Relational sociology

contributions to understanding residential relocation decisions in later life

Sarah Hillcoat-Nallétamby

pp. 621-639

in: François Dépelteau (ed), The Palgrave handbook of relational sociology, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

The increasingly globalised emphasis on casting individuals as consumers, empowered with choice and decision-making strategies enabling them to exercise individual agency in diverse markets, has been reflected in policy discourse and service provision targeted at older people; hence, they are portrayed as independent agents, free to choose and select products, services and lifestyles as informed consumers, notably when it comes to their health and social care preferences. This emphasis finds its roots in neoliberal thinking, which gives primacy to individual, voluntaristic, rational choices embedded within decision-making predicated on intentional, consequential action. Whilst this is a welcome move from the long-standing, dichotomous social representation of older people as either "dependent-disempowered"/"independent-empowered" social agents, it nonetheless overlooks the possibility of a more nuanced construction of their social action as the product of temporal, transactional processes evolving with others through complex figurations of interdependent relationships.