Rosel Natalie
New College of the University of South Florida, Division of Social Sciences, Sarasota 34243-2197, USA.
Int J Aging Hum Dev. 2003;57(1):77-90. doi: 10.2190/AMUD-8XVX-9FPK-MR8G.
Research on aging in place appropriately emphasizes the value of familiar surroundings. The current study contributes an exploration of elders' personal knowledge of where and with whom they are aging in place, knowledge actively accumulated from a lifetime spent in the same area. Structured conversations over a four-month period with 10 elders living on a peninsula in northern Maine provide richly detailed narratives of physical and social particulars of where they live. I use Rowles's (1978) image of concentric circles radiating out from home to organize the information gathered regarding each elder's dwelling, neighborhood and community. Most notable is the depth and detail of their personal knowledge of where they are and with whom they are growing old. I conclude that both the knowledge itself, and the sharing of that knowledge with others, contribute to the implicit and explicit support deemed so valuable for elders who age in place.
对就地养老的研究恰当地强调了熟悉环境的价值。当前的研究探讨了老年人对他们就地养老的地点以及与谁一起养老的个人认知，这种认知是他们在同一地区度过一生而积极积累起来的。在四个月的时间里，与居住在缅因州北部一个半岛上的10位老年人进行的结构化对话，提供了关于他们居住地点的物理和社会细节的丰富详细叙述。我使用罗尔斯（1978）提出的从家向外辐射的同心圆形象，来组织收集到的关于每位老年人的住所、邻里和社区的信息。最值得注意的是他们对自己所在之处以及与谁一起变老的个人认知的深度和细节。我得出的结论是，知识本身以及与他人分享这些知识，都有助于为就地养老的老年人提供被认为非常宝贵的隐性和显性支持。
