This book is about some of the difficulties social researchers in ageing grapple with when asking people to think about their future in relation to their own ageing. Perceptions of the future are often shaped by social, cultural, philosophical and historical experiences on both societal and personal levels. These variables may influence social researchers in their framing of their research, and also influence the subjects of the research, in their imagining of their own futures. The book's editors, Joanna Bornat and Rebecca Jones, introduce the central theme in the book by explaining that the problem of imagining oneself as old is apparent across the lifecourse. They suggest that people may distance themselves from realistic imagining of their future old age because it is so closely and inevitably connected to death. Although people do imagine the future, their imaginings are often laced with ageist stereotypes and other inaccurate assumptions about ageing. Such imaginings do not lead to constructive decision making and realistic planning for old age. The editors explain that the difficulty in researching people's imaginings of their own old age can result in intergenerational conflicts, inadequate planning and insufficient allocation of funds by both governments and individuals.
The four authors, Barbara Adam, Cassandra Phoenix, Linda Pickard and Joanna Bornat, successfully tackle the problem from four different approaches derived from their own research projects.
Barbara Adam, in her chapter ‘Future Matters for Ageing Research’, briefly examines attitudes to the future under the four headings of fate, fortune, fiction and fact. Her broad analysis of the philosophical and historical changes in people's perceptions of their future raises many unanswered, as well as unanswerable, questions. Adams emphasises the ‘disjuncture between social life and its academic modes of inquiry’ (p. 12). She leaves the reader wanting to explore further some of the challenges to researchers in this area of growing interest.
Cassandra Phoenix, in her chapter with the apt title of ‘Erm, I Don't Know … It's Not Something That I Really Think About’, refers to her work in narrative gerontology and in-depth interviews that identified the difficulties people have in imagining the future as old age. Phoenix's approach is focused on achieving a research methodology that assists in eliciting interviewees' realistic imaginings about their future old age. In the context of her specific research, she actively strives to understand the interviewees' situations so that she can appropriately frame her interview questions about their perceptions of their future old age.
The third chapter, ‘Researching the Future with Survey Data’ by Linda Pickard, uses secondary research through her analysis of large-scale data-sets and calculated projections in order to plan for the future based on knowledge of the past. The author acknowledges the limitations of such research and its potential to lead to inaccurate assumptions. However, given the limitations, well-constructed large-scale data-sets can frame perceptions of future ageing upon which to base further and more refined research analysis.
The final chapter of the book, ‘Researching the Future with Older People’, is written by Joanna Bornat. She refers to her work with ‘The Oldest Generation Project’ (TOG), undertaken with Bill Bytheway between 2007 and 2012. Bornat, with her extensive research into the lives of older people, describes clearly the inhibited ways in which older people talk about the future, and the equally inhibited ways in which researchers present the future in their research with older people. In a large research project, such as the TOG, qualitative and longitudinal methodologies were used together with diverse research strategies. This enabled the researchers to include in their analyses examinations of the interviews for their future orientation. Bornat encourages approaches to ageing research which explore futurity and at the same time ‘decouple the future from preventative measures’ (p. 81). She supports these approaches as they expand the research outcomes to include people's perceptions of their own old age, their forward thinking and planning about their old age, and their sharing of these future imaginings, all of which are ‘helpful to families, carers and wider society and also to people in late life’ (p. 81).
This book will appeal to researchers wanting to explore new methodologies in ageing research focused on people's realistic expectations of their old age. All levels of society, from governments, aged care service providers, carers and families of older people, to older people themselves, will benefit from research innovations that accurately inform planning and the allocation of finances.
