AGEING IN (A NEW ZEALAND) PLACE: ETHNOGRAPHY, POLICY AND PRACTICE.

• Author: Keeling, Sally

INTRODUCTION

The promotion, enhancement and maintenance of "independence" and "ageing in Place" have been fundamental themes in policy and practice relating to older people in New Zealand for at least the last ten years. A recent report (National Health Committee, 1999) identifies both of these fundamental themes and shows them to have become increasingly explicit in guiding policy and practice development since the publication from the Ministries of Health and Social Welfare (1992).

However, "independence" and "ageing in place" have been little examined in terms of what they might mean for older people themselves in New Zealand communities. At the same time, these themes and slogans have attracted anthropological curiosity, and a recent study in Mosgiel has presented an ethnographic approach to ageing in a particular South Island town.

This work derives a "three-dimensional view" of independence from the complex ways in which a group of 80-90-year-olds talk about their personal sense of independence, their social context, and the personal resources of health and wealth at their disposal (Keeling 1998a). Each of these three dimensions (the personal, the social and the resource-based) contributes to a holistic and dynamic view of independence.

A close examination of independence and ageing in this particular community shows that the two themes of "independence" and "ageing in place" merge almost to the point of tautology. In other words, this research is grounded in the local features of the landscape, township and in the lifetimes of the research participants. The majority of those involved in the qualitative aspects of the study have spent their lives in the southern part of the South Island, and have lived in Mosgiel for at least the last ten years.(2)

MOSGIEL LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF AGEING

The Mosgiel Longitudinal Study of Ageing (MLSA) was first launched in 1988, and has been described as "an investigation of cardiovascular risk factors, nutrition, disability and social support networks in the total population of the area 70 years and over" (Campbell 1997:132). The project was established with the aims of making a unique contribution to gerontological research at the local, national and international levels. Mosgiel was chosen as the site for this research project, on ageing in a community setting, on the grounds that its findings could be indicative (although not representative) of national patterns. Occupational class and property values indicated a predominantly Pakeha, middle class, retired community without extremes of poverty or wealth, and the age distribution of the sample was very similar to the country as a whole (Campbell et al. 1993, 1994:75).

The study at the outset covered the entire population in the community aged 70 years and older. The response rate was 91%. Baseline data was obtained from the 761 subjects over the period 1988-91. At the first follow-up (in 1991), 557 subjects were seen again, although the questionnaires on social factors were not included at this time. The six-year follow-up took place from 1994-96, and involved 313 subjects.

Mosgiel's relatively small scale and geographic boundedness made it amenable to anthropological approaches of study, ranging from participant observation to detailed interviews with individuals. Mosgiel is identifiable by virtue of its association with the MSLA epidemiological project, and therefore has not been deliberately "masked" in this account. Individual respondents in this study have, however, been assigned pseudonyms to protect their identity and to respect the confidentiality agreed to in the study.

COMMUNITY STUDIES: AGEING IN PLACE

A useful complementary paper to this work is Joseph and Chalmers (1995). This study relates the perceptions of older people in two Waikato towns - Tirau and Morrinsville - of the processes of rural restructuring and service closure experienced over the last ten years. Joseph and Chalmers explore the perceptions of people growing old in Tirau and Morrinsville, and the "objective" impacts of economic and social restructuring.

In recent years, Southland community settings have been well explored by Smith and McMath (1988), Smith (1989), and Lovelock (1993). While ageing in a community context has received limited attention in any previously published anthropological research in this country, geographers in New Zealand and elsewhere have consistently been interested in the interface between place and health (Gesler 1991, Kearns and Gesler 1998).

By locating the study in a specific community, and by relating to issues in public policy and practice at a national level, it is hoped to address some of the traditional problems of idiosyncratic description and limited generalisability identified as inherent in the genre of community studies (Pearson 1994). While studying the social networks of older people was the stated "entry point" for this research, the resulting report is presented around the three-dimensional construct of independence, giving strong emphasis to "home" and being set very explicitly in a local context, against a national policy backdrop (Keeling 1998a).

I argue that detailed ethnographic studies of ageing in particular communities contribute specificity and detail to the more general understanding of policy and practice relating to older people. This level of understanding has been missing to date in New Zealand (cf. Koopman-Boyden 1993, Statistics New Zealand 1997, 1998).

MOSGIEL: "THE PEARL OF THE PLAIN"

Those who approach the city of Dunedin by air are familiar with the location of Mosgiel today as they see first the roadside Welcome to Dunedin sign and, shortly afterwards, note a hillside hoarding saying MOSGIEL. Older people who have lived in the region for much of their lives recall an earlier hoarding which presented Mosgiel as The Pearl of the Plain (Bell and Lyall 1995). The multiple meanings of this term and its intended pun on the spelling and meaning of purl and plain, reflected the image of the town, nestled at the neck of the Taieri Planes, as the then home of the nationally renowned Mosgiel Woollen Mills, and of the orientation of Mosgiel more to its rural plains hinterland for much of its history rather than to its more cosmopolitan city neighbour.

The slogan that introduces this section thus links history with geographic and local identity. Mosgiel is settled into the northern end of the Taieri Planes, and on three sides is edged by hills. Mosgiel was one of New Zealand's communities that exemplified the growth and expansion of the 1950s. The availability of flat land for residential and commercial development was an important advantage for Mosgiel, as was its relationship with both rural and urban sector enterprises. In more recent years, while "family homes" have become larger and more luxurious, there has been the parallel development of the one- or two-bedroom unit or flat, built in permanent, low-maintenance materials.

The role of the woollen processing mill over one hundred years of operation in the district represents in an emblematic way the changing commercial waves of fortune over time (see Nicholson 1998:178ff). The receivership of the company in 1980 is described as a "most traumatic event in Mosgiel's history" (Kirk 1985:189). The changing fates of clothing manufacturing, agriculture, engineering, domestic appliance production, and mining throughout the twentieth century are threads woven through Mosgiel's history, and through the interviews with the older people who had participated in the employment sector and business life of the town over this same period.

The population of Mosgiel in 1991 was 11,022, which represents a 1% increase in the period 1986-1991 (Statistics New Zealand 1992). By comparison, the Dunedin area total population was 114,276, and experienced a lesser growth rate, of 0.49%, in the same period (Dunedin City Council 1995:22). In terms of the age composition of the Mosgiel population in 1991, 16% of the population is over 65, while the rate in that age group for the wider Dunedin area is 12.9%.

INDEPENDENCE IN MOSGIEL

The key feature to arise from the study was the idea of independence. There were many different ways in which assertions and statements of independence appeared in respondents' interviews, sometimes in unexpected contexts. Their talk about independence shows the complexity, prominence and continuity of the idea of independence in the context of both their present and past situations. Here, in the main body of the paper, I explore aspects of independence and how independence is articulated by research participants.

This approach owes much to Arber and Evandrou (1993), and particularly to Pickard (1995), for her ethnographic and interpretive approach to ageing in a community setting. In the anthropological component of the Mosgiel study, extended open-ended interviews with participants were carried out in the week following the second follow-up interviews in the epidemiological study. These interviews were taped and transcribed. Inductive analysis of these interviews was carried out through manual coding, comparison and interpretation (see Keeling 1998a:116). The thematic framework was built up out of this detailed process, and the extracts from interviews presented here illustrate directly some of the sources and grounding on which this process is based.

Mrs Allen

After talking in a reflective way about Mosgiel and how it had changed over the years, Mrs Allen shifted the balance to refer both to her independence, and to the contributions she had made to the community herself in the past.

"Let me tell you, I've mowed my little bit of lawn right up till a fortnight ago ... and it was the idea in years gone by, that if your neighbours were sick ... I'd take a kiddie in for a few days until they got better, and it was just the way of life, and it was simple." In this example, Mrs Allen links past "in years gone by" and...