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Generativity in Culture Context: The Self, Death and Immortality as Experienced by Older American Women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2008

Baine B. Alexander ,
Robert L. Rubinstein ,
Marcene Goodman  and
Mark Luborsky
Mark Luborsky
Affiliation:
Polisher Research Institute, Philadelphia Geriatric Center, 5301 Old York Road, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19141, USA
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Abstract

Theoretical approaches to conceptualising the notion of generativity have been psychologically or psychosocially based and assume generativity to be a universal phenomenon. Because psychological issues are subsumed within a cultural context, we suggest that generativity is not a universal psychological principle but rather a cultural construct. In this paper we argue that generativity must be analysed as a product of American culture and its embeddedness in individualism. Through an analysis of ethnographically based interviews with 161 older women we illustrate how generative behaviour is inextricably tied to a constellation of American beliefs about the nature of the self, the meaning of death, and attempts to attain immortality that are informed by the ideology of individualism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , December 1991 , pp. 417 - 442
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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