Home and Identity in Late Life: International Perspectives

Leading scholars, offering international and multidisciplinary viewpoints, examine the meaning of home to elders and the ways in which this meaning may be sustained, threatened, or modified according to changes associated with growing old.

Organized into four sections--The Essence of Home, Disruptions of Home, Creating and Recreating Home, and Community Perspectives on the Meaning of Home, this volume explores topics including:

• What makes a house a home?
• What role does the meaning of home play in the process of relocation to another place of residence?
• What is the relationship between a person's home life and cherished possessions such as symbolic jewelry or religious items in late life?
• How does the community/neighborhood environment influence the way that older people feel about the places in which they live?

Contributors include Hans-Werner Wahl, Robert L. Rubinstein, Edmund Sherman, Carolyn Norris-Baker, and Rick Scheidt, among others. As a special feature, this volume concludes with critical commentaries from three eminent scholars, Amos Rapoport, Kim Dovey, and Marie Versperi.

This volume will be of interest to practitioners, researchers, upper-level graduates/graduate-level students in gerontology, environmental psychology, social work, and nursing. It will be valuable to everyone in the helping professions who seek a deeper understanding of the ways in which "being at home" and attachment to place plays a key role in the life experience and well-being of their clients as they grow older.