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Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.165
igaa057.165
Abstracts
Session 2850 (Poster)
Aging in Place: Supportive Individual, Family, Community, and Environmental Factors
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Island Aging in the Ninth Decade and Beyond
Eliopoulos Elaine  
PhD student, Weston, Massachusetts, United States
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”50 51
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
This novel research was designed to explore the lived experience of the aging body and its impact on social exclusion in remote island environments. Twenty three participants, aged 80 to 102 years old, in the Pacific Northwest, USA, were interviewed to explore the role their bodies played in everyday life. Despite presenting limited choices and lifestyle options, the island communities appeared to foster rather than impede a sense of competency and autonomy in the lives of these later life participants. Their ability to navigate their worlds, despite their physical limitations, was apparent in their reports of inclusion in the manner they desired. The island community context, characterized by low technology and mostly face to face encounters for goods and services, presented the participants with the possibility of accessible and meaningful engagement. Their sense of self and inclusion casts doubt on the dominant narrative of decline typically used to describe these late years. New narratives of corporeal being emerged from the data, demonstrating a complexity not captured by the singularity of the decline narrative. The visual methodology utilized enriched the depth and range of the semi-structured interviews, encouraging participants to think critically about their bodies. Possibilities for further research could explore the nuances of these new narratives and whether a different understanding of the older body may be useful.