Publication details
Institutions of Ageing Czech Men: Critical Reflections and Transformative Directions
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| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Everyday experiences of men as they age bring about various entanglements with power and privilege as well as with powerlessness and reconsiderations of their own "doing aging and masculinity." The paper explores these themes both on individual and structural levels while critically reflecting and considering potentially transformative directions of such experiences toward more caring and less entitled practices. It is based on a qualitative sociological study (2023-2025). More than 90 face-to-face interviews were collected by a team of researchers, with men aged 24 – 78 (mostly in their 40s – 60s) in several social environments in the Czech Republic (a post-socialist country in Europe) covering a spectrum of marginalized as well as privileged status settings. Men were addressed as men in the study and ageing was framed as a social and biographical process rather than a fixed biological category. Thus, both gender and age were explicit topics and intersecting relations addressed in the interviews. Analytically, the paper draws on critical approaches to studying men and masculinities, and concentrates on the re/production of gender inequality and some challenges to practices of masculinities connected with ageing. The core question of how (Czech) ageing men do their masculinities in various settings as they age helps us re/formulate intersections of these categories both analytically as well as in practice that was collected in the narratives of ageing Czech men. The core axes of care (received and provided) and power(lessness) provide points for transformations in institutions of ageing men. This is still a work-in-progress analysis with our findings offered for peer reflection and feedback. |
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