Call for submissions to a special issue

The Golden Oldies: The Radical Potential of Pleasure for Creating a Counter-Narrative on Leisure and Physical Activity in Later Life

Across popular and scholarly discourse, there is at best a disregard and as often a disavowal of pleasure in late and later life. It seems that neoliberal pressures on the old to age well see numerous actors presenting later-life leisure and physical activity as instrumental, used solely in the service of thwarting age-related decline. They frequently emphasise the physical and mental health benefits of “busy bodies” (Katz, 2005) and reproduce normative tropes of older adults as lacking in ability, health, and activity, while also reproducing hierarchies of “good” and “bad” leisure (e.g. active and successful vs. passive and problematic). These attitudes reflect a commitment to neo-liberal healthy ageing scripts that disregard structured inequalities across the life course and the importance of pleasure for human flourishing.

While scholarship on pleasure, leisure, and physical activity in later life exists, it is limited and marginal, with pleasure being at best an accidental and incidental finding, and at worst a distraction or disruption to instrumental efforts to use leisure and physical activity for self-care and governing of ageing populations. Building on critical ageing scholarship that underscores how pleasure can be an important tool for rethinking and resisting neoliberal ageing strategies (Allain, 2020; Kontos et al, 2021;Liddle, Parkinson, Sibritt, 2013; Phoenix & Orr, 2014; Swinnen & de Mederois, 2018; Throsby, 2013), this special issue will consider what knowledge would be gained, and how can scholarship on leisure and physical activity in later life be broadened when scholars center and attend to the intrinsic value of pleasure, or pleasure for pleasure’s sake?

Despite our interest in pleasure, this special edition distinguishes itself from therapeutic work that looks to find ways to make populations happier, especially those working in the service of neoliberal agenda. Instead, we are interested in all forms of pleasure in later life, including sensual (pertaining to one’s senses), documented (arising from keeping track of one's activities), habitual (generated through the act of regular participation), and immersive (produced through focus that provides escape from one's everyday lives) (Phoenix & Orr, 2014). And we define leisure broadly to be inclusive of both ‘traditional’ and non-traditional activities and practices of older adults, including their engagement in solitary and social activities, crafting, sports, culture and arts, gambling, volunteering, traveling, sex, and digital technologies.

We encourage contributions from researchers from across all disciplines in the humanities and social sciences to propose papers that focus on pleasure or one or more of the following related concepts, including, but not limited to:

• play/playfulness/fun
• creativity and curiosity
• happiness, satisfaction
• everyday and mundane joy

We encourage papers that foreground intersectional and interdisciplinary perspectives on leisure and/or physical activity that address:

• Narratives and representations of pleasure and old age/ageing
• Ageing, pleasure and their cultural contexts and discourses
• Theoretical entanglements between the field of ageing and feminist, queer, critical race, crip and disability, digital studies and other fields that have explored the radical potential of pleasure as resistance (e.g. expressions and acts of Black and Queer Joy, desire-based design)
• Social structures, practices, and lived realities of pleasure in later life
• Social, political, economic, and ethical perspectives on ageing and pleasure

 

Timetable:

• Call posted on journal website: September 2024
• Open for manuscript submissions: Nov 1^st, 2024
• Close for manuscript submissions: April 30^th, 2025

 

For questions regarding this call, including to pitch an idea (or share abstract of a potential paper) and/or their fit with this special issue, please contact Dr. Kristi Allain (kallain@stu.ca)

 

Biographical Sketches of Guest Editors:

Kristi Allain, PhD

Sociology, St. Thomas University

Kristi Allain is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Canada Research Chair in Physical Culture and Social Life.  Her work examines physical culture and its complex relationships with national identities. In her early work she examined how young men’s hockey produced, contested, and supported dominant Canadian national identity. Recently, she has assessed the intersections of Canadian identity, aging masculinities, and the sport of curling, focusing on gender, aging, and national identity from the perspectives of both the advantaged and the marginalized. By including these diverse actors, she illustrated the ways that national identity construction has material consequences for marginalized groups, working to erase them from popular celebrations. Her upcoming work will examine the fields of institutional policy, media representation, and the experiences of old(er) adults and their families, to discover how their engagement or disengagement with sport and physical activity contests or reinforces dominant national identities.

Alisa Grigorovich, PhD

Recreation and Leisure Studies, Brock University

Alisa Grigorovich is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies. Her research program focuses on the interrelationship of leisure, aging and wellbeing, with particular attention to uncovering how inequality and social exclusion is perpetuated and maintained. A core aspect of her scholarship involves translation of research findings into arts-based and digital knowledge innovations to advance social inclusion of older adults and carers from historically excluded and marginalized groups. She is currently engaged in interdisciplinary and community-oriented research in two areas:1) Technology to enhance wellbeing and quality of care; and 2) Leisure for human flourishing in dementia care.

 

References cited in description of call:

Allain K. A. (2020). Winter of our contentment: Examining risk, pleasure, and emplacement in later-life physical activity. Journal of aging studies, 55, 100895. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2020.100895

Kontos, P., Grigorovich, A., Kosurko, A., Bar, R. J., Herron, R. V., Menec, V. H., & Skinner, M. W. (2021). Dancing with dementia: Exploring the embodied dimensions of creativity and social engagement. The Gerontologist, 61(5), 714-723. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnaa129

Katz, S. (2005). Cultural aging: Life course, lifestyle and senior worlds Broadview Press, Peterborough.

Liddle, J. L., Parkinson, L., & Sibbritt, D. W. (2013). Purpose and pleasure in late life: Conceptualising older women's participation in art and craft activities. Journal of aging studies, 27(4), 330–338. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2013.08.002

Phoenix, C., & Orr, N. (2014). Pleasure: a forgotten dimension of physical activity in older age. Social science & medicine, 115, 94–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.06.013

Swinnen, A., & de Medeiros, K. (2018). “Play” and people living with dementia: A humanities-based inquiry of TimeSlips and the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project. The Gerontologist, 58(2), 261-269. https://academic.oup.com/gerontologist/article/58/2/261/2918456

Throsby, K. (2013). ‘If I go in like a cranky sea lion, I come out like a smiling dolphin’: Marathon swimming and the unexpected pleasures of being a body in water. Feminist Review, 103(1), 5-22. https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2012.23