Ilkka Pietilä - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Ilkka Pietilä

Culturally, institutional care has been seen to strip older people of their status as full adult ... more Culturally, institutional care has been seen to strip older people of their status as full adult members of society and turn them into “have-nots” in terms of agency. The substantial emphasis in gerontology of measuring the activity and functional ability of the elderly has unintentionally fostered these stereotypes, as have traditional definitions of agency that emphasize individuals’ choices and capacities. The aim of this article is to discover what kind of opportunities to feel agentic exist for people who have reduced functional abilities and therefore reside in assisted living. In this article, agency is approached empirically from the viewpoint of Finnish sheltered housing residents. The data were gathered using participant observation and thematic interviews. This study suggests that even people with substantial declines in their functional abilities may feel more or less agentic depending on their functional and material surroundings and the support they receive from the staff, relatives, and other residents. The perception that residents’ agency in assisted living cannot be reduced to measurable activity has methodological implications for gerontological research on agency. Care providers can utilize our findings in reasserting their residents’ quality of life.

The concept of resident–facility fit has largely been used to illustrate whether a residential ca... more The concept of resident–facility fit has largely been used to illustrate whether a residential care facility and a resident are together able to meet requirements set by only the hampering functional abilities of the latter. The purpose of this paper is to study how assisted living residents perceive resident–facility fit. The data were gathered ethnographically from both observations and resident interviews in a sheltered home in Finland during 2013–2014. Perceived resident– facility fit is based on several relational factors that connect to both the residents as individuals and their surroundings. This fit seems also to be partly conditional and indeed depends on residents' trust in having their own potential to act. Good resident–facility fit results in feeling at home in a facility, whereas poor fit can even result in residents' feeling imprisoned. Care providers can thus utilize our results to affirm residents' quality of life in residential facilities.

Nick Copeland is a political anthropologist who has conducted over two years of fieldwork in Maya... more Nick Copeland is a political anthropologist who has conducted over two years of fieldwork in Mayan communities in Guatemala, where his research examines questions of state violence, development, democracy, and social movements. His book project "Bitter Earth: Indigenous Experiences of Counterinsurgency and Democracy in Guatemala" describes how a fusion of counterinsurgency warfare and democratic forms of governance shapes indigenous experiences of democracy, undermining community solidarity and preventing widely held frustration with the socio-political order from expressing itself through formal democratic procedures. This research as well as a prior study of Mayan women's political activism was conducted in collaboration with grassroots political organizations. Nick recently completed a historical article that describes how cooperative development and green revolution technologies rationalized US support for Guatemala's military government through the 1970s, setting the stage for the extreme violence of the late 1970s and 1980's. While at the University of Arkansas, he co-authored a book "The World of Wal-Mart: Discounting the American Dream" that examines popular ambivalence the company's low price, low wage business model, and how the mega-corporation responds to critique by presenting itself as a free-market solution to social problems. In addition to courses on social theory, cultural anthropology, and sociology, Nick teaches about Latin American history and social movements and emerging transnational regimes of peace and conflict management and humanitarian governance. Outside the classroom, Nick regularly engages in human rights activism and served as a member of the board for the Northwest Arkansas Workers' Justice Center.

Journal of Aging Studies, 2013

This article explores the ways in which a group of male factory workers uses bodies as bases for ... more This article explores the ways in which a group of male factory workers uses bodies as bases for hierarchical categorization of men by age in their talk of mundane aspects of their lives. Analysis of interviews about health (4 focus groups and 5 personal interviews) with Finnish working-class men under 40 years old shows that they portray age groups to which they do not belong as careless, even irresponsible toward health and its maintenance. As they categorize youth and old people by age, they leave themselves unmarked by it, providing no vocabulary to describe their own group. Despite their tendency to distance themselves particularly from old people, they also distinguish among older men by familiarity, providing relatively nuanced accounts of their fathers' aging. We discuss the marking of age groups in terms of social inequality and talk of fathers in terms of intergenerational relations. Even family ties among men of diverse ages involve ageism, which familiarity serves both to mitigate and to make less visible. This article documents the maintenance of age inequality in everyday, mundane behavior.

Ageing and Society, 2014

ABSTRACT

Becoming a resident in a long-term care facility challenges older people’s continuity of self in ... more Becoming a resident in a long-term care facility challenges older people’s continuity of self in two major ways. Firstly, as they leave behind their previous home, neighborhood, and often their social surroundings, older people have to change their life-long lifestyles, causing fears of the loss of one’s self. Secondly, modern-day care facilities have some features of ‘total’ institutions that produce patient-like role expectations and thus challenge older people’s selves. Our ethnographic study in a geriatric hospital and a sheltered home in Finland aims to find out what features of daily life either support or challenge older people’s continuity of self. A philosophical reading of the concept of recognition is used to explore how various daily practices and interactions support recognizing people as persons in long-term care. Categories of institution-centered and person-centered features are described to illustrate multiple ways in which people are recognized and misrecognized. The discussion highlights some ways in which long-term care providers could use the results of the study.

Ageing and Society, 2015

Autonomy is a pervasive concept in Western lifestyles today. However, people in the fourth age ar... more Autonomy is a pervasive concept in Western lifestyles today. However, people in the fourth age are assumed not to be autonomous but dependent on other people. The data of this study consisted of interviews with Finnish community-dwelling --year-old people. The study aim was to examine how these people see their own autonomy in their everyday lives. The analysis was based on membership categorisation analysis. Our respondents considered their autonomy through three distinct themes. Functional ability was considered in terms of being physically capable of managing daily tasks. Independence in decision making was based on material and financial self-sufficiency and on the respondents' supposition that they were capable of making decisions due to an absence of memory disorders. Additionally, autonomy was considered as contesting norms of age-appropriateness. Among respondents, chronological age seemed to have been replaced by functional and cognitive ability as a definer of categorisations; age-others became ability-others. Our study revealed that the perceptions of autonomy also included gendered features as they were linked with differing gendered ideals, roles and life domains of women and men. The results highlight the internal diversity among the oldest old and challenge the third/fourth age division. Instead, they suggest the existence of a certain 'grey area' within old age, and urge an analysis on the subtle meaning making involved in older people's constructions of age-categorisations.

Social science & medicine (1982), 2008

Several studies have claimed stress to be a major reason for poor public health in Russia and ref... more Several studies have claimed stress to be a major reason for poor public health in Russia and referred to significant social changes as a reason for the high level of perceived stress among Russians. This article aims to examine how stress and its relation to health are interpreted in the context of everyday life in Russian men's and women's interview talk with a focus on descriptions of recent social changes. The research material consists of 29 thematic interviews of men and women from St. Petersburg aged 15-81. In the analysis of contextual constructions of stress, we found that stress was used not only within a context of an individual's own life as an expression of a strained psycho-physiological state but also denoted larger societal processes and changes. In addition to individual experiences, the whole of Russian society was described as suffering from stress. Throughout the material, most interviewees, whilst outspokenly blaming stress for deteriorating physical...

Ageing and Society, 2014

ABSTRACT

Sociology of Health & Illness, 2008

The substantial gender difference in life-expectancy is among the key characteristics of current ... more The substantial gender difference in life-expectancy is among the key characteristics of current health crisis in Russia. Despite a relatively large body of epidemiological literature on gender difference, there is little empirical research on the gendered meanings of health among Russian lay people. This study aims to enhance understanding of gendered meanings of health by analysing lay accounts of the gender gap in life-expectancy on the basis of 29 interviews with Russians aged 15-81. The analysis showed that gender difference was largely attributed to structural conditions and changes in Russian society and, to a lesser extent, to behavioural factors. Another important conclusion drawn from the analysis was that talk about gender included very few alternatives to conventional gender relations, or negotiation of their effects on health and illness. We interpret these findings to reflect, first, the culturally weak role of the individual in Russian discourses of health that are still largely focused on the role of government as primarily responsible for public health. Secondly, it seems that there are few alternatives to conventional discourses of gender in post-Soviet Russia; the gender relations in people's understanding appear to be static and persistent despite recent profound social changes.

Journal of Aging Studies, 2013

This article explores the ways in which a group of male factory workers uses bodies as bases for ... more This article explores the ways in which a group of male factory workers uses bodies as bases for hierarchical categorization of men by age in their talk of mundane aspects of their lives. Analysis of interviews about health (4 focus groups and 5 personal interviews) with Finnish working-class men under 40 years old shows that they portray age groups to which they do not belong as careless, even irresponsible toward health and its maintenance. As they categorize youth and old people by age, they leave themselves unmarked by it, providing no vocabulary to describe their own group. Despite their tendency to distance themselves particularly from old people, they also distinguish among older men by familiarity, providing relatively nuanced accounts of their fathers' aging. We discuss the marking of age groups in terms of social inequality and talk of fathers in terms of intergenerational relations. Even family ties among men of diverse ages involve ageism, which familiarity serves both to mitigate and to make less visible. This article documents the maintenance of age inequality in everyday, mundane behavior.

Journal of Aging Studies, 2011

This article focuses on the intersections of age, gender and class in interpretations of the agin... more This article focuses on the intersections of age, gender and class in interpretations of the aging and situational identity work of middle-aged working-class men. Empirically the article is based on interview data (4 focus groups and 9 personal interviews with 40+ men) in which Finnish paper-mill workers are interviewed about health. Based on the theoretical implications of intersectionality, the article provides an empirical analysis of how age-based cultural hierarchies and distinctions are used flexibly in the process of self-identification and how categorizations of age and conceptualizations of aging are tightly interwoven with gender and class. The analyses show that the middle-aged interviewees base their interpretations of the aging self on negotiating their position between the age categories of the 'young' and 'old'. Both these groups are labeled with rather negative characteristics regarding the irresponsibility for health among the young and impaired functional ability of the old, which conflicts with the working-class expectations regarding masculine identity. The findings suggest that studying how people 'do age' requires consideration of the respects in which aging is an age-specific and gendered process shaped by class-based values, ideals and practices.

To conduct an intersectional analysis of relations between gender and age in the health behaviors... more To conduct an intersectional analysis of relations between gender and age in the health behaviors of middle-aged men, informed by cross-national comparison between Finland and the United States. Methods: Thematic and discourse analysis of data from interviews conducted among professional and working-class, middle-aged men in the U.S. and Finland. Results: Respondents report that middle age inspires them to regard many bodily changes as more than transitory; and they assume a sense of responsibility that can lead to greater self-care. Men reported using such strategies as discipline, routine, and monitoring in their attempts to forestall aging. Conclusions: The men face contradictions: While they may adopt ideologies of masculinity and control and accept responsibility for influencing their health, their bodies may also present them with age-based limitations to their abilities to do so. How men respond to these changes varies by context, including their aging and these nations' different systems of health care.

Culturally, institutional care has been seen to strip older people of their status as full adult ... more Culturally, institutional care has been seen to strip older people of their status as full adult members of society and turn them into “have-nots” in terms of agency. The substantial emphasis in gerontology of measuring the activity and functional ability of the elderly has unintentionally fostered these stereotypes, as have traditional definitions of agency that emphasize individuals’ choices and capacities. The aim of this article is to discover what kind of opportunities to feel agentic exist for people who have reduced functional abilities and therefore reside in assisted living. In this article, agency is approached empirically from the viewpoint of Finnish sheltered housing residents. The data were gathered using participant observation and thematic interviews. This study suggests that even people with substantial declines in their functional abilities may feel more or less agentic depending on their functional and material surroundings and the support they receive from the staff, relatives, and other residents. The perception that residents’ agency in assisted living cannot be reduced to measurable activity has methodological implications for gerontological research on agency. Care providers can utilize our findings in reasserting their residents’ quality of life.

The concept of resident–facility fit has largely been used to illustrate whether a residential ca... more The concept of resident–facility fit has largely been used to illustrate whether a residential care facility and a resident are together able to meet requirements set by only the hampering functional abilities of the latter. The purpose of this paper is to study how assisted living residents perceive resident–facility fit. The data were gathered ethnographically from both observations and resident interviews in a sheltered home in Finland during 2013–2014. Perceived resident– facility fit is based on several relational factors that connect to both the residents as individuals and their surroundings. This fit seems also to be partly conditional and indeed depends on residents' trust in having their own potential to act. Good resident–facility fit results in feeling at home in a facility, whereas poor fit can even result in residents' feeling imprisoned. Care providers can thus utilize our results to affirm residents' quality of life in residential facilities.

Nick Copeland is a political anthropologist who has conducted over two years of fieldwork in Maya... more Nick Copeland is a political anthropologist who has conducted over two years of fieldwork in Mayan communities in Guatemala, where his research examines questions of state violence, development, democracy, and social movements. His book project "Bitter Earth: Indigenous Experiences of Counterinsurgency and Democracy in Guatemala" describes how a fusion of counterinsurgency warfare and democratic forms of governance shapes indigenous experiences of democracy, undermining community solidarity and preventing widely held frustration with the socio-political order from expressing itself through formal democratic procedures. This research as well as a prior study of Mayan women's political activism was conducted in collaboration with grassroots political organizations. Nick recently completed a historical article that describes how cooperative development and green revolution technologies rationalized US support for Guatemala's military government through the 1970s, setting the stage for the extreme violence of the late 1970s and 1980's. While at the University of Arkansas, he co-authored a book "The World of Wal-Mart: Discounting the American Dream" that examines popular ambivalence the company's low price, low wage business model, and how the mega-corporation responds to critique by presenting itself as a free-market solution to social problems. In addition to courses on social theory, cultural anthropology, and sociology, Nick teaches about Latin American history and social movements and emerging transnational regimes of peace and conflict management and humanitarian governance. Outside the classroom, Nick regularly engages in human rights activism and served as a member of the board for the Northwest Arkansas Workers' Justice Center.

Journal of Aging Studies, 2013

This article explores the ways in which a group of male factory workers uses bodies as bases for ... more This article explores the ways in which a group of male factory workers uses bodies as bases for hierarchical categorization of men by age in their talk of mundane aspects of their lives. Analysis of interviews about health (4 focus groups and 5 personal interviews) with Finnish working-class men under 40 years old shows that they portray age groups to which they do not belong as careless, even irresponsible toward health and its maintenance. As they categorize youth and old people by age, they leave themselves unmarked by it, providing no vocabulary to describe their own group. Despite their tendency to distance themselves particularly from old people, they also distinguish among older men by familiarity, providing relatively nuanced accounts of their fathers' aging. We discuss the marking of age groups in terms of social inequality and talk of fathers in terms of intergenerational relations. Even family ties among men of diverse ages involve ageism, which familiarity serves both to mitigate and to make less visible. This article documents the maintenance of age inequality in everyday, mundane behavior.

Ageing and Society, 2014

ABSTRACT

Becoming a resident in a long-term care facility challenges older people’s continuity of self in ... more Becoming a resident in a long-term care facility challenges older people’s continuity of self in two major ways. Firstly, as they leave behind their previous home, neighborhood, and often their social surroundings, older people have to change their life-long lifestyles, causing fears of the loss of one’s self. Secondly, modern-day care facilities have some features of ‘total’ institutions that produce patient-like role expectations and thus challenge older people’s selves. Our ethnographic study in a geriatric hospital and a sheltered home in Finland aims to find out what features of daily life either support or challenge older people’s continuity of self. A philosophical reading of the concept of recognition is used to explore how various daily practices and interactions support recognizing people as persons in long-term care. Categories of institution-centered and person-centered features are described to illustrate multiple ways in which people are recognized and misrecognized. The discussion highlights some ways in which long-term care providers could use the results of the study.

Ageing and Society, 2015

Autonomy is a pervasive concept in Western lifestyles today. However, people in the fourth age ar... more Autonomy is a pervasive concept in Western lifestyles today. However, people in the fourth age are assumed not to be autonomous but dependent on other people. The data of this study consisted of interviews with Finnish community-dwelling --year-old people. The study aim was to examine how these people see their own autonomy in their everyday lives. The analysis was based on membership categorisation analysis. Our respondents considered their autonomy through three distinct themes. Functional ability was considered in terms of being physically capable of managing daily tasks. Independence in decision making was based on material and financial self-sufficiency and on the respondents' supposition that they were capable of making decisions due to an absence of memory disorders. Additionally, autonomy was considered as contesting norms of age-appropriateness. Among respondents, chronological age seemed to have been replaced by functional and cognitive ability as a definer of categorisations; age-others became ability-others. Our study revealed that the perceptions of autonomy also included gendered features as they were linked with differing gendered ideals, roles and life domains of women and men. The results highlight the internal diversity among the oldest old and challenge the third/fourth age division. Instead, they suggest the existence of a certain 'grey area' within old age, and urge an analysis on the subtle meaning making involved in older people's constructions of age-categorisations.

Social science & medicine (1982), 2008

Several studies have claimed stress to be a major reason for poor public health in Russia and ref... more Several studies have claimed stress to be a major reason for poor public health in Russia and referred to significant social changes as a reason for the high level of perceived stress among Russians. This article aims to examine how stress and its relation to health are interpreted in the context of everyday life in Russian men's and women's interview talk with a focus on descriptions of recent social changes. The research material consists of 29 thematic interviews of men and women from St. Petersburg aged 15-81. In the analysis of contextual constructions of stress, we found that stress was used not only within a context of an individual's own life as an expression of a strained psycho-physiological state but also denoted larger societal processes and changes. In addition to individual experiences, the whole of Russian society was described as suffering from stress. Throughout the material, most interviewees, whilst outspokenly blaming stress for deteriorating physical...

Ageing and Society, 2014

ABSTRACT

Sociology of Health & Illness, 2008

The substantial gender difference in life-expectancy is among the key characteristics of current ... more The substantial gender difference in life-expectancy is among the key characteristics of current health crisis in Russia. Despite a relatively large body of epidemiological literature on gender difference, there is little empirical research on the gendered meanings of health among Russian lay people. This study aims to enhance understanding of gendered meanings of health by analysing lay accounts of the gender gap in life-expectancy on the basis of 29 interviews with Russians aged 15-81. The analysis showed that gender difference was largely attributed to structural conditions and changes in Russian society and, to a lesser extent, to behavioural factors. Another important conclusion drawn from the analysis was that talk about gender included very few alternatives to conventional gender relations, or negotiation of their effects on health and illness. We interpret these findings to reflect, first, the culturally weak role of the individual in Russian discourses of health that are still largely focused on the role of government as primarily responsible for public health. Secondly, it seems that there are few alternatives to conventional discourses of gender in post-Soviet Russia; the gender relations in people's understanding appear to be static and persistent despite recent profound social changes.

Journal of Aging Studies, 2013

This article explores the ways in which a group of male factory workers uses bodies as bases for ... more This article explores the ways in which a group of male factory workers uses bodies as bases for hierarchical categorization of men by age in their talk of mundane aspects of their lives. Analysis of interviews about health (4 focus groups and 5 personal interviews) with Finnish working-class men under 40 years old shows that they portray age groups to which they do not belong as careless, even irresponsible toward health and its maintenance. As they categorize youth and old people by age, they leave themselves unmarked by it, providing no vocabulary to describe their own group. Despite their tendency to distance themselves particularly from old people, they also distinguish among older men by familiarity, providing relatively nuanced accounts of their fathers' aging. We discuss the marking of age groups in terms of social inequality and talk of fathers in terms of intergenerational relations. Even family ties among men of diverse ages involve ageism, which familiarity serves both to mitigate and to make less visible. This article documents the maintenance of age inequality in everyday, mundane behavior.

Journal of Aging Studies, 2011

This article focuses on the intersections of age, gender and class in interpretations of the agin... more This article focuses on the intersections of age, gender and class in interpretations of the aging and situational identity work of middle-aged working-class men. Empirically the article is based on interview data (4 focus groups and 9 personal interviews with 40+ men) in which Finnish paper-mill workers are interviewed about health. Based on the theoretical implications of intersectionality, the article provides an empirical analysis of how age-based cultural hierarchies and distinctions are used flexibly in the process of self-identification and how categorizations of age and conceptualizations of aging are tightly interwoven with gender and class. The analyses show that the middle-aged interviewees base their interpretations of the aging self on negotiating their position between the age categories of the 'young' and 'old'. Both these groups are labeled with rather negative characteristics regarding the irresponsibility for health among the young and impaired functional ability of the old, which conflicts with the working-class expectations regarding masculine identity. The findings suggest that studying how people 'do age' requires consideration of the respects in which aging is an age-specific and gendered process shaped by class-based values, ideals and practices.

To conduct an intersectional analysis of relations between gender and age in the health behaviors... more To conduct an intersectional analysis of relations between gender and age in the health behaviors of middle-aged men, informed by cross-national comparison between Finland and the United States. Methods: Thematic and discourse analysis of data from interviews conducted among professional and working-class, middle-aged men in the U.S. and Finland. Results: Respondents report that middle age inspires them to regard many bodily changes as more than transitory; and they assume a sense of responsibility that can lead to greater self-care. Men reported using such strategies as discipline, routine, and monitoring in their attempts to forestall aging. Conclusions: The men face contradictions: While they may adopt ideologies of masculinity and control and accept responsibility for influencing their health, their bodies may also present them with age-based limitations to their abilities to do so. How men respond to these changes varies by context, including their aging and these nations' different systems of health care.