Overview

Taking a novel approach to ageing, this book focuses on older people as makers of meaning and insight, highlighting the evolving values, priorities, and ways of communicating that make later life fascinating and rich. Ricca Edmondson explores what creating meaning in later life really implies, for older people themselves, for how older people are conceptualised, and for relationships between generations.

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9781847425935

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Reviews

Edmondson s critical expedition into the wisdom of the ages and keen observations of everyday life in the West of Ireland transform our understanding of aging as artful, ethical, meaningful, and deeply human. --Stephen Katz, Trent University (Canada)

Ricca Edmondson's truly remarkable book demonstrates that wisdom is not a collection of proverbs but an expression of a deeply humane quest for insight which may intensify as people grow older. An inspiring, deeply reflected work that looks beyond the dominant agendas of contemporary ageing. Jan Baars, University of Humanistic Studies, The Netherlands In five succinct chapters Ricca Edmondson provides an eminently valuable and useful exploration of the nature of meaning in later life, both as meaning attributed to old age and as found and realised within it. Mixing together the narratives of people known as friends and colleagues with the accounts of people as research subjects, she provides a welcome overview of issues and themes to which other books on ageing often give scant or only passing regard. Highly recommended. Chris Gilleard, Visiting Research Fellow, UCL, London This is a book of rare distinction and import. Tremendously learned yet modest, quietly powerful in its advocacy of meaning and wisdom in gerontology. In a word, liberating. Thomas R. Cole, The University of Texas Ricca Edmondson's critical expedition into the wisdom of the ages and keen observations of everyday life in the West of Ireland transform our understanding of ageing as artful, ethical, meaningful and deeply human. Stephen Katz, Trent University

Ricca Edmondson's truly remarkable book demonstrates that wisdom is not a collection of proverbs but an expression of a deeply humane quest for insight which may intensify as people grow older. An inspiring, deeply reflected work that looks beyond the dominant agendas of contemporary ageing. Jan Baars, University of Humanistic Studies, The Netherlands In five succinct chapters Ricca Edmondson provides an eminently valuable and useful exploration of the nature of meaning in later life, both as meaning attributed to old age and as found and realised within it. Mixing together the narratives of people known as friends and colleagues with the accounts of people as research subjects, she provides a welcome overview of issues and themes to which other books on ageing often give scant or only passing regard. Highly recommended. Chris Gilleard, Visiting Research Fellow, UCL, London

Author Information

Ricca Edmondson (died June 2021) was Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland, Galway. After studying philosophy at the University of Lancaster and writing her D.Phil. at Oxford on reasoning in the social sciences, she carried out research at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. She then joined the School of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland, Galway, specialising in interdisciplinary and intercultural approaches to life-course meaning and wisdom, and their history, landscapes and social settings.

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