Watching life go away through the window: the meaning of old age and disability in a group of elderly people in a context of poverty
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This article presents part of the results of a research Project called: Understanding the care of elderly people in disability and poverty situations. The objective is to describe and analyze the meaning of old age and disability, given by elderly people in a marginal urban area of Bogota, Colombia, from a cultural perspective.
This qualitative study made use of interpretive Ethnography. The data were gathered through participant observation and interviews in depth. The contributors were 39 elderly women and men with some kind of disability. The analysis of the data took M. Leininger’s proposal of the following three cultural topics into consideration: (a) one realizes his/her illness, because body is not as useful as before, (b) old age: many diseases and few capabilities, and (c) disability… living one’s life in the hands of the others.
The meaning of old age and disability in elderly people is a socio-cultural construction -with strong influence from religion, social class factors and values- that leads to think it is not possible to conceive elderly or disabled people as an homogeneous group. Therefore, it is required to understand the way each population conceives old age and disability in order to break homogeneous rehabilitation and care schemes —which in most of the cases are centered in biological aspects and deficiency— in order to advance to capabilities respectful and promoting models, making specific demands in accordance with cultural diversity.