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Retiring lives? Old age, work and welfare

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Retiring lives? Old age, work and welfare
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Retirement, pensions, care homes old age may not be as rosy as we think. This free course, Retiring lives? Old age, work and welfare, looks at old age, taking us from the Workhouse to the basic state pension. Why are people expected to stop work at a certain age and what impact does this have on their lives?

Course learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

  • understand how experiences of being an older person are shaped through a historical and mutually constitutive process involving an interplay between the personal, work and welfare; and the points of continuity and difference this interplay illuminates
  • understand how personal experiences of being older are constituted not only through age divisions, but also through loci of social difference and inequality organised around class, (dis)ability, ethnicity, gender, ‘race’ and sexuality
  • understand how different social theories – Marxist, feminist, Marxist-feminist and post-structuralist – have attempted to account for, and give shape to, the personal lives of older people.

First Published: 10/08/2012

Updated: 15/04/2016

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