Velhices: múltiplas faces de um processo socialmente construído

Abstract

Along with the constant economic, political and social transformations experienced by capitalist societies since the middle of the last century, we have also witnessed a really new demographic phenomenon: the growth of the elderly sector of the population. The ageing of the population is the result of a network of economic and social relationships which are different from one country to another, from one region to another, thereby constructing different realities and ways of experiencing this process. In Brazil the process of demographic transition is characterized by the speed at which the absolute and relative increase of the adult and elderly populations modified the national age pyramid. As Haddad (1986) points out, although the increase in the elderly sector of the population might suggest an improvement in the quality of life in this country, the way that Brazil is “ageing” reflects the historical inequalities that have been consolidated here. That is, the ageing process reproduces the inequalities that are established in human sociability, in accordance with social, economic, political, cultural, ethnic, sexual, generational and spatial differentiations. Old age, understood in this light, is not a generalization, in the singular; but rather, as Beauvoir (1990) observes, “old ages”, since there are different and unequal old ages. Thus, more than a natural, biological and organic phenomenon, old age is a multifaceted phenomenon (social, economic, political, cultural, spatial, etc.), which has its origins in the relationships of social production and reproduction. This study considers the above ideas and is based on them, attempting to understand the heterogeneity of the process of ageing from “oral reports of life” by ageing men and women, from different age-brackets (generations) – between 65 and 91 years of age, social insertions – networks of sociability/participation, and personal income brackets from the municipality of Juiz de Fora in the state of Minas Gerais. The aim is to identify the peculiarities of this process, marked by the real objective living conditions of these individuals, and, at the same time, establish links of global belonging between these old people and the material and cultural conditions of the capitalist society in which they are ageing. The guiding principle of this dissertation is the public, and therefore collective, character of the ageing process and old age; it also attempts to get away from the idea of ageing being seen as an individual, homogeneous issue, and instead define it as a public, heterogeneous issue.