Rural Gerontology

This book provides the first foundation of knowledge about the intellectual traditions, contemporary scope and future prospects for the interdisciplinary field of rural gerontology.
With a focus on rural regions, small towns and villages, which have the highest rates of population ageing worldwide, Rural Gerontology is aimed at understanding what it means for rural people, communities and institutions to be at the forefront of twenty-first-century demographic change. The book offers important insights from rural ageing studies into today's most pressing gerontological problems. With chapters from more than 65 established and emerging rural ageing researchers, it is the first synthesis of knowledge about rural gerontology, harnessing a burgeoning interdisciplinary scholarship on the rural dimensions of ageing, old age and older populations. With a view to advancing a critical understanding of rural ageing populations, this book will have an overreaching impact across the social sciences by drawing on advancements in understandings of rural ageing from social, environmental, geographical and critical gerontology to facilitate a comprehensive exploration of the diversity, complexity and implications of the ageing process in rural settings.
Bringing together valuable international perspectives, this book makes a timely contribution to gerontology, rural studies and the social sciences, and will appeal to scholars and researchers across USA and Canada, UK and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, Europe, China and countries in Africa, South America and South-East Asia.

Mark Skinner is Dean of Social Sciences at Trent University, Canada, where he is also Professor of Geography and holds the Canada Research Chair in Rural Aging, Health and Social Care. Rachel Winterton is Senior Research Fellow at the John Richards Centre for Rural Ageing Research, La Trobe Rural Health School, La Trobe University, Australia. Kieran Walsh is Professor of Ageing & Public Policy in the Discipline of Economics and Director of the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology at the National University of Ireland Galway.

PART I Introduction 1 Introducing rural gerontology PART II Interdisciplinary foundations 2 Demographic ageing and rural population change 3 Rural studies of ageing 4 Rural health and ageing: making way for a critical gerontology of rural health 5 Critical human ecology and global contexts of rural ageing 6 Critical social gerontology and rural ageing PART III Contemporary scope 7 Rural ageing in low- and middle-income countries 8 Rural women, ageing and retirement 9 Rural-urban migration of older people: mobility, adaptation and accessibility 10 Policy and program challenges in delivering health and social care services to rural older people 11 Rural ageing, housing and homelessness 12 Rural ageing and transportation: how a lack of transportation options can leave older rural populations stranded 13 Rural community development in an era of population ageing 14 Making rural communities age-friendly: issues and challenges 15 Rural ageing in place and place attachment 16 Place-bound rural community of older men: social and autobiographical insideness of the Mill Village Boys in Finland 17 Social relations, connectivity and loneliness of older rural people 18 Understanding and performing care in rural contexts in Central Europe PART IV Emerging critical perspectives 19 Postcolonial perspectives on rural ageing in (South) Africa: gendered vulnerabilities and intergenerational ambiguities of older African women 20 Posthumanist traditions and their possibilities for rural gerontology 21 A Deweyan pragmatist perspective on rural gerontology 22 Interrogating the nature and meaning of social exclusion for rural dwelling older people 23 Defining the relationship between active citizenship and rural healthy ageing: a critical perspective 24 A critical view of older voluntarism in ageing rural communities: prospect, precarity and global pandemics 25 Older people and poverty: making critical connections in rural places 26 Critical perspectives on mental health, dementia and rural ageing 27 Rural gerontechnology: arts-based insights into rural ageing and the use of technology 28 Rural older people, climate change and disasters PART V Conclusion 29 Towards a critical rural gerontology