Fairhurst, E 2008, 'Ordinary theorizing of aging and membership categories' , Journal of Societal and Social Policy, 7 (1-2) , pp. 3-16.

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Abstract

Drawing upon a corpus of the author's research, this paper demonstrates how membership categorization devices can explicate social aging. In particulat it connects Schutz's notion of anonymous typifications with membership categorization analysis. Initially,Schutz's perspective and its development within ethnomethodological/interpretivist understanding of social life is outlined. The practical use of membership categorizations is illustrated in three domains: firstly, professional texts of architectural design for special housing for older people to show how space utilization is accounted for, secondly,an ethnography of rehabilitation of older people to show how professional theorizing of care displays a dialectic between space/place and type of care received and thirdly material from a study of becoming and being older to outline changing identities of aging. Whilst these research studies ostensibly are discrete, they are linked with a theoretical/analytical concern to demonstrate how membership categorization analysis concretizes Schutz's rather abstract notion of typification in social situations and, thereby, displays the ongoing accomplishment and orderly production of aging

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