The Practices of Everyday Life and Elderly People’s Negotiating Identities

Abstract

This article discusses the practices in everyday life of elderly people as identity negotiation against the domination by stereotype stigmatizing elderly people with their physical recession and dependency. The stereotype excludes the elder as a co-culture for controlling. According to author’s interacting with the elders utilizing observation and informal conversation as a research assistant, an acquaintance and a stranger, it is found that the elders do not entirely surrender to the stereotype with which they are labeled. In contrary, they utilize some tactics in their everyday lives to negotiate and reconstruct new identities as an elder with job or breadwinner as well as an elder who can still control one’s old life. The elderly also puts one’s own self into new relationship to be beyond the stereotype. However, the reconstructed identities can be fluctuated according to factors and situations. Thus, the practices of everyday life among the elderly can be the way to liberate them from the locked door.