Downsizing

Confronting Our Possessions in Later Life

Professor David Ekerdt

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Hardback

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English

Columbia University Press
16 June 2020

Age groups: the elderly; Coping with old age

As life unfolds, things tend to accumulate. When older adults undergo health, residential, and marital changes, they will face a reckoning with their lifelong store of possessions-special, ordinary, and forgotten. Such a predicament now confronts tens of millions of Americans as the Baby Boom cohort passes into retirement and beyond. Despite what a thriving industry of clutter manuals tells us, for most older adults, downsizing is no simple task.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with recent movers in over a hundred diverse U.S. households, David Ekerdt analyzes the downsizing process and what it says about the meaning and management of possessions. He details how households approach and accomplish downsizing, exploring the decision-making process and the effectiveness of different strategies. From an expert gerontological perspective, he considers the cognitive, physical, emotional, and social tasks that the process entails and the role of factors such as gender and class on the divestment of things. Ekerdt finds that despite the fatigue and emotional challenges people encounter, afterward they report satisfaction in having completed a downsizing and feel empowerment on the other side of the task. Offering an empathetic and practical look at one of life's major transitions, Downsizing brings forward the voices of elders so that older adults, their families and friends, and practitioners working with older clients can understand and benefit from their experience.

By: Professor David Ekerdt
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm,
ISBN: 9780231189804
ISBN 10: 023118980X
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 16 June 2020
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

David Ekerdt is professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of Kansas. He is the editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of Aging (2002) and a coeditor of Consumption and Generational Change: The Rise of Consumer Lifestyles (2009), among other publications. In 2018, he served as president of the Gerontological Society of America.

Reviews for Downsizing: Confronting Our Possessions in Later Life

Downsizing is a good read that advances the notion that the life course within social gerontology needs to take a material turn. It is hard to imagine a reader who could not relate to this book. -- Renee Beard, College of the Holy Cross