Fiction and the Cultural Mediation of Ageing (FCMAP): New Narratives of Everyday Ageing in Contemporary Britain: An Anthology

拟议的研究回归到为老龄化的小说和文化调解项目（FCMAP）收集的数据，该项目包括对1992年，2006年和2009年关于老龄化的大众观察（MO）指令的回应，以及通过第三时代大学（U3A）建立的读书小组成员的自传和日记，他们在2009年和2010年期间阅读了一系列与老龄化相关主题的小说。新项目将以最近最畅销的MO选集和日记为模型，如西蒙·加菲尔德的《我们的隐秘生活》和内拉的《最后的战争》（这两部小说都有续集，并被改编成电视剧——后者非常成功，由获得英国电影学院奖的维多利亚·伍德主演的《49岁的家庭主妇》）。通过收集15到20个FCMAP参与者的故事（包括MO和U3A），目前年龄在60到90岁之间，并将它们编织成一本大众市场平装选集，暂定名为“我们的时代：当代英国老龄化的日常日记”，我们将追踪自20世纪80年代以来当代英国老龄化经历的根本变化。正如伯明翰一位72岁的退休水管工在1992年所指出的那样：“现在人们的社交生活比20年前更活跃，甚至更老。”几年前，人们认为退休后做点园艺，坐在扶手椅上。”在随后的20年里，领取养老金的老人享受几年应得的休息的福利国家的标志性形象已经过时，取而代之的是一系列积极的休闲活动，这些活动以前被认为是退休前年龄范围内的人的专属，以及一些特殊角色的演变，如祖父母和慈善机构的志愿者，这些角色已成为日益紧张的英国社会继续运转的必要组成部分。对于那些亲身经历过这些变化的人来说，很明显，60多岁的人，在许多情况下，70多岁的人，在行为和经济和社会重要性方面的转变，完全推翻了媒体对“老年人”的一般描述，特别是政府和媒体一直把老龄化贴上社会问题的标签。2009年，一位66岁的退休女审计员，有一位102岁的健在母亲，因此她很清楚自己可能还有超过三分之一的生命，她预言了一场权力转移，即“现在进入养老金群体的一代人将准备好大声疾呼，要求他们想要的东西”。以这种经过验证的格式制作选集——包括研究团队在MO进行持续的档案研究，对选定的U3A成员进行后续采访，以及扩展的编辑工作——将使FCMAP的发现能够超越已经成功参与的学者和政策制定者的受众，直接面向公众。其目的是让读者亲眼看到，随着年龄的增长，对自己生活的叙事理解给人们带来的好处。这本选集将展示如何看待衰老的过程——包括孩子离开家、更年期、事业结束、退休、退休后的活动（包括U3A、志愿工作、照顾孙子女）、养老院、丧亲之痛和虚弱——通过自我反思的叙事镜头，让人们将其视为一段持续自我发现的旅程，而不是一条注定的毁灭之路。项目结束时，将在伦敦市中心举行为期一天的活动，将研究团队和选集的一些贡献者与公众、政策制定者、媒体代表和其他学者聚集在一起。在这里，我们将讨论在现实世界中出现的一种新的基于叙事的生命历程理解的意义，并期望为未来的研究提供富有成效的方向。

The proposed research returns to the data collected for the Fiction and the Cultural Mediation of Ageing Project (FCMAP), which consists of responses to Mass Observation (MO) directives on ageing from 1992, 2006 and 2009, and the autobiographies and diaries from members of book groups, set up through the University of the Third Age (U3A), who read a series of novels with ageing-related themes during 2009 and 2010. The new project will produce a book modelled on recent best-selling MO anthologies and diaries such as Simon Garfield's Our Hidden Lives and Nella Last's War (both of which have led to sequels and been dramatised for television - the latter very successfully as Housewife, 49, starring a BAFTA-winning Victoria Wood). By collecting the stories of between fifteen and twenty FCMAP participants (both MO and U3A), currently aged between sixty and ninety, and weaving them together into a mass-market paperback anthology, provisionally entitled Our Age: Everyday Diaries of Ageing in Contemporary Britain, we will trace the radical changes in the experience of ageing in contemporary Britain since the 1980s. As a 72 year-old retired plumber from Birmingham noted in 1992: 'People have a more active social life these days to a more advanced age than twenty or so years ago. Years ago one thought about retiring as doing a bit of gardening and taking to an armchair'. Over the subsequent two decades the already-outdated iconic Welfare-State image of the old age pensioner enjoying a few years of well-earned rest was replaced both by a range of active leisure pursuits formerly considered the preserve of those in the pre-retirement age range and by the evolution of ad hoc roles, such as grandparenting and volunteering for charities, into necessary components for the continued functioning of an increasingly strained British society. For those who have experienced these changes at firsthand, it is obvious that the transformation in both the behaviour and the economic and social importance of people in their sixties and, in many cases, their seventies completely invalidates the general media representation of the 'elderly' and, in particular, the persistent labelling by government and media of ageing as a social problem. In 2009, a retired female auditor, aged 66, with a living mother of 102, and therefore well aware that she had potentially over a third of her life ahead of her, was prophesising a power shift in which 'the generation coming into the pensioner group now will be prepared to speak up and demand what they want'. The production of the anthology in this proven format - involving the research team in sustained archival research at MO, follow-up interviews with selected U3A members, and extended editorial work - will enable the findings of FCMAP to reach beyond the audience of academics and policymakers, which has already been successfully engaged, directly to the general public. The aim is to enable readers to see for themselves the advantage that drawing on a narrative understanding of one's own life confers on people as they grow older. The anthology will show how viewing the process of ageing - including such aspects as children leaving home, menopause, careers coming to an end, retirement, post-retirement activities (including the U3A, voluntary work, caring for grandchildren), care homes, bereavement and infirmity - through the lens of self-reflective narrative allows one to see it as a journey of continued self-discovery rather than a pre-ordained road to ruin. The project will end by bringing together the research team and some of the contributors to the anthology with members of the public, policy makers, representatives of the media and other academics at a day event to be held in Central London. Here, the significance of this emergence in the real world of a new narrative-based understanding of the life course will be discussed and, it is expected, that fruitful directions for future research will emerge.