Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-x4r87 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T09:53:36.328Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘You Can’t Turn Back the Clock’: Conceptualizing Time after Institutionalization*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 February 2012

Elaine C. Wiersma
Elaine C. Wiersma*
Affiliation:
Lakehead University
*
†Correspondence and requests for offprints should be sent to / La correspondance et les demandes de tirés-à-part doivent être adressées à: Elaine C. Wiersma, Ph.D. Department of Health Sciences Lakehead University 955 Oliver Road Thunder Bay, Ontario Canada P7B 5E1 (ewiersma@lakeheadu.ca)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Time is a phenomenon that is often taken for granted. In gerontology, time is often equated with chronological or linear time, which thereby causes time to be defined as chronological age. With this paper, my purpose is to illuminate further understandings of time and how the passage of time is experienced in old age, particularly in the context of a move to a long-term care institution. Towards that end, I describe a case study of a gentleman coming to live in a long-term care facility. In this case study, time was perceived as an element outside day-to-day experience that structured daily life. Specific dimensions of temporality are evident, including biographical time, embodied time, and embedded time (including institutional time). These dimensions of time provide further understanding of the experiences of age and institutionalization.

Résumé

Le temps est un phénomène que l’on considère comme acquis. En gérontologie, le temps est souvent assimilé au temps chronologique ou linéaire, ainsi causant que le temps devient défini comme âge chronologique. Le but de cet article est d’éclairer la compréhension supplémentaire du temps et comment le passage du temps est relié à la vieillesse, en particulier dans le contexte d’un déplacement personnel vers un établissement de soins de longue durée. Á cette fin, nous décrivons une étude de cas que nous avons mené avec un gentilhomme qui est venu vivre dans un établissement de soins de longue durée. Les dimensions spécifiques de la temporalité sont évidentes, y compris le temps biographique, le temps incarné, et le temps intégré (y compris les notions du temps institutionnel).

Keywords

vieillissementtempsperceptions du tempsl’institutionnalisationsoins de longue duréeagingtimeperceptions of timeinstitutionalizationlong-term care
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal on Aging / La Revue canadienne du vieillissement , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 73 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Association on Gerontology 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This article is dedicated to Brian. His insight and wisdom were an inspiration to me. Sincerest gratitude is extended to my doctoral advisor, Dr. Sherry Dupuis. I would like to also thank Diana Parry and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Support was received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada – Canada Graduate Scholarship.

References

Adam, B. (1990). Time and social theory. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Adam, B. (1995). Timewatch: The social analysis of time. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Baars, J. (2007). A triple temporality of aging: Chronological measurement, personal experience, and narrative articulation. In Baars, J., & Visser, H. (Eds.), Aging and time; Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 15–42). Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Bytheway, B. (2005). Ageism and age categorization. Journal of Social Issues, 61(2), 361–374.Google Scholar
Calkins, K. (1970). Time: Perspectives, marking and styles of usage. Social Problems, 17(4), 487–501.Google Scholar
Charmaz, K. (1991). Good days, bad days: The self in chronic illness and time. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Chaudhury, H. (1999). Self and reminiscence of place: A conceptual study. Journal of Aging and Identity, 4(4), 231–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaudhury, H. (2002). Journey back home: Recollecting past places by people with dementia. Journal of Housing for the Elderly, 16(1/2), 85–106.Google Scholar
Chaudhury, H. (2003). Quality of life and place-therapy. Journal of Housing for the Elderly, 17(1/2), 85–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diamond, T. (1992). Making gray gold: Narratives of nursing home care. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dupuis, S.L., Smale, B.J.A., & Wiersma, E. (2005). Creating open environments in long-term care settings: An examination of influencing factors. Therapeutic Recreation Journal, 39(4), 277–298.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums. New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday.Google Scholar
Gubrium, J.F. (1975). Living and dying at Murray Manor. New York: St. Martin’s Press.Google Scholar
Gubrium, J.F. (1993). Speaking of life: Horizons of meaning for nursing home residents. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Halldorsdottir, S., & Hamrin, E. (1997). Caring and uncaring encounters within nursing and health care from the cancer patient’s perspective. Cancer Nursing, 20(2), 120–128.Google Scholar
Hazan, H. (2002). The home over the hill: Towards a modern cosmology of institutionalization. Journal of Aging Studies, 16, 323–344.Google Scholar
Henderson, J.N. (1995). The culture of care in a nursing home: Effects of a medicalized model of long-term care. In Henderson, J.N., & Vesperi, M.D. (Eds.), The culture of long-term care: Nursing home ethnography (pp. 37–54). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.Google Scholar
Hockey, J., & James, A. (2003). Social identities across the life course. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ice, G.H. (2002). Daily life in a nursing home: Has it changed in 25 years? Journal of Aging Studies, 16, 345–359.Google Scholar
Jonas, K.J., & Huguet, P. (2008). What day is today? A social-psychological investigation into the process of time orientation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(3), 353–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klingemann, H. (2000). “To every thing there is a season”—social time and clock time in addiction treatment. Social Science & Medicine, 51, 1231–1240.Google Scholar
Kontos, P.C. (2004). Ethnographic reflections on selfhood, embodiment and Alzheimer’s disease. Ageing and Society, 24, 829–849.Google Scholar
Lennings, C.J. (2000). Optimism, satisfaction, and time perspective in the elderly. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 51(3), 167–181.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lopez, S.H. (2006). Culture change management in long-term care: A shop-floor view. Politics & Society, 34(1), 55–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Mills, M. (2000). Providing space for time: The impact of temporality in life course research. Time & Society, 9(1), 91–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Northrup, D.T. (2002). Time passing: A Parse research method study. Nursing Science Quarterly, 15(4), 318–326.Google Scholar
Paterniti, D.A. (2000). The micropolitics of identity making in adverse circumstance: A study of identity making in a total institution. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 29(1), 93–119.Google Scholar
Patton, M.Q. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd. Ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Shapiro, S.B. (1999). Pedagogy and the politics of the body: A critical praxis. New York: Garland Publishing.Google Scholar
Torre, R.R. (2007). Time’s social metaphors: An empirical research. Time & Society, 16(2/3), 157–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, B.S. (1995). Aging and identity: Some reflections on the somatization of the self. In Featherstone, M., & Wernick, A. (Eds.), Images of aging: Cultural representations of later life (pp. 245–260). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Twigg, J. (2000). Bathing—The body and community care. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Van Manen, M. (1997). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy (2nd ed.). London, Ontario, Canada: Althouse Press.Google Scholar
Waterworth, S. (2003). Temporal reference frameworks and nurses’ work organization. Time & Society, 12(1), 41–54.Google Scholar
Wiersma, E.C. (2007). Making institutional bodies: Socialization into the nursing home environment. PhD dissertation, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.Google Scholar
Wiersma, E.C. (2008a). Dismantling of the self: Loss and grief in admission to long-term care. Senior Care Canada, 10(3), 12–15.Google Scholar
Wiersma, E.C. (2008b). The experiences of place: Veterans with dementia making meaning of their environments. Health and Place, 14(4), 779–794.Google Scholar
Wiersma, E.C. (2010). Life around…Staff’s perceptions of residents’ adjustment into long-term care. Canadian Journal on Aging, 29(3), 425–434.Google Scholar
Wiersma, E.C., & Dupuis, S.L. (2010). Becoming institutional bodies: Socialization into a long-term care home. Journal of Aging Studies, 24(4), 278–291.Google Scholar