Paper short abstract:

The poster presents empirical ethnographic accounts, main research questions and theoretical framework of the ethnological and cultural anthropological research aiming at comprehensive understanding of practices, representations and discourses pertaining to "active aging" in an urban environment.

Paper long abstract:

This poster presentation focuses on practices, representations and discourses pertaining to "active aging" in the Croatian capital, Zagreb. Our interest in the topic emerges from our initial ethnographic insights on aging, and from a wide range of theoretical and empirical findings (on "active aging", retirement, demographic change and family life) in various disciplines such as social work, sociology, law, urban anthropology, social gerontology, etc. Ethnology and cultural anthropology, the disciplines from which the authors both emerge, engage with the elderly as well. However, the elderly are often (implicitly) constructed and perceived as "perfect" informants for/in an ethnographic data gathering, whose legitimacy profoundly relies on the fact of their age. They themselves are far less often the very focus of research. In this presentation we first critically address this issue. Secondly, we contrast the multiple and complex discourses of "active aging" (as one of the core elements of health care policies for the elderly, and of the contemporary sociocultural constructs and standards of "quality of life") with the (elderly) individual experiences of aging.