Agency in ageing: an open issue
Despite frequent reports of increased longevity and growing numbers of older people who enjoy good health, a negative vision of ageing persists, often limiting adaptive capacities among older people and impeding individuals from realising their full potential. Shared perceptions of ageing often seem to focus on both physical and mental limitation and decline, which is thought to explain an inevitable disengagement of older people from their ordinary daily activities and habits (Kaufman Reference Kaufman1994).
Personal expectations and cultural beliefs are becoming crucial variables in predicting how an older person will reorganise his/her life and find a new life balance as he/she grows older (Phillipson Reference Phillipson1998). Among these variables, agency seems to assume, at least culturally, particular relevance in defining normality for the individual who is considered ‘healthy’ as long as he/she has a proactive attitude and is capable of making plans for the future (Kontos Reference Kontos and Tulle2004; Marshall Reference Marshall2005).
The idea of a self or person as an agent has fostered a long debate since Durkheim and Mauss (Reference Durkheim and Mauss2009), as it is well known. The construct of agency has also been explored by social movements as well as by socio-political activists since the end of the 1970s: first by feminist theorists (cf. Wray Reference Wray2003), and later by sociologists such as Bourdieu (Reference Bourdieu1984), Giddens (Reference Giddens1979) and Sahlins (Reference Sahlins2004), who emphasise the role of the individual's decision-making processes. Nonetheless the construct of agency has remained broad in its formulation and has, over time, acquired different nuances of meaning (Campbell Reference Campbell2009; Hitlin and Elder Reference Hitlin and Elder2007). Overall, however, it is generally understood as what Ratner (Reference Ratner2000) defines as the ‘individualistic view of agency’, associated with autonomy, motivation, willpower, perseverance, planning, choices and initiatives (Chirkov, Ryan and Sheldon Reference Chirkov, Ryan and Sheldon2010). Some authors have come to call these qualities the capacity to act (cf. Ahearn Reference Ahearn2001) or, rather, the capacity that an individual acquires to plan his/her own future assuming an active, conscious and intentional role in achieving this future. Emirbayer and Mische considered the temporal dimension as a central aspect of agency and identified the resulting capacity as rendering the individual capable of ‘formulating projects for the future and realising them’ (Reference Emirbayer and Mische1998: 964) and of mastering ‘projectivity’, defined as ‘the imaginative generation by actors of possible future trajectories of action, in which received structures of thought and action may be creatively reconfigured in relation to actors’ hopes, fears, and desires for the future’ (Reference Emirbayer and Mische1998: 971).
Although this idea of agency has been challenged by alternative perspectives advanced in the academic context (i.e. Gilleard and Higgs Reference Gilleard and Higgs2010; Lloyd et al. Reference Lloyd, Calnan, Cameron, Seymour and Smith2014; Tulle and Dorrer Reference Tulle and Dorrer2012), it still prevails in everyday Western thinking (Menon et al. Reference Menon, Morris, Chiu and Hong1999). Contemporary public policies have strongly contributed to sustaining and promoting it as common standard. Indeed this definition of agency can be found in the Active AgeingFootnote 1 agenda outlined by the World Health Organization (WHO), which tends to present it in terms of active participation, implying the capacity of human beings to shape the circumstances in which they live. As critically noted by some authors (Barnes Reference Barnes2000; Joas Reference Joas1996; Tulle Reference Tulle2004), this concept implies an ‘act of force’ or a form of ‘resistance’ that an individual is capable of exercising in his/her life.
Yet seen as ‘force’, ‘activity’, ‘resilience’ and ‘capacity to plan the future’, agency arguably becomes problematic as the individual ages (cf. Greiner and Phillipson Reference Greiner, Phillipson, Baars, Dohmen, Greiner and Phillipson2014), since we are led to see an older person as ‘unagentic’ (Dannefer and Uhlenberg Reference Dannefer, Uhlenberg, Nussbaum and Coupland2004) and to interpret, especially the fourth age, as ‘lack of agency’ (Gilleard and Higgs Reference Gilleard and Higgs2010). In this respect, Holstein and Minkler (Reference Holstein, Minkler, Bernard and Scharf2007: 16) raise concerns regarding the emphasis on an idealised notion of ‘activity’ in ageing, which, they suggest, is liable to be oppressive or counter-productive in practice. The authors write that ‘the efforts to eliminate ageism by “focusing on the positive features of old age” risk ignoring the “real bodies of old people” and unwittingly impose unrealistic and “oppressive standards”’ which can negatively affect identity and self-worth. Notions of ‘successful … healthy or active ageing’ carry ‘implicit normative standards’ which ultimately devalue ‘those who do not live up to their ideals’. Similarly, Jesuino (Reference Jesuino2014) talks about a ‘paradoxical social representation’ which ties older people in a double-blind loop of conflicting messages.
The Western idea of agency with regard to older people tends to focus, paradoxically, on the methods that they adopt to delay growing old and to address the decline linked to age. These may involve using coping strategies functional to the general and inadequately analysed idea of ‘remaining active and productive’ (Cardona Reference Cardona2008; Tulle Reference Tulle2004). In line with growing alternative voices (i.e. Gilleard and Higgs Reference Gilleard and Higgs2010; Lloyd Reference Lloyd, Twigg and Martin2015), we argue that understanding agency in this way erroneously risks interpreting the contingencies of many older people as limiting and ‘faulty’ and fails to provide alternative keys to understand the lived experience of older people (Elder Reference Elder1994). In the final analysis, the idea that older people are ‘unagentic’ is, from our point of view, a socially constructed belief based on implicit meanings and hidden values usually underlying the construct of ‘normality’ as far as agency is concerned. We do not mean to imply that older people are incapable of exercising a form of activity conforming to the interpretations of agency by the WHO; our studies have often shown the contrary. We nevertheless maintain that this definition is reductive and incapable of reflecting the many ways agency can be expressed in individuals’ later years (cf. Baars et al. Reference Baars, Dohmen, Grenier and Phillipson2014).
In order to understand the lived experience of older people we need, therefore, to abandon the implicit reference system that many of us in the Western tradition have adopted and which leads us to perceive the older person's actions in a pejorative light. In this respect, Walker (Reference Walker2002), a supporter of active ageing, underlined the importance of also examining ‘activities’ from a bottom-up perspective (cf. Gubrium and Holstein Reference Gubrium and Holstein1995). This perspective directly includes the points of view of older people and can thus also radically diverge from formulas embraced by public policy, which are strongly influenced by criteria and needs of a political and economic nature (Bowling Reference Bowling2008). Our contribution consists in a theoretical discussion of agency, aimed at conceptualising an alternative idea of it. In order to depict this idea we will draw on some narratives presented by older interviewees while speaking about ageing well, comparing them with the philosophical concept of disponibility, that resonates, in particular, with the wu-wei Footnote 2 tradition (Borel Reference Borel2015).
A theoretical framework
An ever-growing tendency in social psychology and critical gerontology seeks to promote multifaceted interpretations of ageing, emphasising positive narratives with respect to negative ones (Gergen and Gergen Reference Gergen and Gergen2001; Gubrium and Holstein Reference Gubrium and Holstein2008; Kenyon, Bohlmeijer and Randall Reference Kenyon, Bohlmeijer and Randall2011; Phoenix, Smith and Sparkes Reference Phoenix, Smith and Sparkes2010). This field of research has shown how it is possible to identify and promote stories containing multifaceted connotations of old age, usually understood as a period of life exclusively characterised by decline (e.g. Andrews Reference Andrews, Bamberg and Andrews2004; Contarello et al. Reference Contarello, Bonetto, Romaioli, Wachelke and Leone2011, Reference Contarello, Camargo, Wachelke, Piccolo and Xavier Morais2016; Gullette Reference Gullette1997; Phoenix and Sparkes Reference Phoenix and Sparkes2009; Randall and McKim Reference Randall and McKim2008; Vincent, Tulle and Bond Reference Vincent, Tulle and Bond2008).
Our contribution can be considered part of a wider effort to focus the spotlight on aspects associated with the ageing process, while also examining some outlooks that are often taken for granted from completely different perspectives. It is important, as we see it, to examine scenarios in which older people demonstrate that they are able to live up to the standards of health and wellbeing that are expected of them. More important, perhaps, is to evaluate thoughts and points of view that can redefine those standards, avoid taking them for granted and recognise the meaning of an experience examined from fresh perspectives. It would thus be possible to encourage the emergence of multiple interpretations that are indispensable for challenging the conventional ways in which old people are perceived or perceive themselves, thereby avoiding forms of self-limitation and negative self-fulfilling prophecies.
Taking into consideration the subject of agency in this specific case, our references are mainly ascribable to reflective pragmatism (Gergen Reference Gergen2014; Gergen, Josselson and Freeman Reference Gergen, Josselson and Freeman2015), symbolic interactionism (Danziger Reference Danziger1994; Denzin Reference Denzin2008; Mead Reference Mead1925) and social constructionism (Gergen Reference Gergen1999). In accordance with those perspectives, we propose that social dimensions model the thinking processes of an individual, and that agency can be defined as the way chosen by a person to give meaning to his/her actions and to the possibility of actively planning his/her own future (Harré Reference Harré1984).Footnote 3
Although several scholars have argued that the mind is prevalently a social and cultural product (Luria Reference Luria1976; Valsiner Reference Valsiner2003), the conviction that wanting, deciding and planning – that is acts of will – are natural activities that originate in a primary pre-social homunculus situated somewhere in our brains still prevails (McVeigh Reference McVeigh1995). Western tradition and the thinking that has been constructed around it have persuaded us that there is a primary psychological nucleus equipped with free will and willpower. In the face of the naturalisation of the phenomenon of agency, anyone who expresses a degree of volition different from the expected one is quickly branded as indolent, lazy, dependent, apathetic, problematic, sickly, lethargic and/or feeble (Romaioli, Faccio and Salvini Reference Romaioli, Faccio and Salvini2008).
These cultural premises have long obscured more radical reflections that suggest how the sense of agency can instead be understood simply as a social construction (Jolanki Reference Jolanki2009; Shotter Reference Shotter, Campbell and Muncer1998). The model of agency which we now consider as the most widely accepted, and which we spontaneously take for granted, is neither innate nor categorical; it depends on historical and social contingencies and thus represents only one of many possible configurations. As McVeigh (Reference McVeigh, Salvini and Bottini2011: 303) remarked, ‘if agency is a historic-social construct (rather than a product of natural evolution), we should expect theories of volition and of agency constructed using different parameters’.
Diversities in social-cultural parameters defining agency have, for example, been highlighted in the field of child development. The Russian psychologist Vygotskij (Reference Vygotskij1933) stressed the importance of cultural mediation and noted important differences between the decision-making processes of a child and those of an adult. As far as cultural anthropology is concerned (cf. Heelas Reference Heelas, Lock and Heelas1981; Rosaldo Reference Rosaldo1980), comparative study of indigenous psychologies has provided evidence of forms of agency that are socially organised, qualitatively distinct and thus not reducible to a single model. Based on these observations, Lock (Reference Lock, Lock and Heelas1981) identified an active/passive (or control/under control) dimension. He noted that while one culture may establish a system of meanings that leads individuals to identify themselves in terms of their ability to control, another may lead its members to identify that same ability differently and to consider the exercise of control as something beyond the self.
This reasoning is also clearly useful not only in distinguishing between different cultural worlds but also as a means of underlining how within a single culture there can be different constructions of agency depending upon spheres of experience. Indeed, some aspects of everyday life are constructed as if the self were autonomous and capable of exercising control over them, and this triggers subjective feelings of power and freedom. At the same time, other aspects are culturally constructed giving the impression that our self is ‘under control’, not necessarily of external forces but certainly removing the presumption that the self is able to determine the course of events (McVeigh Reference McVeigh, Salvini and Bottini2011). An example of this thinking could be the way we describe intense emotional experiences as if we were being controlled by ‘our heart’ or by ‘an instinct’.
There is flexibility within ones sense of agency which varies according to different forms of experience. This flexibility is modulated mostly by relational, communication and socialisation processes. That is why, from our point of view, changes in life status (cf. Hershenson Reference Hershenson2016, referring to retirement) make different ways of interacting with others, with the world and with oneself feasible, and can lead to substantial modifications in the construction of one's sense of agency.
Aims and research questions
Our contribution aims to challenge the assumptions implicit in the prevailing Western way of interpreting agency. We do this by bringing together the above-mentioned concept of disponibility and some older peoples’ accounts of their lived experiences. More precisely, we examined the responses of a group of older people interviewed to explore their view of ageing well and, indirectly, how they conceptualised agency.
At the beginning of the research, our main interest was to intercept narratives of people describing good ways of ageing. Our research questions, in broader terms, regarded whether and how people might age well in a historical and social period such as the present one. It was in the actual process of research – in the circularity of gathering, analysing and interpreting data within a qualitative research methodology – that the theme of agency became particularly salient. A particular understanding of this construct appeared to seep in through the interviews, challenging those same ideas that public policies seemed to take for granted and raising new queries in the research process. Although we had already adopted a critical perspective with regard to some premises shared within the WHO agendas, listening to the interviewees led us to question various issues in a deeper and more explicit way, and thus to better sharpen and focus our research questions. These then became:
• Are there different ways of conceiving agency in old age?
• How is the concept of agency sustained by active ageing challenged by the perspectives offered by some older people describing good ways of ageing?
• How are notions about the ‘self’, ‘active role’, ‘responsibility’, ‘control’ and ‘projects’ organised in older persons?
In search of an interpretive model suitable to envision the data under collection, we thus asked ourselves:
• Do any interpretive traditions exist that can provide more exhaustive schemes of intelligibility and, if they do, are they capable of outlining the ways that older people organise personal agency?
Participants
Thirty participants (15 men and 15 women) living in the Northern–Central–Eastern regions of Italy (Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna) who were classified, in accordance with the WHO classification, as ‘young elderly’ – from 65 to 74 (41%), ‘elderly’ – from 75 to 84 (38%) and ‘very elderly’ – older than 85 (21%), were enrolled in our study. We opted for a purposive sampling (Flick 2006) with participants recruited as typical cases, i.e. people who might be considered representative of good ways of ageing. This reference group was recruited with a snowball sampling technique and mainly consisted of ‘safe elderly’ who could contribute more readily in developing narratives that were not typical of age-related stereotypes and prejudices linked to ageing; by ‘safe’ we mean interviewees who declared that their health was relatively good and enjoyed relative economic stability. It is fair here to restate that we are not referring to older people in perfect health and in full economic wellbeing, but rather to individuals who allocate themselves in situations of relative good health and wealth. The presence of serious chronic and degenerative illnesses, as well as of barely acceptable economic positions, in the life circumstances of some participants invites us to enhance the subjective psychological dimension – rather than objective variables – as central in the definition of people's wellbeing.
Method
The qualitative strategy adopted for the data collection in this study was episodic interviews (Flick Reference Flick2009). This type of interview provides the material for a double assessment that looks at both semantic and episodic (individual autobiographical experience) memory. The main questions adopted in the interview protocol are quite broad. They invited the interviewee to produce a story and to feel free to select life episodes linked with good ways of ageing, narrating them along personal criteria:
• We thought you might be a good example of person who is ageing well. In this interview we will ask you to let us understand your experience linked with ageing well nowadays. We are in Italy, many things happened…
• What does ageing mean for you and your everyday life? Can you tell us a brief experience that, in your opinion, is representative of your way of ageing positively?
• According to most people, what is the most shared idea of ageing?
• Thinking of the present situation, which future scenarios are you expecting in your life? Can you give us some examples?
As can be noted, the interview questions were focused on accounts of subjective experiences linked with good ways of ageing. The theme of agency emerged spontaneously within the participants’ narratives and was raised directly by the interviewers apart from some requests for clarification. Most of the interviews were carried out in the presence of two researchers of different age at the homes of the participants in order to encourage spontaneous conversation in a familiar environment.
The interviews were transcribed into a Word document; a thematic analysis of the texts was carried out (bottom-up) with the assistance of NUD*IST software. The unit of analysis was the complete sentence. The code definition underwent a validation process through negotiation of the coding rules of the statements by two researchers. First, a quite detailed open coding was performed. Later, a focused coding allowed us to synthetise the specific contents of the texts, merging the identified codes in higher-order categories on the basis of their common meaning (cf. Charmaz Reference Charmaz2014). We will comment here exclusively on the resulting categories that were pertinent to the idea of agency expressed by the interviewees.
Main results
‘Disponibilité’ as a daily wisdom
We will begin by offering the reader an imaginative anchor, a kind of framework within which categories of meanings can be arranged and whose elements can be discussed. As mentioned above, the dimension of agency seems to reflect a framework similar to the way that Taoist philosophy defines wisdom, and thus does not overlap with scholarship or cognitive insight but rather with a series of practices and mental attitudes found to be particularly productive for the harmonious management of everyday life (cf. Lao Tse Reference Lao Tse2011). The principal themes emerging from the analysis attributable to the conceptualisation of agency refer to reported life episodes and include the following topics:
1. Mental states of wellbeing and serenity.
2. Willingness to exercise positive thinking.
3. Solid engagement with the present.
4. Sense of moderation (sobriety) which consists less in personal contentment than in desiring ‘what is right’.
5. Openness to existence.
6. Capacity to accept oneself.
7. A particular attention towards interpersonal relations.
In order to understand the fil rouge underlying the codes used and thus the guiding principle connecting them, it is important to trace parallels between the reflections of some of the older people expressed during the interviews and the theoretical concepts developed around the construct of disponibilité, as outlined by the French scholar and noted sinologist François Jullien (Reference Jullien2004, Reference Jullien2011, Reference Jullien2012). Such ‘disponibility’,Footnote 4 which the philosopher considers an ethical and cognitive category, is the mental attitude of someone who refuses to be confined by a conviction or a fixed project so as to be open to new developments (disponibility: from dis-position, absence of position).
In an essay in which he discussed this concept, linking it to the field of psychology, Jullien (Reference Jullien2012) pointed out that disponibility has not been sufficiently discussed in Western culture because it reflects a way of thinking that challenges many of its foundations. As we will see, disponibility questions whether the value of the individual depends essentially on his/her strength, volition, productivity and capacity to plan ahead. As such, someone who adopts disponibility has in some way renounced activism as a criterion of identity. Such an approach to life may, on a superficial level, seem defeatist, on the contrary our participants speak about it as the principal ingredient of positive ageing.
We will now attempt to outline in detail the components of the framework of the Western concept of agency, pointing out how this was challenged and reformulated by some of our interviewees who presented us, between the lines, a very different conceptualisation of agency.
The relationship with time: from planning to opportunity
The Western concept of agency places the individual in a particular relationship with time by projecting the self on to a diachronic plane. It is not immediately evident that we extend our experiential horizon towards an illusory future and therefore impose plans and projects upon ourselves. Every plan requires time to be carried out and is based on the premise that the chosen objective is preferable to others. The structure of a particular model of agency is therefore not independent from the way the individual attaches meaning to the idea of time and to the relationship that he/she imagines can be had with a specific dimension of existence. By accepting the Western idea of agency, priority is clearly given to the future, and the idea that the individual is able to determine future events is to some extent indirectly supported. ‘Determination’ as a value obviously constitutes a cultural by-product, just as the social pressures to live in a productive, propositional way are consistent with a point of view that we essentially take for granted.
Let us introduce a critical argumentation about agency by examining the extract of one of the interviewees:
At 74, in the situation I'm in right now, I'm happy not to have plans because I'm free to take all the opportunities that come along. Having a plan makes me stressed, in any case, through trying to make it happen and I need to keep my strength for everyday life. So … right now, my mind and emotions are free as far as everyday life is concerned. (INT21VR, woman, 74 years old)
Many of the older people who were interviewed suggested, almost paradoxically, that an individual who bases his/her life on a future project is actually neglecting him/herself because he/she must maintain allegiance to the self of that decision-making moment, which is presumably the self that made the plan and imagined seeing it through. Locked in the past, however, the choice of a goal is one that in some ways was already made by someone other than the present self since the real or imaginary contingencies linked to it were different ones. Pandering to a decision lost in time means impeding oneself from re-evaluating it in the here and now, and from recognising the unpredictable possibilities the self of the past could not have imagined in the modified circumstances in which an individual finds him/herself.
The awareness of having to conserve one's time wisely probably implies a different projection of self in a diachronic sense for the older person. It means that if the future self (the person I would like to be or to become) imagined in dreams, plans and expectations has less influence on the present, it does not follow that aspirations for the future are abolished but, rather, they are bifurcated in a multiplicity of directions leading to a variety of real possibilities. In other words, desire is not yet solidly and obsessively fixed in predefined, calculated and idealised forms. Instead, aware of temporality and changeability, it is catapulted into the present and committed to the capacity to enjoy the present and transient moment.
It's important to live in the present which is a period of calm, in short, it's the happiest period of my life … I don't need to think about tomorrow, next week, about what will happen! (INT04VR, woman, 65)
I say: ‘This morning! That suits me just fine! Tomorrow we will see.’ If it's raining tomorrow, I'll get out a book and read; today it's nice and I'm going to go for a walk. That's it, I don't need a lot of things. (INT03PF, woman, 72)
On reflection, all plans are based on the principle of hope; but every hope risks feeding pretexts for procrastination, putting off until tomorrow the benefits that could be savoured today. In this regard, older people seem to be absorbed to a greater extent with bringing their narrative into the present (Bauman Reference Bauman2001) and celebrating the here and now; they are ready to collect immediately that impetus of momentary realisation which the young man imagines is final and which he attributes to the success of his future projects. That is why, just as Jullien remarked, ‘disponibility consists in keeping the fan of possibilities entirely open – with no stiffening and nothing excluded – so as to respond fully to every request that is presented’ (Reference Jullien2012: 38).Footnote 5
It's important to take advantage of these possibilities day by day, don't say you'll do it tomorrow … You don't even know if there is a tomorrow or the day after! … Try to make the most of what opportunities you have! (INT05PF, woman, 72)
As we have said, the culturally conveyed Western model of agency convinces the individual that he/she can exert his/her own control and can shape the future in function of his/her own volition. This implies a dialectic relationship with the present in that the individual who is immersed in it always attempts to subjugate it to him/herself, to manipulate it, to direct it. In older people, this need to bend the present to self is less conspicuous. While disponibility does not set the older person against the present and its existing circumstances, the illusion of controlling the future is diminished.
I wouldn't change anything. And a little bit of humility is needed in this life … maybe that's the reason I really enjoy things. (INT17VR, man, 72)
Here, in some respects, is a hint of something similar to ‘fatalism’, an attitude in Western culture that is often accompanied by a stereotypical notion of resignation and passivity on the part of the person who exerts it. Yet, on the contrary, disponibility does not reflect an apathetic surrender but rather a dynamic adaptation to the present; it is the capacity to perceive the best viable match between self and what life has to offer. ‘Disponibility … is accompanied by opportunity, which comes from the world as if “to one's door”’ (Jullien Reference Jullien2012: 39).
The relationship with the other: from competition to collaboration
According to the Western concept of agency, anything that prevents a project from being realised, or that simply distracts from it, is implicitly seen as an adverse element like background noise (which sidetracks us) or as an obstacle hindering our aim of arriving at the finishing line. The end result may be visualised as a flag hoisted on the individual's experiential horizon, with many other secondary goals placed close to the main target; these are not necessarily inappropriate but are secondary to the urge that drives the project and channels the individual's energy and commitment. Shared values such as determination, perseverance or ambition are also contained in this teleological vision of existence. As Jullien (Reference Jullien2012: 36) points out, however:
Supporting an idea is already leaving the others in the shadows: it is favouring an aspect of things to the detriment of others and thus sinking into partiality. Because every idea that is backed is at the same time a preconceived idea that does not permit us to consider them in their togetherness on the same plane in an impartial manner. Preferences and prejudice thus enter into the matter.
Defining a plan and working to see it through establishes a trajectory with the offshoot being that other possible options are seen as undesirable, irrelevant or even problematic when perceived as obstacles or failures.
I hope that things will continue like this: I don't make plans any more. My daughter and grandchildren make plans; I made plans in the past: some went well, others less so because not everything goes as you expect. That's life and I think and hope that I won't have to make any more plans! (INT17VR, man, 75)
Moreover, according to the Western concept of agency, once a goal to be pursued has been established, an individual is placed within an individualistic, competitive logic that separates the desired world from that which impedes its full attainment, and hence others are frequently seen as rivals, antagonists or competitors. The economic paradigm of the maximisation of profit is thus extended to include interpersonal relations where others become either obstacles or resources, but in all cases instruments used for one's own self-realisation (Davey Reference Davey2002). Maximal concentration on a project is accompanied by an equally strong (and inevitable) indifference towards anything existing beyond that pre-established objective: the result is a real incapacity to be receptive.
The distance separating the individual from the world when one adopts disponibility is, in contrast, shortened. When there is no fixed goal, the individual proceeds in life without the usual meter of judgement that measures situations and people as variables to be used in search of one's own specific profit. Evened out by the absence of a project, the vicissitudes of life instead become strangely attractive, generating curiosity, playfulness, contemplation. In this sense, the older interviewees told us how they were better able than before to be open to experiences, to embrace both attitudes of detachment and positivity, and to live in a state of serenity:
I always say, ‘I would never go back’ … I don't see my old age as at all sad … Many people have said to me, ‘Good heavens, isn't old age ugly’ … But I tell you, it's just fine by me! (INT04VR, woman, 65)
As far as day-to-day daily life is concerned, I'm having the best years of my life! (INT02VR, woman, 69)
I'm a person who has learned quite well to approach things with … how would you put it? … positivity … I always say everything is fine. (INT04VR, woman, 65)
For the interviewees, other people no longer appeared to be competitors (or pawns to be used in the pursuit of an initiative), but above all human beings or companions on life's journey with whom one could empathise. Nurturing relationships was often defined as the core of everyday living (frequent references were made to friendships, but also to the community in general, to volunteering and to other forms of interpersonal solidarity). Frequent allusions to complicity and sharing suggested that another person ceased in some situations to be ‘the other’ and became a co-participant connected by a common destiny and mutual interests.
Situations are faced in a less emotional way … much more calmly and also in the context of relationships with other people. If the whole world once seemed to be weighing on your shoulders, now you're aware that it's not. No, now everything seems lighter. (INT16VR, woman, 67)
I was never one to hold back and, if required, I was willing to take risks by saying what I thought. In the sense that if I had something to say, I would say it. Now… now I choose my words carefully and I often opt to say nothing … in the sense that I've realised with the passing of time, and that's why I connect it to ageing, that some things never change. Why should I waste my time talking? Some things, especially human relations, are just that way, each of us is made in a certain way. (INT23VR, woman, 65)
Doing volunteer work can be going to visit a friend who isn't well; you don't need to do extraordinary things … because more than anything else, if you're there for others, you'll receive more than what you give, because afterwards you feel happy. It is something that enriches you. (INT05PF, woman, 72)
This is what life is all about … kids, the cycle of life goes around and round … this is how old age presents itself … you see, old age is normal for everyone. Now it's your turn, it's your turn to go around, it's your turn. (INT05VR, woman, 90)
Relationship with oneself: from the heroic self to a fluid one
Now let us try to take a closer look at how agency can affect the idea of self. Precisely because of the commitment needed to complete a project, an individual needs to use a type of discipline that implies a particular psychological attitude and image of self. Once established, a project requires self-denial and the individual needs to become, and to remain, motivated, to be committed and tenacious. Committing to a project implies a form of activism that evokes a heroic self-image of which the archetype is the individual's show of strength against a world to be moulded. Whoever is competing to achieve a goal will need to gather strength and foresight, and must be determined, persistent and single-minded. This is the only way to reach a goal which in this case does not consist psychologically of a conquest as such but rather in the ‘confirmation’ of those attributes which, almost presumptuously, one imagines one possesses.
Whenever someone is backing an idea or a project, a form of necessity or duty requiring a preconceived type of behaviour is imposed upon the individual; that duty (this and not that must be done) leads directly to the construction of a defined identity in which, as Jullien (Reference Jullien2012: 37) points out, ‘the mind is bogged down, and no longer evolves’.
Disponibility invites us to turn the framework defining how we represent ourselves upside down: while Western cultural values emphasise self-control, independence, self-determination and the consequent fear of losing all this, an individual who adopts disponibility possesses completely different types of qualities.
The subject no longer thinks of himself as full, but as empty. This causes disponibility to turn things over even more … It means, in effect, that the subject must renounce the initiative of the subject … who from the very beginning presumes and plans, chooses, decides, sets objectives, organises what needs to be done. If he thus momentarily renounces this domain because he chooses to adopt disponibility, it is because he fears that the initiative he is taking part in can create an obstacle or be untimely, that it will close him off from an opportunity, that it will block him in a sterile confrontation with himself, impeding him from going in. But going into what? In reality he does not know into what … It is evident that by promoting the autonomous figure of the subject and his internal structure, envisioned in terms of his faculties in that they are properties and thus separated from the flow of the world, Western thought has hampered his capacity to open. (Jullien Reference Jullien2012: 35)
Here, disponibility seems to mean for some older people a euphonic (harmonious) relationship integrating the individual with the context. ‘Because, instead of detaching us from the situation to become independent, disponibility takes us into it and leads us to exploit our resources without facing it’ (Jullien Reference Jullien2012: 44). It is accompanied by a deep feeling of acceptance, of giving up the prerogative to test oneself and to constantly challenge oneself. For older people who reset the conventional criteria defining ‘who I am’ or ‘who I should be’, it becomes meaningless to bend situations in order to attain confirmation or approval. When the imaginary idea of the hero is abandoned, there is no longer any need to think of oneself as strong or to fear being weak. The outcome is a greater capacity to respect oneself, to respect others, and to move forward in a way that is finally peaceful and harmonious.
A critical reflection on the idea of agency
According to estimates, in the medium term the largest section of the population in many industrialised countries will be made up of older people. This forecast evokes a dystopian scenario since there will be more older adults who are inactive (retired) than working adults, with dramatic implications for the current economic systems (Department for Work and Pensions 2005; Department of Health 2005). There are strong collective socioeconomic-political and ideological pressures favouring the greater participation of older people in the productive system, extending their working lives and encouraging their productivity even at older ages.
On the one hand, these ominous predictions constitute an attempt to find a solution to a situation that is justifiably considered critical, and to emphasise and support a functional activism to promote the wellbeing of older people. Yet, on the other, they may be creating an overload of collective demands or expectations in defining what is today considered successful ageing and the role of agency in this. Thus, just as the older person who goes to the gym, who participates actively in the economic and productive life of his/her country, who acts as if youthful, and who sets and follows ambitious objectives may be considered commendable, the person who re-discovers the beauty of a playful and contemplative life, who embraces a more modest, ecological lifestyle, risks being misunderstood or even judged negatively. Unless analysed critically, the implicit construction of criteria for good ageing could leave older people exposed to pejorative judgements and limit the interpretive cultural schemes utilised to confer meaning and value on the experience of advanced ageing (Holstein and Minkler Reference Holstein, Minkler, Bernard and Scharf2007).
Our work aims to suggest and promote an alternative way of conceptualising agency, based on the way it emerged from interviews with a group of older people, echoing visions derived from Oriental Philosophy. By doing so, we wanted to analyse critically some of the fundamental assumptions of the Western tradition that are widely shared and taken for granted. These concepts are linked to specific ideas of the person, free will, willpower and time. Based on these assumptions, the individual is considered able to control his/her life actively, determining its course by making projects and trying to see them through. By abandoning this need for a project, it seems that a series of personal changes are stimulated, allowing in this case older people to take a distance from implicit beliefs in Western culture. In particular, by avoiding excessively planning life, participants involved in the study show the following: (a) a different concept of time, where the present is perceived as amplified; this makes them worry less about what follows and pay more attention and care about the here and now; (b) by worrying less about the accomplishment of projects, older people feel more part of the circumstances; this makes them avoid contrasts and see others not as competitors or rivals but allies and life mates; (c) a different relation with others encourages older people to develop a new self-perception. The pressure to be a certain way is weaker and also the need to prove themselves, to stand out or to prevaricate, while they gain in flexibility, benevolence and acceptance: in one word, disponibility. This philosophical concept synthesises the revolution described above and it represents a form of emancipation from common concepts in Western culture such as self-sufficiency, strength, self-determination and competition. Disponibility can thus be meant as a new cognitive attitude – thanks to the loss of the illusion of control upon ourselves, others and circumstances – and as an ethical attitude – through the acquisition of other values as guidelines of our existence in the world.
While the idea of agency – defined as the capacity for active commitment in the present in view of a future good – conforms to neoliberal ideological demands (as they are presently structured), it also deprives the individual of the possibility of constructing a different relationship with time, with others and with him/herself, a relationship which can in many ways be defined as eurythmic according to our interviewees who reported greater wellbeing, serenity and participation in social life. The disponibility of the older person who is open to a possibility or opportunity requires, first of all, the overturn of implicit values in the production systems. Within these values, active involvement is seen as an end in itself with the risk that its antonym is thought as a passive attitude of defeatism and resignation. As Jullien (Reference Jullien2012: 29) instead pointed out:
It is clear that [disponibility] is not kind of a renunciation, it is not an invitation to be passive, but rather the contrary of solipsism (of the subject) and of his activism … This ‘de-pressing’ (letting go) of disponibility is in reality a seizing, which is all the more skilful because it is fluid, not defined … It is continuously modulated and since it does not have objectives, it is never disappointed, nor deprived; it is neither misdirected nor fragmented. Its range is all the wider – or rather it knows no limits or confines – precisely because it does not follow any trail, it does not have to reach any objective, it does not have to satisfy any desire for knowledge, nor does it need to possess any object. This seizing by de-pressing is not oriented; it does not have plans. It is without shadows. It is no longer guided by intentionality, it thus considers everything on an entirely equal plane … Its radar is open to everything because it does not expect to catch anything.
Models of agency provide a scheme that permits us to attribute the meaning of control over ourselves from a certain point of view. However, culturally and socially produced diversity in models of agency can be utilised to differentiate events or actions perceived to be under the direct control of the self. In the Western tradition, the individual's journey, as far as his/her development is concerned, leads him/her to evolve from a primordial exterior control of his/her own actions (as for the infant) to forms of interior control of agency (for the adult). As far as we are concerned, with regard to the transition to old age there is room for a further revision of the dominant Western model of agency. This would lead to reducing the individual's illusion of control (Salvini and Bottini Reference Salvini and Bottini2011) concerning certain aspects of life (the future, others, the idea of self…), thus leading to a sense of greater fusion with the present situation.
These data are in line with evidence produced by other studies (cf. Baars Reference Baars1998; Clarke and Warren Reference Clarke and Warren2007; Howarth Reference Howarth1998) which have shown the centrality of the subjective temporal horizon (clearly expressed by phrases such as ‘living for now’ and ‘taking one day at a time’) in the re-definition of agency in late ageing. There are also very strong similarities with the concept of ‘Gerotrascendence’ proposed by Tornstam (Reference Tornstam2005) and with empirical data that emerged from this research line. In the author's words:
life was often described as a positive development involving increased life satisfaction in the context of a developmental pattern typically including a redefinition of the self and relations to other people, as well as a new way of understanding existential questions. (Tornstam Reference Tornstam2011: 168)
His informants
described how they had become less self-occupied and … A transpersonal sense of affinity with others and with earlier generations had developed, as well as a sense of being part of a whole. Informants also talked about a kind of redefinition of time, space, life and death. (Tornstam Reference Tornstam2011: 168)
This change
does not imply any state of withdrawal or disengagement, as is sometimes believed. It is not the old disengagement theory in a new disguise. Rather, it is a theory describing a developmental pattern that goes beyond the old dualism of activity and disengagement. (Tornstam Reference Tornstam2011: 166)
Our work outlines similar aspects in the organisation of old age but suggests that older people develop this lifestyle throughout the above-mentioned psycho-social dynamics which consist of challenging dominant cultural presuppositions. In this way, a more exhaustive genealogy of these ideas takes shape thanks to the concept of disponibility and to the linking with ancient Oriental thought.Footnote 6
In this perspective, some interviewees of ours successfully refuse to see themselves as apathetic, dependent or feeble when they abandon ideas of determination, autonomy and strength. The model they have embraced permits them to go beyond preconceived ideas and to reformulate a conception of self, of time and of their daily existence whose confines are more flexible and less sharply defined since they are not conceived as separate entities in a confrontation of contradictions (me against the world/me against time) but as events that are revealed thanks to their reciprocal relation (Gergen Reference Gergen2011).
To conclude, besides illustrating a different way of conceiving agency from the model proposed by deeply rooted Western thought – a theme emerging in the lived experiences and narratives of the older people who participated in our study – this discussion indicates possible future theoretical and empirical lines of research which could be directed towards answering the following questions: What are the prevalent relational schemes in which older people take part and how do these produce changes in organising a sense of personal agency? In what way do the different modalities that older people use to construct agency contribute to redefining the very idea of wellbeing? Is it possible to transfer some of this wisdom to institutional systems that structure social relations? What circumstances or interventions might facilitate the acquisition of disponibility? Might non-older people, in particular in some situation, acquire this specific sense of agency and with what outcomes? In what way could the collective expression of disponibility reverberate in a different social order?
Answering these questions will ultimately mean constructing projects, examining and selecting data, and interpretations of those data; something that will lead us to face the inescapable partiality that prevents all of us from grasping ‘other’ beyond our projects, even when that ‘other’ is intentionally planned and sought out.
Acknowledgements
The project has been approved by the Ethical Committee for Psychological Research of the University of Padova, Italy (Prot.1915 21-4-2016).
This study has been funded within the project 'Narratives of the Fall? A Social Constructivist Analysis of the Global Crisis and of Ageing in Search of Sustainable Patterns of Change' by MIUR and FISPPA Department, CPDR 131738/13.
We would like to thank Paola Castellan, Francesca Dellai, Paola Feroni, Chiara Piccolo, Valentina Rizzoli and Giulia Volponi for their assistance in carrying out the interviews.
