The Retirement Village as a Residential Environment for the Third Age – The Example of Firhall,Scotland

Abstract

Retirement villages represent a recent addition to the range of residential options for older people in the UK. Research has focused on the development and nature of retirement housing in the public and voluntary sectors in England. Limited attention has been directed to the private retirement communities and, in particular, to the lived experience of residents in private sector retirement villages. This research, which is the first study of a private retirement village in Scotland, overcomes this information deficit by identifying the nature and growth of private retirement villages in the UK and exploring the lived experience of residents of the private retirement village of Firhall. The discussion is organised into four main parts. Part I examines the concept of the retirement village. Part II explains the growth and geography of retirement villages in the UK. Part III comprises the empirical analysis of the case study retirement village. The research identifies the social, economic and demographic characteristics of the village population and provides insight into lived experience of the residents in the study village. Finally, in part IV, the discussion identifies a number of key issues for further research, and the potential contribution of retirement villages for meeting the needs and preferences of the growing third age population of the UK.     

EXPERIENTIALITY AND “NARRATIVE REFERENCE,” WITH THANKS TO THUCYDIDES1

Lately, the concept of experience, which postmodernist theoreticians declared dead, has seen a renaissance. The immediacy of experience seems to offer the possibility of reaching beyond linguistic discourses. In their attempt to overcome the “linguistic turn,” scholars such as Ankersmit, Gumbrecht, and Runia pit experience against narrative. This paper takes up the recent interest in experience, but argues against the opposition to narrative into which experience tends to be cast. The relation between experience and narrative is more complex than is widely assumed. Besides representing and giving shape to experience, narratives are received in the form of a (reception) experience. Through their temporal structure, narratives are crucial to letting us re‐experience the past as well as to representing the experiences of historical agents. This potential of narrative is nicely illustrated by Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in which “side‐shadowing” devices restore history's experientiality. Through “side‐shadowing,” narrative can challenge the tendency toward teleologies inherent in merely retrospective histories and can re‐create the openness intrinsic to the past when it still was a present. However, the “side‐shadowing” devices used by Thucydides are fictional. To conceptualize the price and gain of “side‐shadowing” in historiography, the paper advances the concept of a “narrative reference” (a concept analogous to Ricoeur's “metaphorical reference”). Introspection, speeches, and other “side‐shadowing” devices sacrifice truth in a positivist sense, but permit a second‐level reference, namely to history's experientiality. In a final step, the paper turns toward modern historians—most of whom are reluctant to use the means of fiction—to briefly survey their attempts at restoring the openness of the past.     

青海省开展“平安寺院”建设的成功经验与启示

“平安寺院”建设作为构建和谐青海、“平安青海”的一项重要工作,领导重视、宗教界积极响应,成效十分显著。本文通过实地调查,在对青海省开展这一工作的主要做法与成功经验进行概括、总结的基础上,提出了青海省开展建设“平安寺院”活动的几点建议。     

美术馆:从展览馆向博物馆的回归

从博物馆的发展史来看,美术馆无疑是博物馆的重要类型之一。在我国,由于种种复杂原因的影响,美术馆与博物馆在体系上一度呈现分离状态,它们之间的业务联系也非常疏远。近年来,美术馆界开始了从"展览馆"向"博物馆"转变的路程,致力于使美术馆成为最具特色的博物馆类型之一。     

博物馆视角下的近代中国知识体系的蜕变

近代以来,西方人把博物馆这一事物移植到中国,并伴随博物学引进西方现代知识体系;中国人在加深了对博物学和博物馆的认识的同时,也把中国传统学术按西方现代学科体系进行分类、整合。于是,近代中国的知识体系潜移默化地发生了蜕变。     

Water and the Urban Fabric: a study of towns and waterscapes in the Roman period in Britain

This paper highlights the ways in which components of waterscapes—rivers, lakes, pools, wetlands and waterfronts—formed elements of the urban fabric in the Roman period. Urban archaeology has focused mainly on features relating to land, while nautical archaeology, studying rivers, ports and harbours, trade and seafaring, reminds us of the importance of watery contexts. By examining waterscapes in the urban setting we can start to break down some of the traditional dichotomies in archaeology between land and water. Water could form an integral part of the lived environment and acquire cultural meanings that can be studied archaeologically. © 2012 The Author     

‘Home,and not some house’: young people's sensory construction of family relationships in domestic spaces

Drawing on recent work highlighting sensory experience of space, this paper argues that understandings of children's and young people's relationships, including difficult family circumstances, may be enriched by taking greater account of their embodied, sensory experience of the domestic spaces in which these relationships are lived. In a study of young people's family life in the context of parental substance misuse, we found that respondents often made sense of difficult family relationships, at different times and in particular spaces, through sensory experience. They also employed sensory and spatial strategies to construct safe and secure domestic places for themselves.     

武田泰淳的文学发端

武田泰淳不仅是一位热衷于中国文学研究的知识分子,也是日本文坛“战后派”卓有成就的作家之一。本文旨在通过对武田特殊人生历程的分析,客观审视其第一次战时体验和评传《司马迁》的创作背景,以期更加清晰地阐释武田文学的发端及其现实意义。     

促进“认同”是当代博物馆的重要任务

"认同"是个人对自我社会身份的认知,与特定社会群体的关系及归属感,是当代社会发展重要的心理保障。文化遗产与特定群体的发展历程和发展需求紧密联系,在认同中起到催化和强化的作用。促进认同将对博物馆的收藏、研究、陈列、教育及观众服务等各项工作提出新的任务、带来新的活力。博物馆必须运用其收藏的文化遗产,揭示遗产蕴涵的多层面信息,帮助人们了解自己的发展历程,认清自身特点,强化自我认同。加强公众的民族认同、文化认同、社会认同和国家认同,是当代中国博物馆不容推卸的社会责任。     

台湾地区博物馆发展文化创意产业的理念与实践

文化创意为近年来发达国家地区竞相发展的经济力,我国台湾在地方政府的鼓励扶持下,利用文化创造活力强、文物资源丰富等优势,积极发展文化创意产业,成果突出,其中台北"故宫博物院"具有台湾地区博物馆发展文创产业指标的地位。台北"故宫博物院"通过精心设计展览内涵、向社会开放文物数字资源、培养民众美学素养等方式,吸引并固定了一大批观众;同时还积极开拓商机,征求厂商合作开发文物衍生商品,并结合典藏文物特色设计餐饮空间,文化创意产业获得了可观的产值和显著的社会效应。