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IT WAS ALL PLANNED... NOW WHAT? CLAIMING HUMAN AGENCY AND CONSTRUCTING MEANING IN EVERYDAY RETIREMENT LIFE IN URBAN CHINA

Liang, Jiayin
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1386853041

Abstract Details

2013, Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, Gerontology.
This study adopts a grounded theory approach to investigate retirement life in urban China. It examines how older urban Chinese who have lived a relatively constricted, externally planned earlier life construct an unanticipated life stage of retirement in the face of socio-demographic transformations and in the absence of corresponding social support and clear social norms. How do Chinese urban retirees live their everyday lives? How do they construct this life stage in the absence of clear social norms? How do they make meaning out of their experiences? Face-to-face, semi-structured, in-depth interviewing was supplemented by non-participant ethnographic observation. Three sensitizing frameworks: social constructionism, life course theory, and critical gerontology serve as interpretive lenses through which a theoretical model of meaning construction, grounded in the qualitative data, is generated. Observations and interviews reveal a variety of everyday activities, both social and solitary. Two broad categories of time use emerge: passive time rider and proactive time user. Among the latter, different categories of individually constructed retirement pathways are identified. Caregiving and reminiscing emerge as two featured activities, and reminiscence constitutes an important mechanism of meaning construction. For these retirees, the opportunity to claim and exercise personal agency is in striking contrast to their earlier, rigidly planned lives. The experiences of the participants clearly reveal that, even when the opportunity to practice human agency is limited in earlier life, human agency can be claimed and exercised to shape how post-retirement life is experienced, constructed and expressed. The claim of human agency and adaptive, selective strategies of most study participants shape their pathways in retirement. Meaning in retirement is constructed in the contexts of socio-demographic and economic transformation, income disparity, and lagging social structures of old age support. The capacity to maintain a contented frame of mind and to define personal happiness within the framework of family orientation are prominent throughout the participants' narratives. The study has implications for Chinese social policy and for future research in cross-cultural gerontology and life course studies.
Kathryn McGrew (Committee Chair)
162 p.
Gerontology
Retirement, Meaning Construction, Agency, Urban China

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Liang, J. (2013). IT WAS ALL PLANNED... NOW WHAT? CLAIMING HUMAN AGENCY AND CONSTRUCTING MEANING IN EVERYDAY RETIREMENT LIFE IN URBAN CHINA [Doctoral dissertation, Miami University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1386853041

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Liang, Jiayin. IT WAS ALL PLANNED... NOW WHAT? CLAIMING HUMAN AGENCY AND CONSTRUCTING MEANING IN EVERYDAY RETIREMENT LIFE IN URBAN CHINA . 2013. Miami University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1386853041.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Liang, Jiayin. "IT WAS ALL PLANNED... NOW WHAT? CLAIMING HUMAN AGENCY AND CONSTRUCTING MEANING IN EVERYDAY RETIREMENT LIFE IN URBAN CHINA ." Doctoral dissertation, Miami University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1386853041

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

miami1386853041
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© 2013, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License IT WAS ALL PLANNED... NOW WHAT? CLAIMING HUMAN AGENCY AND CONSTRUCTING MEANING IN EVERYDAY RETIREMENT LIFE IN URBAN CHINA by Jiayin Liang is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Miami University and OhioLINK.