factors (see Figure 5.1). Daily or routine journeys, such as to work or to shops, are seen as having no direct value in themselves, regarded as a ‘waste of time’, to be minimised through travel-time reductions or delivery services. Even the space between the formal activities can be seen as a devalued obstacle (Cresswell, 2010). Consideration of journeys for tourism perhaps illustrates the shortcomings most starkly: in these cases, the journey may literally be seen as richer, more satisfying and desirable than the destination activity. As tourist travel does not fit with the efficiency-maximising paradigm, it has traditionally been on the margins of transport planning. Locations in which it is significant are viewed as anomalous, and tourists themselves as dislocated from their routines. Implicit in this perspective is that novelty enriches travel, 127

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Perceived economic priority

Essential

Discretionary

UTILITY Not ‘transport’ Tourist

while repetition, familiarity and the mundane are undesirable. It also ignores the opportunity that routine travel offers for time safeguarded from social and familial obligations (Jain and Lyons, 2008) and, as will be argued later, the importance of engagement with the familiar locale. In a further extension of the economic logic employed by some transport planners, those routine trips identified as creating net benefits within the formal economy are referred to as utility travel – implying that other types of trips are lacking in value – whereas routine trips seen as less urgent and lower priority – such as a walk in the countryside, or to ‘windowshop’, and for social purposes – are termed discretionary. ‘Discretion’ implies choice and voluntariness, and that such trips can be foregone without essential needs being unfulfilled. People making such trips may also be assumed to seek to minimise the time costs of travel, but, at the same time, the consequences of long journey times or unexpected delays are seen as less important than they are for high-utility heavy goods vehicle deliveries, business-tobusiness meetings or the peak-hour commute. Further, the utility–discretionary–tourist characterisation of trips also relies on a distinction that also often breaks down in practice. In the GaPL study, justifications made by the older respondents blurred between ‘subsistence shopping’ and social connectivity: “I could shop online, give up using the greengrocers…. But you make friends … if you don’t go in the shops as a regular customer you would miss that” (female, 60s).

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Another of the participants in the GaPL research identified how a hybrid trip, almost without an explicit purpose, could even be identified as a social norm: “Nowadays it’s part of life to go and wander around the supermarket and have a cup of coffee and a cake … when you have got time to do it, it’s the sort of thing you do” (male, 60s).

Implications for older citizens The categorisation of trips has practical as well as academic importance: the triad is particularly disadvantageous for considerations of the transport and mobility needs of older people and younger people, due to their lower involvement in high-profile, ‘high-utility’ economic production, notably, paid work. The definition of ‘utility’ has an implicit meaning of ‘essential’, which risks marginalising the travel aspirations and needs of older people through categorising them as discretionary – and therefore low priority for transport policy – leaving trips to access the short-run basics of life – groceries and health care – as the main priorities (Figure 5.2). As the majority of formal economic activity, and the traffic congestion transport planning tends to focus upon, occur in urban areas, this approach is also not well-oriented towards understanding the transport problems of rural areas. Hence, older citizens living in rural areas may be doubly marginalised by professional practice, while experiencing fewer mobility opportunities. Urban-dwellers are more likely to have independent access to service centres offering a range of essential and discretionary services, so a visit by bus primarily to a Figure 5.2: Indicative comparative trip profile classification by stage in life course Essential Trip centres of gravity: O Older people Middle-aged people M Younger people Y

Discretionary

Tourist

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food store might be combined with a visit to a social club or perhaps a cinema. However, a rural-dweller is more likely to need to rely on a lift in someone else’s car, in which case, the activities may be rationalised to minimise the impact on the lift-giver’s schedule, with the ‘discretionary’ trips that enhance the quality of life or have special significance, such as reunions and funerals, being those most likely to be forgone (Davey, 2007). The focus on the formal wage economy also marginalises the important unpaid work contributed by older citizens. People in the UK aged 65–74 are those most likely to be involved in voluntary activities (Department of Communities and Local Government, 2010), and Chapter Two showed how the GaPL survey respondents were heavily involved in such activities. Such mobilisation is essential to the present emphasis of numerous governments upon civic engagement as a way of meeting needs at a time of austerity budgets for the public sector (see Chapter One). Equating paid employment with highpriority, productive economic activity is one process that systematically disenfranchises volunteering and familial social care. Another is that they rarely appear as a trip purpose category in transport planning surveys, models or analyses, despite the importance of these to welfare (the broader economic notion of utility) and even to wider issues such as climate change and the sustainability of much modern social services provision (Evans et al, 2012). Even from the perspective of economics, the definition of utility employed in some transport analyses has also been excessively shortrun, focusing on the immediate production and welfare consequences of journey characteristics. Health economics is becoming increasingly aware that the utility benefits of enabling leisure walking include long-run welfare benefits both for the individual walker and in reduced costs to health services through avoided poor health (Cavill et al, 2008). This awareness is becoming increasingly influential in transport economics, with the benefits of promoting physical fitness now included within official UK government transport project appraisal procedures (DfT, 2013). Here, too, however, movement is identified as providing a measureable functional output with a specific derived objective: staying healthy and avoiding imposing costs on the health care system. In contrast, Musselwhite and Haddad (2010) have provided a hierarchical conceptualisation of a much broader and, in respects, less tangible range of benefits from mobility, including satisfying affective needs by establishing personal agency, status and role and aesthetic needs derived from travel, for example, from experiencing nature. 130

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As in the case of transport studies, gerontology has been identified as focusing excessively on mobility as ‘actual realised movement’ (Ziegler and Schwanen, 2011, p 760) or physical functioning, for example, someone’s ability to shop or use public transport. Nevertheless, the gerontological literature has been more aware of the wider benefits of travel, including the importance of maintaining independence and well-being (Gabriel and Bowling, 2005; Sugiyama and Ward Thompson, 2007), maintaining social inclusion (Scharf and Bartlam, 2006), and avoiding isolation (Victor et al, 2005). Mobility constraints are seen not just as creating additional constraints in accessing the destinations of goods and services, but also as potentially limiting different life spaces, and, hence, they are implicated as a contributory factor in the incidence of physical disability and loss of independence (Hirvensalo et al, 2000). Gerontology has begun to recognise the multidimensionality of mobility (Ziegler and Schwanen, 2011), with authors such as Mollenkopf et al (2011) exploring the subjective meaning of mobility over time. In the next section, past approaches are synthesised and developed, considering how a wide range of modes of connectivity can be variously important for well-being over time, according to personal needs, aspirations and capacities.

A continuum of mobilities for connectivity Urry (2007) emphasises how social connectivity arises from relationships maintained across distance with varying extents of face-to-face meeting or ‘co-presence’. Social groups have particular expectations and rules about how distance is managed, which influence how the social life of that community is established. While this has always been the case, new technologies have influenced the nature of how these mobility relationships are negotiated, and have also brought new mobility options. Urry identifies five forms of mobility, which can be summarised as: • ‘corporeal mobility’ or the physical movement of the body through space; • the movement of objects such as goods; • ‘imaginative travel’, by which the mobility experience is solely within the mind, typically triggered through audiovisual media, but with no connectivity with the actual environment across space; • ‘virtual travel’, facilitated by information and communication technologies (ICTs), whereby the quality of the experience substitutes for corporeal mobility; and 131

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• ‘communicative travel’, whereby information is passed through high- and low-technology media, including letters, text messages and telephones. The five forms of mobility are not always straightforward to independently establish – a letter involves the movement of an object but also communicates from sender to recipient. Virtual travel and communicative travel, in practice, seem to differ by the quality of the experience, whereby taking part in a videoconference achieved through high-quality facilities may be (nearly) equivalent to being co-present, whereas a poor-quality videophone call may amount to communication rather than co-presence. Hence, the term ‘virtual mobility’ rather than ‘virtual travel’ is used here to address both these forms. Older age cohorts in industrialised states are developing diverse corporeal mobility narratives. Overall, they arguably have a wider availability of transport resources than any previous cohort of older people, with rates of driving licence-holding and car access continuing to rise, the introduction of new forms of mobility using flexible bus services, and single-person electric micro-vehicles. In some locations, public transport supply is at an all-time high, and in the UK, older people can travel free on most public bus services, while discounts are provided in many other states. Parkhurst and colleagues (2013) presented a continuum of modes of connectivity that links corporeal mobility with three other mobilities: virtual, potential and imaginative (see Figure 5.3). Virtual mobility comprises: the real-time aspect of Urry’s ‘virtual travel’, where there is the experience of visiting a location without corporeal movement, such as through Internet-connected cameras; his ‘communicative travel’, namely, the exchange of person-to-person information through ICTs and traditional media such as paper; and the procurement of goods and services without corporeal travel by the consumer.Virtual mobility is rising among older citizens, as well as the wider population, and is expected to continue to rise as older cohorts in the future are increasingly technologically enabled and engaged: Figure 5.3: A continuum of modes of connectivity Corporeal Physical

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Potential

Imaginative Ideational

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“Yes, I use the Internet. Buying things and especially emails. Oh gosh … it’s a godsend. I’ve got lots of friends all over the place so it’s a wonderful way of keeping in touch with them. I look at it every day and use it quite often.” (Female, 80s) The GaPL research found that, already, 60% of older households were Internet-enabled (see Figure 5.4). However, ICTs are also subject to capability constraints, due to limited dexterity, visual acuity or cognitive ability. While these constraints are by no means exclusive to older people, they experience them more frequently than do younger people. Therefore, the extent of universality of use will depend in part upon the extent to which future technological development is inclusive. In the GaPL study, resistance to the proliferation of higher virtual mobility technology was also identified: “Two of my eldest daughters have said, ‘Why don’t you get a computer Daddy, a laptop?’ … but you know I’ve already had a computer and I gave it away because I did not see the sense in having it. I said, ‘What is wrong with picking up the phone and phoning me, or me phoning you?’, which we do.” (Male, 70s) Figure 5.4: Reported household connection to the Internet

No computer 36%

51%

Broadband connection to the Internet

4% Have a computer, but not connected to the Internet

9% Dial-up connection to the Internet

Note: N = 910

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The rise of ICTs has led to debate around the extent to which virtual connectivity might and should substitute or complement physical connectivity for those with limited corporeal mobility and, in extremis, those who have temporarily or permanently lost independent locomotive ability within and beyond the home completely. Substitution has, at times, been identified, from a moral perspective, as a negative development. Physical connectivity is identified as superior to virtual connectivity and therefore to be preferred where possible, to minimise perceived associated ‘desocialisation’ effects and related psychological threats. Alternatively, ICTs may be viewed as a liberating force, enabling the ‘global village’ or new forms of social group not primarily based around proximity in physical space. In practice, Kenyon (2010) found virtual activities to be additional to physical mobility, resulting in an overall increase in participation in activities and connectivity, neither adding to nor reducing physical travel demands. Kenyon examined a sample without identified physical mobility constraints and of mixed age. However, if virtual mobility is in part additional, and if ICTs do continue to be increasingly important within society, then people of all ages who do not engage with them will exhibit increasing relative interaction ‘deficits’ in quantitative terms (although not necessarily in terms of their quality). Where corporeal mobility is limited or impossible, however, the reservations about virtual mobility replacing literal mobility are reduced or eliminated: even for the virtualisation sceptics, ICTs are identified as a next-best and important way of maintaining citizen independence, through online shopping and banking, remote health ‘telecare’ and social media. Rowles (1981) also identified that remote technologies allowed older people’s ‘surveillance zones’ to broaden, as people in care environments used remote technology to monitor the comings and goings of residents, staff and visitors. Emerging from a sociological rather than a psychological perspective, Urry’s classification emphasises expressed mobility. However, mental well-being also reflects emotional considerations, such as feelings of independence and having mobility options. To this end, the desire to maintain potential mobility may result in the retention of vehicles and driving licences – often at the cost of a considerable share of household disposable income – as a psychological and practical ‘insurance policy’, to address needs that may not arise, or desires that are not in the event fulfilled:

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“I kept my driving licence, there is no reason why I shouldn’t … but I consider that my reflexes aren’t good enough for driving. I don’t need to drive, she can drive, but I kept my driving licence in case there was an emergency and I had to drive.” (Male, 80s, mobility scooter user) Metz (2000, p 150) hypothesised that ‘potential travel – knowing that a trip could be made even if not actually undertaken’ – is an important element of mobility. Davey (2007, p 50) identified examples of such trips being the possible need to travel at short notice to respond to family emergencies, or ‘journeys “on a whim” for pleasure or aesthetic enjoyment’. The implication of potential mobility is that aspirations to be mobile do not necessarily need to be expressed to contribute to well-being: feeling that one could move in response to a strong desire or necessity is in itself sufficient, ‘as if ’ the person had moved. Hence, the potential to be mobile can itself contribute to overcoming feelings of isolation and entrapment. However, the feelings of potentiality can be psychologically complex: Davey (2007, p 55) identified one case in which a respondent maintained a car ‘ready for use, even when no one in the household was licensed to drive. It remained a symbol of independence, control and of “not being beholden” to anyone’. Although potential mobility has been most linked to the car, the GaPL research found that buses could also elicit similar phenomena: the following respondents talked in positive and knowledgeable terms of the pleasures that others had apparently experienced when riding buses, before adding that they had not experienced this as literal mobility themselves: “it is actually a social thing because you meet up with people and you can sit there and admire the view on the way. It’s like being chauffeur-driven on the bus. You can stop for coffee and sandwiches … I haven’t done it myself.” (Male, late 60s) “In fact, some people go all over the place [by bus] don’t they? We don’t … but could do.” (Male, late 70s) In these cases, public transport was valued as a ‘care-free’ option, perhaps due to an association with UK policy which means that bus travel is free of charge for most trips made by older people. Andrews et al (2012) concluded from a study of concessionary bus pass-holders

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that for some UK older people the pass had become the ‘plastic embodiment’ of freedom and individualism. While actual movement may sometimes be seen as a defining characteristic of being human and social, being human or social does not of course end with the absence of corporeal mobility. Ziegler and Schwanen (2011, p 776) also argue that Urry’s mobility paradigm does not represent psychological being, and they propose ‘imaginary mobility’. Their approach emphasises memory and reflection upon previous experiences as having particular importance for well-being, through maintaining the continuity of self-identity. In the present chapter, we apply this concept as imaginative mobility, defined as the ways in which people extend their sense of connectedness to, and meaningful engagement with, life activities that were previously addressed by corporeal mobility. This does not involve a simple replacement of a previous literal mobility activity (for example going to the pub to meet long-standing friends), but the achievement of a different but allied experience through other means (such as reminiscing about long-standing friends and stories with visitors and through photographs). Imaginative mobility experiences require no, or virtually no, corporeal mobility by the person experiencing them; no more than moving within a building to a window, balcony or just outside into a garden. The GaPL data provided examples of imaginative mobility where the movement was mainly metaphorical – ‘back in life’ – although the inclusion of transport infrastructure is also suggestive of a more literal reimagining of movement: “The canals remind me of the past.We had no money. If we could not catch a rabbit or the hens didn’t lay, we did not have enough food … we had no money but we so enjoyed everything there.” (Female, 70s, registered disabled) Other accounts appeared to be drawing upon a spatial cognitive representation to revisit a corporeal mobile experience: “There is a dingle down there and there is a tunnel up the other end and there is a tunnel of trees” (female, 80s, housebound). However, there was also more limited evidence within the GaPL data indicating that a more direct representational symbolic reexperience of corporeal mobility might be occurring. For example, this could be through the re-imaginative movement of the body in dance, alongside the relocation to happy times, the elicitation of both being assisted by listening to music: “It’s something I knew a long time 136

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ago – dancing and the happy times then … the music takes me back there” (female, 80s, housebound). The four modalities of mobility can be seen in terms of Kaufmann’s (2002, p 38) ‘motility capital’, or ‘the factors that define a person’s capacity to be mobile’. These factors are partly the outcome of social processes, which influence the availability of mobility systems, their conditions of use and the availability of information about them. They also partly derive from individual aptitude, aspiration, time constraints and desire to obtain knowledge about mobility options and opportunities. Kaufmann recognises the role of stage in lifecycle as one of the factors that can influence capacity. While the concept of motility capital has most relevance for those that are expressed – corporeal and virtual – he also envisages that it can be potential. Imaginative mobility represents an extension of the development of motility capital in that it draws on past corporeal mobility experience for its investment and expression, such as trips like this one: “I suppose most fine days in the evenings I go out on the scooter and go and see what the local farmers are doing … just getting out of the house and keeping an eye on what the local farmers are doing: I see the sheep, see the dairy cows out, I see the barley harvesting and all that sort of thing. I am naturally a farmer anyway.” (Male, 80s) The phenomenological interviews, in particular, emphasised the multiple and personal meanings that mobility has in creating a ‘textured locale’, by which means past journey purposes become current narratives: the valuing of a local rural vicinity as a ‘storied’ place rich with personal, communal and landscaped history, which gives the immediate locale ‘a human face’: “this old house, a ruin really. I’ve known it since a toddler and we go there regularly … we’ve always loved it and there is a fountain which is fantastic to see” (male, 60s).

Changing ‘mobility styles’ across the life course Clarke and Dix (1983) noted that the degree of independence of mobility choices will be greatest in single-person households and most constrained in those where children or dependent adults are present. Hence, younger-old couples will be interdependent in their travel choices and may, as a household, be relatively unconstrained, unless they are caring regularly for grandchildren. For the older old, 137

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much will depend upon health status and whether one of a couple is caring for the other, or one survives the other. Lanzendorf (2003) developed the ‘mobility biography’ approach to examine how critical events in an individual’s life can disrupt longestablished behaviour patterns. Events that are particularly relevant for older people are retirement (which brings more discretion about how time is spent), changes in health status, changes in car availability and bereavement. In addition, some of these critical life events are likely to trigger secondary events, such as household relocation to a new locality. Relocation has been associated with a significant change in mobility behaviour, as it requires the reassessment of mobility options in the context of a new environment that may vary from the previous one in terms of the density of local opportunities and the transport options available to reach them (Stanbridge, 2007). Hence, the literature tends to emphasise changes in mobility styles as arising as consequences of other choices or external constraints. In the GaPL interviews, however, there were frequent references to more direct, internally motivated changes arising from altered desire for different kinds of mobility across the later life course. These generally related to reduced corporeal mobility with rising age. For some respondents, this decline could be seen as implicit with age. In this case, the change had apparently been accepted, or at least rationalised: “Well, I used to go a lot more than I do now ‘cause, I mean, my eldest sister, she’ll be 95 this year. And the one below me would be 86 … and my brother is 81. So, you know, we don’t travel. If I go up there, I have to see them all.” (Female, 80s) In other cases, there seemed to be a sense of a lifetime ‘travel budget’ beyond which the rewards were not worth the physical or psychological efforts: “As far as I am concerned, I have spent 40 years of my life overseas anyway so I have no desire to go to these places or to move around” (Male, 70s). Sometimes, previous corporeal mobility had been very effectively transformed into other forms of mobility, in this case, virtual mobility: “my husband and I were very keen on rugby. My husband used to play rugby.When we were in London, we followed London Welsh, and when they were playing, we’d go and watch them in Twickenham. Saturdays were filled with that. Now I love watching it on television.” (Female, 80s) 138

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Although, for another interviewee, this transformation seemed less successful because it felt imposed: “It’s frustration I think. Of not just being able to go somewhere … wanting something you can’t have I suppose. Getting bored of watching Jeremy Kyle” (female, 70s). Similarly, it can be hypothesised that imaginative mobility is particularly valued by older people whose potential for both literal mobility and virtual mobility is receding (either due to increasing physical limitations, ill health or lack of desire). Portals to imaginative mobility, such as reminiscence triggered by conversation or in response to music or visual media, were found to be significant aids for some of our rural elders, by which pathways were opened up to either a life that is possible or to a life that was being held on to. It can also be hypothesised that imaginative mobility will develop in richness and vivacity in compensation for a reduced role for other mobilities. Given variation in motility capital across the lifecycle, it can be hypothesised that the four mobilities will often coexist with each other, with some combinations having durations of many years, and others being transient, perhaps lasting a few months. Figure 5.5 provides a hypothetical example of how an individual may experience the mobility continuum in older age. It perhaps presents an individual who enters older age (t1) as corporeally mobile, both using active travel and motorised vehicle modes, with a satisfactory income but hitherto little engagement with ICTs, and hence limited experience of virtual mobility. Until now, potential travel has mainly occurred in respect of scoping foreign holidays, which due to conflicting priorities, were not in all cases taken. However, having more time in retirement, ICTs are explored for the first time (t2), and connectivity with relatives in Australia reaches a lifetime peak. More intense interaction combined with receiving a retirement lump sum motivates a longmused (corporeal) trip to visit them, and potential mobility becomes actual. Developing virtual mobility becomes a boon in the next Figure 5.5: Example five-stage biographical transition across the mobility continuum t1

t2

t3

t4

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Virtual

Potential

Virtual

Potential

Imaginative

Corporeal

Corporeal

Corporeal

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decade (t3), when car ownership ceases at the age of 73, due to rising financial outgoings and a decline in real-terms income, combined with a sense that negotiating the road network as a driver was no longer ‘worth the hassle’ given free bus travel from a stop 10 minutes’ walk away. However, walking to the bus stop when the weather is poor is not always as attractive as having a car on the drive, so corporeal mobility reduces as a consequence. This lacuna is partially satisfied psychologically through a growth in potential motility capital through reflection on options and practical actions, for example, obtaining information about a door-to-door flexible bus service. A decade later (t4), a sense of interest in the local spatial community combined with greater physical and psychological effort experienced in being corporeally mobile means that those trips become shorter and imaginative mobility – recalling foreign places visited – takes on an important role in psychological life.Virtual mobility proves invaluable in keeping up with the village hall committee work through emails, without having to hand-deliver notes to the members. Finally, for a very brief period in the latter stages of life (t5), corporeal mobility becomes rarer and virtual mobility more of a challenge as a result of poorer eyesight; imaginative mobility becomes the dominant aspect of mobile life. In this notional biography, a relatively linear progression is followed, but in the myriad of other possible biographies, the sequences may be reversed and/or repeated.

The connectivity of older people in rural areas The first half of this chapter has presented a holistic framework for understanding the mobility and connectivity of older people in a broad sense, drawing on examples from rural ageing. The second half now applies that framework in considering three linked rural policy dilemmas.The issues examined can be expressed as concerns that arise from the nature of rural areas: generally, requiring greater distances to reach destinations, having lower population densities and having more limited transport services, which mean that they might be expected to: • exhibit high levels of car dependence and show great vulnerability to the consequences of not having car access; • experience difficulty in accessing goods, services and opportunities for social connection, particularly if they do not have car availability; and • experience greater potential for social exclusion due to limited mobility opportunities. 140

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Car dependence In principle, walking, cycling and use of private taxis, public buses, community transport services and informal lift-giving provide mobility options alongside owner-driven cars in rural areas. However, there are a number of barriers to the effectiveness of these alternatives for meeting all corporeal mobility needs. These include a lack of confidence in walking ability (Avineri et al, 2012), inadequate walking infrastructure – even in urban areas (Newton et al, 2010) – the limited extent of rural bus services and the effects of winter weather on walkability (Shergold and Parkhurst, 2010). More subtly, social factors such as norms and stereotypes can encourage, but instead often deter, public transport use (Musselwhite, 2010; Musselwhite and Haddad, 2010). Ownership of at least one car occurs at higher rates in UK rural households (91%), compared with households nationally (75%) (DfT, 2011a). Smith and colleagues (2010) identify that the poorest rural households were more likely to allocate spending on car travel than urban households with equivalent wealth. Although it has long been recognised that vehicle operating costs can result in poorer rural households rationing their car use (Root et al, 1996), such costs have been rising sharply in recent years, and car ownership overall may have peaked (Goodwin, 2013). However, even wealthier older people who have relied on cars throughout their lives are likely to face a period of life without effective car access due to the temporary or permanent withdrawal of a driving licence within the household of residence. Rabbitt et al (1996) found that UK ex-drivers ended their driving careers at 72 years of age on average. Even where car access is maintained, this may be graduated, through informal regulation of the routes and conditions in which they drive, to avoid potentially challenging situations (such as motorways, driving at night or even turning across busy roads): “Well, I am a nervous … I don’t like driving far I’m afraid. I once had a panic attack on a motorway, which has worried me ever since. I am happy on minor roads: that’s why we don’t go far to be honest…. It does mean we do tend to cancel things, you know, if I feel I can’t cope with it.” (Female, 80s) Such self-regulation may also be influenced by friends and relatives. Evidence suggests that regulation can show both over- and under141

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caution, as well as accurate assessment of risk (Oxley et al, 2003; Berry, 2011). The findings from the GaPL project only partially supported the emphasis on the car as the dominant and most appropriate corporeal mobility option in rural areas: 87% of respondents reported access to a car in the household, and around three quarters had travelled in one in the last week (Figure 5.6). However, car availability in the household fell to 60% for respondents aged over 80. For the whole sample, as many had walked for a trip lasting at least 15 minutes as had travelled in a car in the previous week. While these statistics do not describe the overall intensity of use of the different means of mobility, it is notable that a pattern of greater ‘multimodality’ over time was revealed which is often missed by a focus on the main or most used mode: 62% of respondents had used 3-6 different modes in the year prior to survey, including buses, taxis, cycles and, notably for rural areas, mobility scooters. Figure 5.6: Most recent use of a range of transport options In the last year

In the last month

In the last week

900 800

90

700

79

% in last year

600 500 400

54

300 36

200 19

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4

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axi

ter

e, ke ity rbiped sur ere at un bus oo i o c e t e m l s h Us ty e mo mo om rt for ew bili ar, or r c anspo Rid re som c o o o a m r m t lic t ive ea ub or ge Dr Us es st to ap t e u ju Us min or 15 alth r o e lk f h Wa y

cle

ic ab

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Therefore, the corporeal motility capital of the sample emerged as high, with the ‘other’ modes generally used on an infrequent basis. In the case of the minority who used mobility scooters, particular ‘competences’ and ‘materials’ were required before the new mobility practice could be adopted (Shove et al, 2012) and these were sometimes an obstacle to use: “Yes, it’s heavy. And it has to be assembled and disassembled…. To be quite truthful, with the battery on charge, it’s such a performance to go into the garage, get the battery out and put it on the little thing, get the [scooter] out, drive it there, come back, take the battery off. It’s easy to get in the car: turn the key and off you go.” (Male, 60s) In terms of the other means of transport featured in Figure 5.6, taxis are highly flexible but relatively expensive, particularly compared with buses, which are mostly free to concessionary pass-holders. Although bus services are not ubiquitous, 57% of UK rural households lived within ‘13 minutes’ walk’ of an hourly bus service in 2010 (DfT, 2011b). The GaPL evidence about walking indicates that most of the sample was, in any case, walking this distance on a regular basis. However, the standard measure for bus stop proximity does not allow for weather conditions and, in practice, is modelled as an 800-metre distance, which, therefore, assumes a walking pace of 2.3mph, which would not be achievable by all. Around a fifth of the sample demonstrated through recent use that they had retained the motility capital necessary to cycle on occasion. In other words, they had access at least sometimes to a bicycle, had been in good enough health to ride and had somewhere acceptably safe to ride. Notwithstanding the range of mobility options discussed here, a lack of transport was seen as a barrier to engaging in community activity for a minority of GaPL participants; although this minority included some who reported access to a car, it was predominantly comprised by those without car access. A quarter of those reporting difficulties agreed that they were prevented from participating in community activities as a consequence. One reason why older people with ‘access to a car’ could sometimes be influenced in their travel choices is that another household member may use that car for another purpose at the desired time of travel: “I mean the British Legion, which is here, bimonthly, and I have the car that day. You know, the wife has to get on the train that day, because I have the car to come” (male, 143

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70s). This situation might then lead to some households choosing to maintain two vehicles in order to facilitate their involvement with, and connectivity to, their communities. Lifts from family and friends might be another potential source of mobility for some older people, but this is often perceived as not being a choice, as a consequence of privacy concerns about the journey purpose (such as visits to health care services), or to avoid ‘being a burden’ on others: “one doesn’t like to keep on asking friends for a lift to things like that. I know they’re quite willing to do so but you feel a bit under an obligation doing that all the time, don’t you?… A lot of people, a lot of my contacts, will say, ‘I don’t like to ask’.” (Female, 70s)

Reported and perceived accessibility Although some facilities are provided to rural residents at lower densities than urban residents in order to minimise travel needs, for most services, rural residents need to travel further to achieve the same level of accessibility (for a fuller account, see Shergold and Parkhurst, 2012). People living in rural areas of England and Wales travel approximately 40% further per year than do people in most urban areas, with almost all of this excess travelled by car (DfT, 2010). Rural-dwellers also spend a third more on motoring costs, public transport tickets and taxi fares than urban residents (Office for National Statistics, 2010). Being a rural resident often involves an element of choice, however, which can influence the extent to which the lower density of goods and service provision described earlier is judged as adequate: “we accept we have got 25 miles to get to anywhere, and 50 miles to get to anywhere decent” (male, 60s). Perceptual compensation about what is realistic to expect in terms of accessibility perhaps explains why few GaPL respondents reported finding access to each of 20 nominated service and activity locations ‘very difficult’ (see Figure 5.7), and no more than a fifth reported some level of difficulty. People aged over 80, however, were more than twice as likely as those aged 60–79 to report at least one location type as being ‘very difficult’ to access. Davey (2007) hypothesised that ‘discretionary’ trip purposes might particularly suffer in rural areas due to more limited mobility options. Two such locations – museum/gallery and cinema – were among the four identified with a higher level of problems, presumably due 144

Beyond transport: understanding the role of mobilities Figure 5.7: Reported difficulty in accessing services, facilities and locations of social connection Some problems

Quite difficult

Very difficult

200

Number of responses

180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20

Do ct De or n Ho tist Po spita st O l ffic e Sup Fo erm od ar Bu ket ss top Po lice Ban k Vil ATM Lei lage sur e c hall ent Cin re em a So Pub cia lc Wo lub rsh ip Pet rol Lib ra Ga ry rag Mu e seu m

0

Destination Note: N = 920

to them being relatively infrequent in provision and typically located in urban areas or on urban fringes. However, the locations of more routine social connectivity – places of worship, social club venues, libraries and village halls – were among the least problematic. Further analysis revealed a notably short distance required to undertake the kinds of activities enjoyed at such locations (see Figure 5.8). Rising virtual mobility may also explain why greater difficulty was not found in respect of some of the ‘utility’ purposes: “I will order stuff on the Internet rather than going to town to buy it, so I don’t make that journey and it is just so much simpler on the Internet. Somebody else comes and drives and delivers it to your door.” (Male, 60s) Of those using a computer at least weekly (around half of respondents), more than half reported having used the Internet for banking and nearly two thirds for shopping, although, again, a decline was noted with increased age (see Figure 5.9).

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6–10 miles

1–5 miles