engleski

Aging in Unsettled Times: Managing the Present and Perceiving the Futures in Contemporary Croatia

A steadily growing percentage of people now live longer, warning us of the numerous medical, health-related, economic, and political implications of that growth. In what ways do these dynamics reflect on the quality of family life, or rather, (how) do they form or transform contemporary familial and intergenerational practices and interaction with, for example, ninety-year-olds as members of familial communities? Do intensified feelings of insecurity and expectations of insecure (urban, rural) futures in current pandemic, make difference in intergenerational social life of aging? Through socio-cultural research perspective on family life and aging, i.e. a consideration of aging as a socio-cultural challenge in the contemporary Croatian and European socio-economic and political context, we present findings and ethnographic data from ethnological and cultural-anthropological research on family and kinship, and aging and urban and rural space, from both pre-pandemic and pandemic times. The paper aims to initiate a discussion about contemporary socio-cultural aspects of growing old in the city and in rural areas, and potential applied possibilities of affirmation of old people as political, social, economic, and cultural (present and future) actors both in the context of crisis and in “times of peace.” The paper presents recent and contemporary narratives and practices of family life and aging. Its theoretical basis lies in the fields of the anthropology of aging, the anthropology of the city, and the anthropology of the family, as well as the concepts of care, public space, active aging, family solidarity, intergenerational interaction, and conceptions of futures.

aging ; unsettled times ; etnography ; family ; urban context ; rural context ; Croatia

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