Continuity and change in older age: Identity and ageing-as-discovery

Traditionally, sociology has framed older age as a time of disengagement, withdrawal, and reduced social integration. While now largely dismissed in contemporary sociological understandings of ageing, it is notable that narratives of decline still feature heavily across numerous social, media, and medical discourses. This negativity, however, could be at odds with how older adults experience their ageing and age identity. Using a social constructionist approach, in this presentation I will explore how older adults narrate their self-identity. To achieve this, I will draw on participant-generated photography and interview data, the latter which was subjected to dialogic/ performative narrative analysis, to reveal how the participants frame older age as a time of continuity, discovery, possibility, and change. This reveals that their age identities emerge through the links that the participants create between the past, present, and the future. Thus, while ageing is not without its potential difficulties, the research participants challenge the social myths that reductively and negatively frame older age by constructing an identity that builds on their past through an active exploration and negotiation of new possibilities and experiences.