ACTIVE AGEING IN PLACE…OR NOT? SENIOR VOLUNTEERS AND THEIR EVERYDAY (SPATIAL) PRACTICES

Abstract

The ways in which senior volunteers (re)produce discourses of ageing well in everyday spaces have generated academic and policy interest. This thesis seeks to examine the normative ideals of ageing well as promoted by the Singaporean state, through the everyday (spatial) practices of regular senior volunteers in Singapore. It draws on (a) an interconnected conceptual triad of governmentality, active ageing and ageing-in-place and (b) discourse analysis, in-depth interviews and participant observation to address two objectives. First, to examine the state promotion of senior volunteerism in Singapore, and the ideological basis behind it. I posit that the Singaporean state has actively promoted senior volunteerism in recent years, aimed at encouraging seniors to age actively in place. Second, to explicate if and how senior volunteers have negotiated normative ideals of ageing well in and through their everyday (spatial) practices. I argue that while senior volunteers regard active ageing as key to a ‘good’ old age, they recognise that not all seniors can fit neatly into this. Senior volunteers have since reproduced and reworked normative ideals of ageing well when interacting with and caring for these seniors, to account for seniors’ variegated socio-biological circumstances. Through this thesis, I contend that normative ideals of ageing well are not only constraining, but have also been strained by senior(s) (volunteers) in Singapore. It offers an opportunity to advance theorisations of ageing (well) that do not reinforce modernist binary oppositions of healthy/unhealthy, productive/unproductive and independent/dependent.