Dimensões do envelhecimento e sociabilidades na contemporaneidade: um estudo em Santa Maria/RS

Abstract

This thesis aims to analyze the participation of the elderly people in public policies definition after the Federal Constitution of 1988 and how the operation on the new proposals for political and social spaces happens. This is all based on some sociability that is present in the context of population aging. The analytical gaze was driven mainly by the concept of ‘association’ formulated by George Simmel, by the concept of ‘social representations’ developed by Serge Moscovici, and the wording ‘urban tribes’ by Michel Meffesoli. In order to do so, we opted for a qualitative research with analytical-descriptive orientation, through convenience sample and semi-structured interviews with 30 individuals aged between 65 and 76 years living in the city of Santa Maria, in Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. The research subjects are elderly people belonging to coexistence groups; elderly leaders of organizations representing the elderly citizens; elderly participants of cultural spaces and public places that meet each other ritualistically and seniors randomly chosen. In this sense, it is identified the almost complete absence of the elderly subjects themselves amidst the actions to promote their citizenship. In contrast, the representative entities tend to accumulate greater social capital and to acquire greater confidence of the elderly people who often fall outside of being ahead of the movement. Nevertheless, the elderly ones who take part in cultural spaces and groups of living give a new meaning to their lives and have traits that are considered as characteristic of the new ‘tribes’ of the contemporary age. Facing the sociability, the volunteering crew is of great importance among them, so they seek to reconstitute themselves as new subjects and to take the center stage so that they are the main actors of their lives. Therefore, it is perceived that a homogeneous construction of ‘being old’, seems to lose strength as an explanatory category, as the heterogeneity and plurality of the aging process and thus a ‘destruction of the model’ of old age, from the meaning constructed by the elderly one and his own daily life. Therefore, we suggest the ‘senior’ designation for the elderly people of the XXI century.