Surprising experiences and new directions

Witnessing the upheavals and rebellions in the early months of 2011 in the Arabian countries of the southern shore of the Mediterranean, I came across a short television report from the ongoing Egyptian revolution, today usually associated with the Tahrir Square movements. This specific report had filmed several hundreds of participants in a stormy and obviously highly enraged meeting probably taking place in a university hall or inside another larger building in Cairo. To my utmost surprise, a large group of participants requested publicly that all people over the age of 30 should immediately leave the room. They were expected to completely withdraw from the important strategic debates during this gathering. While a majority seemed at first to be ready to follow this demand, only the forceful intervention of a middle-aged woman with a head scarf pointing to the necessity of uniting in a common cause for democracy could mellow the crowd, and turn around the mood of the excited audience.

This news clip did not go into reflecting on whether the phrasing of this request in the language of the revolutionary student movement of the last century was a deliberate form of quoting and reviving a specific heritage, or whether it had been more an everyday language twist with no direct reference or even knowledge about this particular history. However, this incident made clear that within this new revolutionary movement, deep feelings of distrust levied at older people could easily be mobilised. And this mainly because ‘old age’ seemed to stand here for the continuous experience of power abuse, of corruption and of receiving unjustified privileges and of experiencing a patronage of adult and older social elites from the upper class and from the military. In other words, showing off some degree of secure economical standing and at the same time belonging to a certain age cohort brought you into immediate suspicion of participating in the forgone dictatorship, as a direct supporter or at least as being a protege of the ruler now overthrown.

In this book, the main source of information and of rendering assessments is predominantly statistical data and quantitative indicators on the ageing process in the Mediterranean.

The present agenda of population ageing

A broad public discourse about the societal impact of population ageing has now emerged in a growing number of discussion groups, symposia, conferences and publications. In its components of continuous fertility decline, lowering mortality and increasing life expectancies at birth, thereby giving contours of new societies of longevity, its effects and consequences are now being debated beyond merely the experts in the field of public health, demography and life course research. After being treated for too long as a topic of only secondary importance, the negotiations about this epochal development have now become a frequent, if not already dominant, concern for most governments, media and scientific councils, not only on a national, but even more so on a global, level.

However, depending on the respective stage of demographic transition of each country, the response and perspectives to develop potential strategies to deal productively with these consequences of an ageing society will vary accordingly. Moreover, considering and debating demographic changes not only concerns the present and immediate future, but also requires an engagement in patterns and periods of long-term development of the respective demographic regime of each country. Therefore, a necessary and inevitable challenge for social strategies in all of these countries is to calculate the different time horizons, different compositions and needs of their sociodemographic settings. However, if this is done sensitively to each situation of sociodemographic changes, it should also provide opportunities for social forecasts, for action perspectives and for social planning.

For a long time, the sustained fertility decline (in the words of demographical expertise), together with an extended period of decreasing ‘dependency ratios’, was described as a ‘window of opportunity’. As a limited time period, it has been characterised (in the terminology of the UN Population Division) as the ‘demographic dividend’, about which much has been published. But, by using such economically inspired terminology, this seems to automatically imply an inevitable benefit for society. In fact, there are two dimensions in this ‘dividend’ situation: a strong increase in the size of the working-age population, and a relatively slow increase in the ‘dependent’ groups – children and older people. In other words, due to the decline in fertility, the number of children will increase more slowly than the number of people of working age.

Entering a contested terrain

The central subject of this book is to follow the ageing process by addressing a variety of its implicit social dimensions, and to do this by concentrating on a particular geographical region, the Mediterranean basin. At first, to study the demographic and social developments in such a large geographical unit seems to cause no specific difficulties in mobilising detailed and continuous projections as well as analysing its far-reaching sociopolitical dimensions. The immediate importance of this subject of ageing is even more apparent today. Considerations can start from some essential and undisputed observations about the general situation of ageing societies and particular constraints and specialities affecting the Mediterranean region.

Such observations can be summed up as follows: population ageing and the onset of a decline in the working-age population has today undoubtedly become an increasing concern for most governments. Across the Mediterranean, this phenomenon has exposed a great variation in its level and pace, mainly determined by a country's stage in the second demographic transition and by the scope and timing of the country's fertility decline. Such a development has important and far-reaching implications across all spheres of society. And since these processes are without any historical precedent, in order to meet these challenges, new policies and programmes are urgently required.

At first this task appears easy in having only to deal with an obviously welldefined geographical area to which our comparative social research is directed. However, we should not expect a straightforward way to approach the topic of ageing in the Mediterranean – it is characterised by a variety of cultural conceptions, persistent images and long-term powerful visions that are inseparably bound to a comprehensive and differentiated understanding of this area. To prove how and in which ways such a heritage will affect and influence the present situation of the differently ageing Mediterranean societies is, therefore, a useful and enlightening perspective for comparison.

• • The first step into this broad field of research can be made by simply asking the obvious question, what is meant by ‘the Mediterranean’, and how is the area more exactly defined?

• • I then elaborate on the various ways of conceptualising the Mediterranean, in terms of perceiving its environmental and ecological conditions as unifying dimensions.

Editorial work for this collection was based on a few, but essential, premises. To deal with the ageing phenomenon it is important to be aware of present and future demographic changes and shifts. It is also necessary to make visible and comprehensible the social consequences of these processes for individuals and social settings. Moreover, it is imperative to discuss critically the manifestations and developments of ageing in their effects for whole societies as well as for the programmes and policy options of welfare states responding to this new challenge. In this book the whole Mediterranean region was chosen as the central unit of research. It has therefore also been indispensable to become aware of long-lasting traditions and cultural traits whose possible impact on the ageing phenomenon must be discussed and evaluated.

With such a programme, formulating central conclusions is complicated, for several reasons. First, often non-harmonised theoretical and disciplinary approaches about the ageing dynamic of the Mediterranean make it difficult, as well as the social heterogeneity in this whole Mediterranean region being its dominant characteristic. Balancing out the weight of differences and complexity against the strengths of similarities requires careful assessment of the evidence about the social effects of ageing in all of the Mediterranean countries.

Altogether, five main fields for discussion emerged as essential to stimulate further reflections and dispute: first, a discussion about methodological implications regarding the development of appropriate concepts, of establishing instruments and indicators for a comparative framework; second, becoming aware of the given ambivalences regarding the concept of culture for an analysis of this region; third, discussing again the crucial position of the family in this region and pointing in particular at the ongoing changes and reforms for the care of older people there; fourth, recalling some sociological approaches to life course analysis and discussing and using their explanatory power for the comparison work; and finally, evaluating the ongoing policy strategies and patterns of governance in respect to ageing in this region, and taking into consideration support from the European institutions.

Options for the methodology

First, we look at some methodological and theoretical ideas and consequences aimed at suggesting new research perspectives. It was mentioned in the introduction to this volume that there are today several data-enriched alternatives to analyse countries from the Mediterranean region in a comparative way, for example, the model of MENA (Middle East North Africa) countries (or other similar options).

Establishing a humanistic gerontology – challenges and opportunities

The meaning of ‘humanistic gerontology’

Humanistic concerns build on a rich tradition that has developed through much of recorded history. This tradition was famously summarised in Cicero's quotation from Terence, intended to underline the fundamental connectedness of all human beings: ‘I am a man, and nothing human is alien to me’ (Cicero, 1991: I.30). In different guises, this tradition remained influential until well into the 20th century. The term ‘humanist gerontology’ was introduced to recent research by American scholars such as Moody and Manheimer. It stresses the fact that human activities (including gerontology itself) cannot be understood without taking seriously the different ideals, values, norms and goals that give actions their intelligibility and meaning. This brings to centre stage the practical knowledge that older people cannot be treated as alien by those who write about them. ‘Valuing older people’ demands comprehending them as people, not treating them as strangers whose predicaments are foreign to those of others. It requires gerontologists to work towards studies of ageing that incorporate this stance in a fundamental way.

A primary aim in this collection is therefore to explore a diversity of aspects of ageing while guided by the need to understand the people at the centre of enquiry, with their values and purposes. Contributions include longitudinal studies of the way in which people struggle to develop the meanings of their life courses and the resources they draw on; qualitative studies of ways in which individuals can be helped by cultural frameworks in different national settings to interpret their own ageing in constructive ways; and studies of social and institutional pressures and deficits which make this harder. Quantitative survey material is used to enhance conjectures about meanings that older people in varying circumstances attach to their relationships with their children, or about the willingness of others to allow for constructive public provision for older age. A study of older people in nursing homes is predicated on the question, could a person really pursue the aims and purposes of a normal human being in these circumstances? All this work focuses on human ideas and practices – and the limits they encounter.