The Rite of Relocation: Social and Material Transformations in the Midwest US

Abstract

Concerns of appropriate housing may arise in older adulthood. Some older adults may make life work in the place we call home; others take steps to voluntarily relocate in anticipation of health and other needs. While moving at any age can be challenging, moving from one’s home in later life also represents multiple reflections: past, present and future selves, control of one’s space and relinquishing the care of one’s space to another person or corporation, family support and family fissures, and the body’s capacities and limitations. Moving is examined as a moment where regimes of value are negotiated through competing semiotic ideologies and at times social roles are transformed. Ethnographic fieldwork occurred from January 2009–May 2012 in the Midwest United States. This paper presents experiences of relocation of material and social role transformation as older adults make this housing, and writ large, life transition.

Introduction

Navigability of one’s home can become a serious concern in older adulthood. Some may make life work in the place we call home; others take steps to voluntarily move in anticipation of health and other needs. The transition from one’s home to living in a retirement community can be a significant, dreaded or liberating moment for older adults and their family members. Relocation can require a change in habits that are part of what makes one feel like a responsible adult (e.g., home maintenance, snow shoveling) as well as changes in the bases of membership in a community (e.g., owner to renter). Choosing when to move and where to move can be based on the availability of housing options, real or imagined present health concerns, financial resources and the configuration of one’s kin network.

Moving also entails multiple reconciliations: lives lived and lives desired, relinquishing the care and control of one’s space to another person or corporation, family support and family fissures, and the body’s capacities and limitations. While moving at any age can be challenging, moving from one’s home in later life is a social experience in which the relationships between one’s past, one’s possessions, and one’s anticipated future needs are foregrounded. For many, homes hold memories of events and people, providing feelings of stability and security. As older adults plan their moves, considering selling their homes, leaving their communities or “comfort zone” and disbanding of their possessions to accommodate reduced living space. Thus, moving is often a time when older adults think about the reduction and passing on of their possessions. Considerations and discussions of the redistribution of one’s objects can provide the opportunity to perpetuate one’s legacy among family, friends and strangers (Appadurai 1986, Marcoux, 2000, Ekerdt et al. 2004). Yet such processes may also complicate kin relations, as the act of redistributing possessions can be relationally strategized (Miller 1998), especially if objects are exchanged for future instrumental or emotional support.

This paper analyzes the experiences of older Americans in the Midwestern United States as they embark on the journey of voluntary relocations to retirement communities or more navigable spaces (data collected January 2009–May 2012). In this multi-year ethnographic study, the older adults’ ages ranged from 57–91. Eighty-one older adults participated in the study, and where possible, the researcher met and interviewed their kin (n=49) and professionals related to relocation (n=46). The researcher met some older adults once, and others throughout the moving process (e.g., packing, garage sales, moving day).

Most of the study participants self-identified as Caucasian (95.1%) reflecting the residents of long-term care in the United States. The remaining older adult study participants were African-American (3.7%) and Asian (1.2%). Twenty-two males and fifty-nine participated in the study. The older adults were either married (n=38) where both partners agreed to participate or single (n=43). Most had owned their homes.

Through relocation, older adults work to integrate past selves, understand present concerns and imagine potential selves. The ethnographic nature of the project involved interviews and document collection (sketches, lists) which were analytically juxtaposed with participant observation of older adults and their families through pre-move planning, moving and post-move adjustment.

Such voluntary moves can be considered processes of material and social transformations that may occur in relocation in older adulthood. Ter Keurs (2006) argues for greater attention to the role of physical objects in examining relationships between subjects and objects. His concept of material condensation defined as “the process of internalization of ideas into physical, material objects” occurs before and after relocation. Ter Keurs also emphasizes that the meaning of things can change intergenerationally (2006, p. 59). This study features the internalization of ideas into objects and how these ideas are negotiated across generations and the potential consequences of such processes.

Moving as Role Transformation

Moving can be a time to examine one’s life course. When older adults undertake housing transitions, it is a moment that demands re-articulating one’s connections with community, kin network, and material possessions. In terms of the future, moving can be a moment in one’s life to come to terms with life’s next step, emotionally, physically and geographically.

The adjustments or mortifications according to Erving Goffman experienced by older Americans and kin in this study indicate the multi-faceted challenges that accompany a change in residence. In Erving Goffman’s Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (1962), he traces the transition or “mortification” of “inmates” in a variety of institutional settings. He argues that in order to undergo socialization in the new institution, newcomers experience “role dispossession” where they must sever roles once held outside the institution (p. 14). In this study, many participants were able to maintain former community roles, especially if they moved locally. However, many participants experienced role transformation, as some experienced dispossession of their roles and others assumed additional roles. Role changes may occur before the move into a new setting that can also be understood as role transformation.

Erving Goffman also links personal possessions to role possession. He writes, “The personal possessions of an individual are an important part of the materials out of which he builds a self, but as an inmate the ease with which can be managed by staff is likely to increase with the degree to which he is disposed” (1962, 78). The rules that the institution makes regarding objects and their ownership contribute, according to Goffman, to role dispossession. An individual can take some objects to a new space, while others will be sold, gifted to relatives or friends or discarded depending both on rules and spatial constraints. Objects have their own biography as they circulate through being sold or gifts (Kopytoff 1986) and links between objects and owners ebb and flow. Along the way, meanings attach and detach from object depending on whether they circulate between sentimental and market regimes of value (Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff 1986). Appadurai explains that a regime of value “does not imply that every act of commodity exchange presupposes a complete cultural sharing of assumptions, but rather that the degree of value coherence may be highly variable from situation to situation, and from commodity to commodity” (1986, p. 15, emphasis in original). Applying these concepts to relocation practices, older adults and adult children may vary in regimes of value based on differing generational or social perspectives. When more than one individual helps to make decisions about objects, regimes of value may differ based on competing semiotic ideologies at play. Semiotic ideologies are defined as “basic assumptions about what signs are and how they function in the world” (2003, p. 419) where certain qualities of a “bundled” object are more valued than others due “their shift in their relative value, utility, and relevance across contexts” (Keane 2003, p. 414). Philips (2004) proposes examining competing ideologies from an ecological perspective to understand which contexts permit certain ideologies to flourish.

Moving is a moment where contending semiotic ideologies may surface between older adults and their kin, or older adults and their peers and institutions such as senior living communities. The examples in this paper show that moving may be a context where transformation of roles is permitted, whereas remaining in one’s residence may lead to different types of changes. This paper expands on Goffman’s contribution of role dispossession in a few ways. This paper provides examples of role transformations in examples of role that are dispossessed as well as roles that are added. Second, this paper shows that these transformations do not occur upon entering institutional spaces, but rather, occur in the transitions, in mundane acts and conversations. These dispossessions and changes may occur in the preparation of the move, or Dismantling a Household, and in the adjustment after a relocation, or Redefining Roles in Redefined Spaces. Third, this paper offers an update on the types of spaces considered institutional; the desires and resources of older persons have brought about a proliferation in the types of long-term care available in the U.S., where dispossession of possessions and place are only one part of the story. Older adult as consumer view institutional spaces with critical eyes and suggestions for spatial (see Perry, under review) and social ordering.

Dismantling a Household: Memories and Attachments

For many study participants, the contents of their homes became a source of surprise, shame and frustration. Some were surprised at the number of material objects their homes contained in the basements, attics, and in drawers and cabinets throughout the dwelling. Some were ashamed of the disorganization of the objects, especially when they discovered items were ruined because of neglect or being forgotten. Often, objects became a source of frustration between couples, between older adults and their children and between older adults and the strangers who would purchase objects while disputing prices. Lastly, some were frustrated by what their accumulation of objects might say about them or how, for example, individual pieces of paper had become a burdensome collection over the years.

Evaluating one’s possessions preoccupied most study participants, though the types and number of objects varied. Every home is full of things, some being treasured collections and some everyday objects; in the relocation process, there are literally thousands of objects to be sorted, donated, sold, thrown away and kept. By examining ownership of specific objects, the linking between subjects and objects can be better understood. Mrs. Lewis explores one such object in the following transcript. The additional participant in the conversation below, Sarah, is Mrs. Lewis’s daughter-in-law.

Mrs. Lewis: We were telling the movers, they were saying “huh, all this stuff?”, and

I said well how much stuff would you have after 50 years of marriage and moving around.

Mrs. Lewis: 47…

Mr. Lewis: And including a couple foreign moves.

Researcher: Yeah, yeah.

Mr. Lewis: So…

Mrs. Lewis: And when you buy something that you really like, then it’s harder to part with it.

Mr. Lewis: Yeah, definitely.

Mrs. Lewis: If you just buy stuff to have stuff, it’s not as hard to part with. But if you save your money and buy something you really like, then it is harder to part with.

Mr. Lewis: For several years we, not several years

Mrs. Lewis: No

Mr. Lewis: but for sometime we ate on the floor.

Mrs. Lewis: We did.

Mr. Lewis: When we first got married.

Mrs. Lewis: When we first married we had a rug in the middle of the living room.

Mr. Lewis: And we set some candles…

Researcher: Ohhh!

Mrs. Lewis: We had our silver candle sticks, and our wedding china, and we sat on the rug Indian style and we ate our dinner at night because we didn’t have, in the morning it was cereal at the counter because we didn’t, that was the first table we bought.

Mr. Lewis: That was the first table we bought.

Researcher: Which one?

Mrs. Lewis: The glass top that’s out on the deck.

Mr. Lewis: On the patio.

Researcher: Oh, that’s nice.

Mrs. Lewis: There are seats to those someplace.

Mr. Lewis: 40 some odd years ago, almost 45

Mrs. Lewis: Peter was a baby. We bought a bed and a dresser and a crib and a little dresser and a rocker and then that table and in Los Angeles, California (changed name of place) and we still have every piece.

Researcher: Really? That’s amazing.

Mr. Lewis: Because that bed you saw in the basement was…

Sarah: Do you have the crib?

Mrs. Lewis: No, I’m sorry, the crib we just got rid of.

Sarah: Oh okay. Boy, I was just about to say I’m about ready to get rid of my crib and sell it to a neighbor.

Mr. Lewis: We carried the crib until (place of location not audible)

Sarah: No I know because I remember Melissa slept in that crib.

Mrs. Lewis: Till just before we moved.

Sarah: No, I remember.

Mrs. Lewis: And, uh Peter heard the garbage trucking coming down the street and he came running down the stairs and he saw me in the dining room window crying and he said I knew when I heard the garbage man I better come down here (laughs).

Mr. Lewis: Throwing away the crib, we’d put the crib on the…

Mrs. Lewis: the arm of the garbage truck came down and just crushed it and I said,

“oh, my babies teethed on that crib” unfortunately. They shouldn’t of. There were, there were Jack’s teeth marks on there.

Sarah: Oh wow. Aw.

Sarah: I don’t have that sentimental attachment to things like the crib we bought. I mean there is some sentimental attachment to that. I sold it to

some neighbors because they had room and a foster kid so I went here,

It’s a hundred bucks for it (laughter). I mean, what’s sentimental about

It?

Mr. Lewis: Well wait until your grandkids use it.

Sarah: But it’s, the codes change. See the safety things change so fast that our crib probably isn’t up to the safety standards now. We have the Pack-and-play which is like a play pen because, I’m like, “okay, that can

be a crib and it’s a playpen” and so I still have that but I don’t have the

crib-crib because what am I going to do with it?

In this transcript, the couple recounts the numerous objects they have collected over the course of their marriage. As objects circulate, meanings attach and detach, or become linked and unlinked, to the objects. This can create anxiety about where objects should go during the moving process. Identifying an individual who will care for an object was often a source of concern, in addition to the logistical challenge of distributing objects to relatives across the country. Relevant to this process is the examination of which objects, under which familial and socio-historical contexts, require the effort to identify a potential owner and discuss ownership with such a candidate as well as which objects and types of can forego such a process and instead be designated for trash. Sometimes, trucks hired for the move would also drop some objects at an adult child’s home if the new residence of the older adult was located nearby. Through their possessions, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis remember their past, a time when money was tight, and when they ate on a rug on a floor before they had a table. Their individual biographies, and their biography as a couple are intertwined with the biography of their objects. Mrs. Lewis says, “But if you save your money and buy something you really like, then it is harder to part with.” She asserts there are different kinds of objects, objects you just buy “to have stuff” and objects that “you really like.” However, those embedded meanings of particular objects might not be obvious to another person such as one’s adult child, or the next owner. Mrs. Lewis is able to list six items that they purchased in the early years, when her oldest son was a baby, and informs me that they still have every piece. In fact, the table is still on their porch. Additionally, their daughter-in-law asks if they have retained the crib (line 33) as she discloses that she is planning to get give away her crib (line 34) because her youngest son has already started elementary school.

Mrs. Lewis reconsiders whether she still has her crib, and then recounts the day when it left her possession when she put it out for the garbage truck. She remembers seeing her crib, purchased with hard-earned money, crushed as it was converted to trash. She also remembers the teeth marks from her second son on the crib, indexing her time as a young mother. Her husband ran downstairs to her as she cried. This retrospective recollection of the emotions around the crib is but one part of the moving experience for this couple.

Her daughter-in-law, Sarah, does not share the same sentimental feelings about cribs. Her daughter-in-law suggests that with changing safety codes, older cribs may not meet current standards. She also mentions that while she sold her crib, she retains something that can function as a crib, as a place for sleeping, which is a pack-n-play—a portable crib and playpen combined. She asserts that the quality of the object i.e. an object that provides a place for sleeping, the most significant aspect of the crib to Sarah, is still present in her current possessions by owning a pack-n-play. When her daughter-in-law dismisses both the emotional and physical value of the crib, her mother-in-law counters with, “Well wait until your grandkids use it.” This conversation uncovers intergenerational differences in valuing of objects, where Mrs. Lewis values the family history that becomes integrated with the use of crib by family members. This value system is established and recreated as different qualities of objects are appreciated indexing differing regimes of value.

Objects, such as cribs, function in multiple ways through the moving process. Here I refer again to Webb Keane’s (2003) work on the multiplicity of qualities that are bundled at any one time in any given object. Semiotic ideologies guide the study participants in their analysis of what is significant about an object, or what qualities in the object will determine whether to keep or discard them. In the case of the crib, the qualities of the crib that are invoked are 1) the crib indexes a time when finances were tight; 2) the crib indexes a time when Mrs. Lewis was a young mother; 3) the crib indexes a time when her children were babies who teethed on the crib; 4) the crib indexes her move because saw the crushing of it as part of the dismantling of their possessions; and 5) the crib indexes intergenerational continuity as her grandchildren also used the crib within the last decade. For the daughter-in-law, the crib functions as a place for sleep, achieved by owning a pack-n-play. The utility and the change in safety standards, a changed context producing value incoherence according to Appadurai, are important qualities for Sarah. The crib does not have the same associations for the daughter-in-law, leading the crib and many other objects discussed in this project to be viewed as unimportant by adult kin and grandchildren. Memories are sometimes not known by the next generation. Even when they are known, they may not be valued or even if they are treasured, the next generation may not want to house them in their own homes.

Dismantling a Household: Packing up Possessions

Competing ideologies about ownership emerged in the packing of possessions. Packing up possessions happened everywhere in one’s home, from the basement to the attic, from the bedrooms currently used by the older persons to their children’s former bedrooms, and from the kitchen to living rooms. While the packing experiences involved decision making in every room, in this section, I focus on the mundane happenings of packing up a mud room.^1,2 A mud room’s ostensible purpose is to serve as a transition point, from the outside to the inside, from the community to the private world of one’s home. Sometimes, mud rooms contain laundry equipment and wash basins. In this interaction, there are ideologies at play about the material contents of this mundane space.

Mud rooms make homes, and their owners, distinct, in Bourdieuvian terms. Many homes of study participants did not have mud rooms; instead laundry was sorted and cleaned in basements and homes had less singularized space for transition. David Cullen (2003) suggests the commodifiability of such a mud room space. He writes, “You know what I’ve never seen in a mud room in a typical, fancy-schmancy house? Mud. There’s never any mud in mud rooms. All you ever find in mud rooms are sparkling clean tile floors and green, lace-up, rubber-soled shoes from L.L. Bean. But stick ‘mud room’ in your ‘House for Sale’ ad in the Sunday newspaper and you get to tack on another $5,000.” Having a mud room indexes a home of a higher socioeconomic value.

In addition to a space of “distinction,” this space serves as a safeguard in many ways. First, the room acts as a safeguard from making other areas of the house unclean. Second, the room provides a storage place for “just-in-case” items used to safeguard inhabitants, such as flashlights, replacement extension cords and light bulbs that help keep interior spaces functional. On the next pages are the photo and sketch of the mud room owned by Mr. and Mrs. Keith. The sketch shows the location and size of the space.

When I first asked them for a picture of their mud room, Mrs. Keith said that it never occurred to him to take a photo of it despite the fact that they took pictures of other rooms of their home. Mr. and Mrs. Keith sent me their sketch of the first floor with the mud room labeled as “laundry.” The following discourse between the couple and their daughter, Nancy, highlights, I argue, role transformation within a kin network.

During our packing of this mud room³, which lasted an entire afternoon, their daughter, Nancy, said to me repeatedly, “God, how many boxes of light bulbs do we have?” We also addressed collections of flashlights, ant spray, marbles for fresh cut flowers and ponchos. Mrs. Keith said to me, “The decisions are all agonizing. I’m almost to the point where (whispers) I could just throw it all away. A little later, she says, “I’m beginning to envy people who have left, or more, lost all their stuff, or they don’t have it anymore.” To which I replied, “Yeah, it’s like instantaneously gone.”

Nancy: This is one of my dad’s ones (less clear) parents, when you go through some of this stuff you learn something about your dad.

Researcher: Which is?

Nancy: Why would anybody need so many light bulbs?

Researcher: Yeah.

Nancy: Nobody needs this many light bulbs. Um,

Researcher: Yeah, but, it’s a big house, right, I mean, (laughter).

Nancy: It’s kinda like, how many things of ant spray do you need?

Researcher: Yeah.

Nancy: So, (name) and I finally figured out, you know what, when you’re not Worried about your budget,

Researcher: Yeah.

Nancy: and you think you need something’, you just get it. Yeah, you just get it again, and again, and again, again, again, again, again. Let’s see now, you’ve got enough paper? Okay I’m good.

Researcher: Do you think it’s also cause things go on sale, like you see some, a sale?

Nancy: No, no. He’s not a sale shopper, never has been, that’s me. …

Researcher: (Laughter). Wow, you got light bulbs.

Nancy: We have all these light bulbs, and none of them fit mom (addressing mother in distance).

Mrs. Keith: It’s like screws, (husband’s name) has a thousand screws, and never the right one.

Researcher: (Laughter).

Nancy: Well, I’m sorry, just put one in for now.

Mrs. Keith: I couldn’t find one that I…All these light bulbs, and I couldn’t find one.

Here, the daughter, Nancy explains to me that by seeing so many light bulbs, she better understands her father’s spending patterns. She says he is not a bargain shopper. He is just a continual buyer. Yet with light bulbs, suggested by the last line of this transcript, is that even if one has many light bulbs for specific spaces and configurations, you might still need more. In fact, in line 26, Mrs. Keith suggests that she still cannot find a light bulb that fits the intended lamp. During this part of the conversation, Mr. Keith is actually replacing light bulbs around the house while we pack up the light bulbs.

Daniel Miller (1998) in exploring shopping for provisions suggests, “what the shopper desires above all is for others to want to appreciate what she brings” (p. 149). In this case, it is Mr. Keith’s labor, as a purchaser of light bulbs and other emergency items, that is being analyzed by his daughter, and the objects he brings into the house work to construct his role as caretaker of the home he designed and built. This role will potentially change as he moves to senior living where he is no longer a home owner. However, as indicated later in the paper, caretaking of space takes on different practices in his new residence. While Nancy does not view her father as a bargain shopper, in a subsequent interview, he explained to me that at a local store, once a year, they send a brown paper bag in the mail and that anything a shopper buys that fits in the bag is priced forty percent off. He always got light bulbs.

Later in the conversation, we see that Mrs. Keith is saying that it is his job to sort through his collections.

Mrs. Keith: Those, dad has to see here cause those are his things. He LOVES flashlights along with other things.

Nancy: [Researcher] there’re more flash lights, I mean, more bulbs up here.

Researcher: Oh, great, okay, but these don’t go, you’re not worried about, like, bulbs that match the lamps you’re bringing or anything like that, right?

Mrs. Keith: Well, yes, I do have to, I don’t know what we’re gonna do about that.

Researcher: Okay.

Nancy: You will go to the store and buy them, when you need one. Right now, you just don’t need to pay to move ‘em. Think about that, how much does it cost you to pay to move this stuff, versus getting a new one when you get there? It probably costs you more to move them.

Researcher: I have thought about that.

Nancy: Oh, yeah, what about these bulbs?

Mrs. Keith: Yep.

Researcher: I’m gonna put ‘em in the box. I, I can put them in the box.

Nancy: She wants them in the container.

Researcher: Yeah I’ll put them in this box.

Nancy: I think it costs you more to move this stuff than it does to buy new ones.

Mrs. Keith seems to be protecting her husband’s belongings by not letting the sorting through them be expropriated to another person (lines 1–2). Also, there are no current worries about keeping light bulbs that fit in lamps that they currently own (lines 6). They are choosing to put them into circulation by way of an estate sale and will worry about whether they need bulbs in the future. Nancy tells her mother the plan, to buy new. Then when Nancy asks “oh, yeah, what about these bulbs” Mrs. Keith says, “yep.” Mrs. Keith’s protection of her husband’s collection is now noticeably absent. In Goffman’s framework, in addition to Mr. Keith, Mrs. Keith may also be analyzed to have experienced “role dispossession,” as her daughter assumes the role of disposer. Nancy is rather emphatic, saying earlier, “We have light bulb stores in Springfield,”⁴ the town where the couple is moving to reside two miles away from their daughter.

Mrs. Keith: So, let’s sell the light bulbs, how ‘bout we sell the light bulbs?

Nancy: Dad, you can, you can buy new ones, we have light bulb stores in, in (Springfield).

Mrs. Keith: We’re not moving the light bulbs.

Researcher: Well, also, they’re supposed to change the light bulbs.

Nancy: That’s right, in your lamps.

Mrs. Keith: (Laughter) I can’t imagine calling Ray and saying, “Ray, I need you to change a light bulb.”

An additional reason for selling the light bulbs emerge aside from the availability of bulbs in the new town. In the near future they are relocating to a retirement village in the Midwest. Besides paying for their residential unit, their fees include exterior maintenance like lawn care and snow removal and interior maintenance, including the changing of light bulbs.

The interplay of subjects and objects in the moving processes can be interrogated according to cohort and sociohistorical contexts. Here is a page from the American Association of Retired Persons website⁵ in the Preparing Your Home Section:

The authors draw out the connection between light and safety, perhaps to emphasize that lighting serves as a talisman against predators and personal injury. In fact, lighting is one of the criteria for assessing safety of older persons’ homes. One who is responsible for the maintenance of the light bulbs of the home acts as a protector. As the older persons in my study were often homeowners for decades, maintaining the safety features in their homes was one of the jobs.

These roles, however, were subject to change. Through the ownership and then, dispossession of light bulbs, role dispossession also occurs as semiotic ideologies about ownership, excess and availability of commodities (e.g., replacement light bulbs) are at play. Responsibilities for maintenance have shifted to another, in this case, an institutional stakeholder. Additionally social roles of protector or care of a home’s inhabitants, supported by well-lit spaces, are also relinquished, though perhaps not entirely.

Redefining Roles in Redefined Spaces: Kinship and Light bulbs

This negotiation that is taking place is entering unchartered territory for this family. However, it is important to note that understanding this space as domestic, as opposed to public, matters in this negotiation. It is a moment of transition, in this space of transition. But I argue that the negotiations taking place here, an unremarkable event in an unremarkable space, present several ways of “knowing your place.”⁶ A person can “know a place” in a few ways. First, knowing one’s place can refer to learning one’s roles in a family after a move to senior living. Mr. Keith’s role of maintaining his family’s objects in their domestic space is transitioning in the moving process. Nancy, coming twice per month to stay for an entire week to help, has given a lot of her time to the move. She is transitioning the adult child’s role from assisting to asserting, in David Ekerdt’s terms, in the decisions being made about the move (2006). She is also preparing to help her parents in the future, when they will need more assistance in other areas of their lives. Second, the Keiths are changing physical spaces, from the place they built and maintained to a retirement community, where others provide maintenance. Mr. Keith’s maintenance role will be reduced, if not relinquished due to the type of residence and community that they have selected to move into. Third, they are entering into a new life stage. Marcoux (2000) argues that divestment is a type of investment (p. 219). More specifically, it can be considered an investment when the objects contribute to the treasuring of a person’s memory. Not every object one owns can have that importance. In this case, the light bulbs are not functioning semiotically to index the memory of Mr. Keith using Marcoux’s framework. Instead, they function semiotically to index changes in roles within his domestic space. I also suggest that even when older persons are moving, as demonstrated in this case, they may not be in complete control of the divestment process.

Scholars analyzing the circulation and meaning of objects have suggested a collection might represent other things, like consumer habits, kinship network role redefinition, and feeling weighed down by objects. For the latter, Nancy Munn’s (1986) work on yam storage in Gawa is a useful lens. She suggests that collections of yams vary by typology, those for seeding for the next crop, those for daily consumption, and those for visitors (p. 54). The visitors receive the best yams of the harvest and, she writes, “the model of excess is especially important, as we might expect, in connection with Gawa’s overseas hospitality. For visitors to be able to eat their fill, and yet to see at the same time that there is plenty left over—that there is much food that is rubbish on Gawa—is an ideal image of their community that Gawans would like to have broadcast overseas” (p. 88).

In many ways, the sheer quantity of objects in older adult American households⁷ also provides opportunity for rot, as items put away in basements and attics were often discovered damaged as the study participants and I were planning to pack or sell them. The possibility for “rot” sends the same message: we have enough and there is more than enough left over. In a way, excess represents a vigilance in accumulation. In contrast to the Gawan example, not all study participants viewed excess in the same way. A daughter’s view of the light bulbs sharply contrasts her father’s view of the purpose of ownership of light bulbs.

Lastly, “knowing your place” refers to a relationship of a subject to a space, and what it means to own objects and spaces. Mr. Keith is a particularly good example of a craftsman who custom built his home, to the detail of the wood beams and the mirrors. This may reflect a certain socioeconomic background, as not everyone has the resources to build their own home. However, variation of expertise and appreciation of one who “knows their place” exists despite socioeconomic resources. As the son of a carpenter, Mr. Keith lovingly planned for every beam of his home. He brings his knowledge to his new space. Mr. Keith’s adjustment is also impacted by his “knowing your place” expertise. His light bulb collection, like Christopher Tilley’s examination of netbags, serve as “material repositories of knowledge” (1999, p. 62).

In general, the packing up of one’s possessions proved to be strenuous for many study participants. Their possessions were part of their identities and to part ways, at times, was emotional. Emotion was exhibited in conversations cited earlier about baby cribs of now grown children and art collected by a beloved partner. In other cases, the sheer amount of items in a home caused some to be less sentimental. The owners wanted to finish the job of packing all the items and did not wish to explore the emotional connections to so many items.

Redefining Roles in Redefined Spaces: Is this senior living?

If role dispossession occurred through both the purging and packing of items, there was another way space was redefined. Space was redefined through the questioning of whether certain items or features in a new home would be considered appropriate for older adults. In other words, how do the indexical links between objects and places and their owners change and possibly reduce the field of available links as people age? This occurred when older adults wondered if certain architectural features should be found in places constructed for the wellbeing of seniors. Or whether after moving, there were certain ways of navigating spaces that could be construed as mismatched with an idea of senior living.

For example, the presence use of stools became a questionable practice for some of the residents of moving to several different senior living communities. Thus, based on a particular semiotic ideology, stools, did not seem indexically linked in an appropriate way to residences of older adults. Older adults in the study who had brought stools for their bar areas or foldable stools to be placed in closets expressed shock at the need to use stools to reach items in their kitchen. When I entered a senior living community out of the state, of one study participant, Mrs. Ash, who moved nonlocally, the first thing she pointed out to me was that she was unable to reach some of the items in her kitchen cabinets. In the photo below, there are no objects placed on the top shelf of her kitchen.

She does however, store a small stool in case she needs to reach items. At age 91 at the time of her move, she is concerned about the hazards that would accompany falls. Another study participant, Mrs. Chaney, also expressed her concern about the objects on the kitchen shelves.

Mrs. Chaney: I have a stool…that I bring in and I go up and get my things.

Researcher: In your old house, did you have cabinets you couldn’t reach?

Mrs. Chaney: No…a few inches down would make a difference.

Researcher: Do you think about it every time you’re getting things?

Mrs. Chaney: Of course.

Mrs. Ash, Mrs. Chaney and others raised the issue of using stools with me, which leads to the question of unexpected features of senior living. They did not expect to need to use stools to access their belongings, citing concerns of safety in climbing stools. Falls are, in general, a key concern of older adults, given the potential for broken bones and other health implications and mortality⁸ from falling for older adults. When barrier-free environments, or environments that promote accessibility, are marketed, they are usually conceptualized in terms of width of doorways. The verticality of accessibility is not often addressed. Only one person, Mrs. Jackson, who has been wheelchair-bound since she was seventeen, requested that her cabinets be lowered three inches to allow to her easily reach the items on the shelves. While the others mentioned above do not use assistive devices, they could have also benefited from a vertical redesign. The two choices faced by the others are either to abstain from using the top shelf or to use a stool to reach the items stored on the top shelf. Nevertheless, they did not think stools, belonged in a home of an older adult. The photo below shows how the stool is used in the home, despite the mismatch between object and home.

One study participant, Mrs. Rogers did not wish to bring stools into her new space and consciously did not plan to use them. She questioned why a bar at the kitchen island would be a part of a senior living space. She felt that the use of stools for seating, not climbing like others mentioned above, to be stored under the bar was not good for older persons. When I visited her at her original home where she functioned with a walker and cane at different times, she had chairs or stools strategically placed around her house, such as in a large bathroom, halfway between the shower and the sink to support her navigation of the bathroom. Also, in the kitchen, she had a stool to rest on while chopping vegetables. But in her new residence, she was adamant that she did not want to have stools. In the planning stages regarding the furniture for the house, her family members had made cutouts of her existing furniture and furniture to be purchased in the future. Her son, Sam, brought the cutouts with him, rolled up in his car trunk, on the day they were planning the new house space.

Sam, his mother, and I carefully laid out all the pieces of furniture, including the proposed table yet to be bought; they planned for a table, rather than a purchase of stools. As Ms. Rogers was also experiencing macular degeneration, navigation of her furniture pieces was prioritized, visualizing her pathways throughout the entire house and the use of different pieces of furniture for stability.

Based on the height of countertop, she and her son decided to purchase a new table that could be placed under the counter to act as a dining table, at which she would sit on chairs rather than stools. She planned for this, first in two-d cutouts created by her son to make sure the table would fit.

Mrs. Rogers placed a different object, a table in the place where stools could go as designed by the retirement community, as a reevaluation of the indexical link of stools and senior living. Her options for seating were purposeful, by not packing a stool from her other house to be moved. In this example, the semiotic ideologies about an object (e.g., stools) and the use of stool as a practice are explicitly identified by older adults repeatedly.

Redefining Roles in Redefined Spaces: Transition From Home Owner to Renter

One of the adjustments many older adults had to consider is the transition from being a home owner to being a renter that can occur with moving to a retirement community. For those who moved to condos or smaller homes, this identity shift did not occur to the same degree although often with condo ownership, exterior maintenance and choices of lawn foliage may be conducted by the home owner’s association rather than the individual owner.

One day after their move, I visited Mr. and Mrs. James. Mr. James showed me the new flat screen above the fireplace and explained how he had been arranging cable television hookup. Meanwhile, Mrs. James said that she would join us shortly as she was kneeling on the ground, caulking the grout in the bathroom. When she showed me her project, she clarified that she was almost finished caulking both bathrooms and the kitchen tiles. I was surprised by the initiative since they were not homeowners at their new space. Being renters of housing units where maintenance-free living was advertised as a reason for moving, I was puzzled by the physical labor Mrs. James was exerting, as well as the care she was taking for the new space. The care for fellow residents mentioned above translated to physical spaces as well for Mrs. James, the same woman who often brought banana bread to welcome new residents. After being homeowners for so many years, the older adults in this study found creative ways to care for the physical spaces that they moved into.

After many years of taking care of the grounds of his home, Mr. Keith found himself in a controversy over spatial maintenance. The transfer of control over one’s space to an institutional entity could lead to struggles over the upkeep of grounds as well as the interior spaces. In the transcript below, he recounts his situation.

Mr. Keith: I was chastised

Researcher: What are you talking about?

Mr. Keith: For picking up the debris. Because the agreement with the village is that this will be virginal (unclear) timber.

Researcher: Oh where it drops, it falls.

Mrs. Keith: Yeah.

Mr. Keith: Right.

Mrs. Keith: It’s gotta rot where it falls.

Mr. Keith: Which is, makes it look like a garbage pile.

Researcher: Ohhh.

Mr. Keith: Now I have nothing against letting things grow on their own, except

Mrs. Keith: (unclear – Mr. Keith is speaking over her)

Mr. Keith: They want us to grow, grow poison ivy and I’m against that because that is a health hazard. And I think health hazards trump vir virginity

Researcher: (laughter)

Mr. Keith: In the forest. (Laughter).

Mr. Keith expresses a number of concerns here. First, to someone who has always prided himself on maintaining his home and yard meticulously, the appearance of the “debris” looks like a “garbage pile.” He brings in the example of poison ivy, which is also growing unencumbered. He thinks that the approach of the retirement community is potentially unhealthy. The link he makes between health and disorder may add strength to his concern.

Later in the conversation, he suggests that outsiders notice this policy in action and the community is becoming “famous,” in Nancy Munn’s terms, for it. Munn (1986) explores the way that fame is created when others hear of the wealth or in this case, misfortune of others as material objects circulate operating as signs of prosperity.

Mrs. Keith: To me, he’s made such a huge issue out of it.

Mr. Keith: No, to her, she didn’t wanna bother with it. Didn’t even, she picked up twice, she picked up some twigs.

Researcher: Yeah.

Mr. Keith: I did it for months

Mrs. Keith: No, if they don’t want us to pick them up, okay. I, I’m sorry but I live in this community. I have to look at this community. Others look at this community. had people comment, you know, is it that (Name of Community)’s run out of money, how come

And lastly, Mrs. Keith relates it to concerns of autonomy, which, Mr. Keith emphasizes, is an adjustment in communal living. Socializing is often a marketed feature of senior living. When socializing includes walking with friends through the community and picking up debris of fallen branches, following the community’s rules on grounds keeping is a potential mortification process. Abiding by the community’s rules becomes an example of a way to give up one’s self.

Another botanical example also illustrates the concept of dispossession of roles and responsibilities. During my fieldwork, I had many conversations detailing the sadness in giving away or downsizing their tool collections. While they were planning to give them away because they would not be in the business of fixing things any longer, giving their tools away was also about giving up control of the maintenance of their homes’ exterior spaces.

In retirement communities where painting and landscaping in front yards, hanging baskets could serve as a way for residents to display their gardening prowess and individualize their living units. But in one discussion of what the hanging basket policy of a new retirement community would be, it became apparent that some people strongly wanted hanging baskets while others were concerned about those people, who think they are good gardeners but then, really, will let their plants wither and die. Mrs. Cooper, who strongly wanted to be able to create her own hanging baskets, offered to form a committee to water and nurture everyone’s hanging baskets in the neighborhood. In later discussions of community members as they developed policies, she would ask if grass was even necessary at all in the back yards, where residents are given more leeway to tinker a bit in the garden beds. In the end, hanging baskets were not approved, because they might not maintain the integrity and homogeneity of the community. Attempts at individuality and creativity were restrained in support of an ideology of aesthetic identicality. One reason raised in discussion was that everyone might begin by caring for their baskets, but then get sick, or travel, or simply neglect the baskets.

Perhaps by not having such individualized displays at the fronts of the cottages, complaints about unkempt baskets were possibly avoided. Certainly residents stylized their interior spaces, and their back patios and gardens. But their discussions on this policy indicated that sometimes people chose senior living because the exterior would be maintained to ensure similarity. Additionally staff members, professionals entrusted with this task, would execute these assurances, not the residents themselves. Similar to Mr. Keith’s concern about the clearing of debris, moving to a community where residences and property are maintained is valued. Mr. Keith looked to management for their hands-on maintenance, even taking matters into his own hand when not cleared in a timely fashion. In the case of the hanging baskets, some residents were disappointed by this policy as they wanted to maintain their plants themselves. One resident did put out potted plants and whispered to me that she hoped they would be okay on her front porch. She was not sure if the policy extended to potted plants.

At issue here are also semiotic ideologies associated with public as opposed to private space. In Living and Dying in Murray Manor, Jaber Gubrium (1975) documents some other aspects of institutional living. First, he shows the changing ideas of public and private space. This ethnographic work supports Susan Gal’s (1995) assertion that public and private space can be both nested and negotiated. He argues that sleep is considered an activity that can happen in both public and private spaces. When clients sleep in the lounge or dining room, it is termed “dozing” and can be disturbed (180). However, sleeping in one’s room means the clients are not to be disturbed. In other words, the same practices can be interpreted in different ways, depending on the locations in which they take place. This classic nursing home study looms as an important work in documenting the trajectories of personhood in long-term care facilities.

In this instance, depending on location, the gardening practices of residents are either valued when taking place in the back yard, or seen as potentially fragile when taking place in the front, as shown in the reason for the policy against front-yard baskets (that some residents might become ill and unable to care for their plants). Also note the ambiguous nature of vertical uncertainty: if hanging baskets are not permitted but potted plants in the same location were permitted, the difference would be the height at which the plant maintains its growth.

Redefining Roles in Redefined Spaces: Community Membership

As older adults in this study moved to less demanding living environments, some encountered unexpected adjustments to their new living situations. For some, living with age-graded peers had not occurred since college dormitory or military experiences. In the interim, many had been homeowners of single-family dwellings where they were responsible for the interior and exterior maintenance of their homes as well as the activities that occurred within those spaces. For those study participants who moved to retirement communities, it is important to understand what was unexpected, especially since these voluntary movers evaluated their living options as they planned their moves. Kin also experienced adjustments after the moves. The meanings of living with age-graded peers also became more clear after moving.

Moving served as a time for older adults and their kin to examine their roles and relationships, and anticipate role transformation. For example, in an interview with Mrs. Chaney and Mr. Chaney conducted after they moved to the retirement community. Mrs. Chaney reflects on a potential obligation to other residents that may not have been considered before moving. Below is an excerpt from an interview.

Mrs. Chaney: There is a drawback.

Researcher: Okay

Mrs. Chaney: And uh what the draw back is that—well, just, it must have been two Weeks ago—I was taking the dogs out and I saw this fire truck coming

Researcher: Uh huh

Mrs. Chaney: in, and I thought, “What in the world.” So I put the dogs in the house. It was the fire rescue truck.

Mr. Chaney: Up around the corner and across the parking lot from the club house.

Mrs. Chaney: The house next to (Name) and I don’t know what was the problem there. (Name) came out too, and she had her housecoat on and She was barefoot, and she’s walking towards me and I’m walking towards her, and it’s a cold night.

Mrs. Chaney: And uh she said you know, “should we go over there or uh what Should we do?” I don’t know maybe we should call somebody from—

Researcher: (Name of Retirement Community)

Mrs. Chaney: (Name of Retirement Community), but I assumed that they knew because of the—

Researcher: Ah huh

Mrs. Chaney: And um she said, “You know that’s the one drawback of staying in (Name of Retirement Community) was that’ll happen–It’ll be happening a lot.

Mr. Chaney: With older people.

Mrs. Chaney: With older people–

Researcher: So if everyone is older—?

Mrs. Chaney: Yeah

Researcher: Okay

Mrs. Chaney: And—because this community is a small one.

Researcher: Yeah

Mrs. Chaney: You’re going to know everybody.

Researcher: Yeah, yeah

Mrs. Chaney: And become involved with everybody.

Researcher: Right, right

Mrs. Chaney: So—and you know–in other words, care for everyone.

Researcher: Right, right.

Mrs. Chaney: So it’s um–it’s something that’s—

Researcher: Something to think about.

In this interview, Mr. and Mrs. Chaney come to terms with obligations of care that may come with residing in a retirement community. In my fieldwork, I saw care taken to give rides to others in the community, treats baked to welcome new neighbors and active efforts to involve others in social activities. While experiences of role dispossession are analyzed in this transition, it is also important to acknowledge the new roles are added and redefined. New meanings of being a neighbor in older adult hood could have both concern for ailing health as well as having more time, if not formally engaged in the workforce, to attend to the needs of others. Overall, I witnessed and heard about many acts of kindness among neighbors; thus the adjustment of social roles did not result in hesitation to become involved with community members. In other words, new practices would develop based on new meanings attached to living spaces in age-graded communities.

Discussion

I have documented the transformations experienced before and after moving. Some older adults struggled with the accompanying role redefinitions of the move. Others embraced the additional time they gained to direct toward other interests. With the narrowing of possessions, semiotic processes may occur, changing the meanings of objects, spaces and relationships. Only as they unfold in the future will the tradeoffs between benefits and disadvantages become apparent.

The transformations may also trigger different types of anxieties for older adults. It was rare that an older adult did not seem concerned or anxious about the packing process. The anxieties associated with the decisions about the numerous objects provoked a lot of worry, including anxiety about getting good prices for items, checking whether adult children were interested in certain items, getting items to adult children if they were interested and tax deductions for donations. Another set of concerns centered on anxieties about moving resulting from financial concerns. For those who wished to relocate, but could not, other anxieties may surround not having a plan in place for the future.

There may be other anxieties related to the processes of moving. In fact, other anxieties embedded in examining one’s material possessions may be present–for instance, the beginnings of mental illness, e.g. dementia, at the root of gathering so many objects of one category such as light bulbs (Philips 2012).⁹ Sometimes, additional items are purchased because one cannot remember whether one purchased them previously. In the case of Mr. Keith, he told me that it was the sale at the local store that prompted his accumulation of light bulbs, and after multiple interactions with the Keiths, does not signify early dementia. However, in other situations the accumulation might display or index the initial progression of a disease.¹⁰ The act of light bulb ownership in one setting is indicative of spatial stewardship; in another, could be seen as pathological, or unnecessary given role dispossession. On the other hand, Susan Gal (personal communication) suggested that the anxiety might be structured around concerns of mobility, that accumulation may index a worry that one’s mobility or ability to shop for more items might be diminished in the future. The accessibility of older adults’ homes to shopping is a concern among many urban planners, and environmental gerontologists. There may be also an underlying anxiety about dependency, needing to ask others to help with shopping. There may also be anxiety when kin may not be available to help with shopping¹¹ or kin relations may not be cemented such that they would want to help with shopping and other activities of daily living

Conclusion

This study enhances our understanding of semiotics in three ways. First, in tracing role transformations, before and after relocation in the Midwestern United States, a semiotic approach offers opportunity to examine ways roles may be dispossessed and added in contemporary contexts. Second, roles do not readjust after a move, but along the way, in the packing and discarding of objects, in the creating of policies and in observing peer living. Moving to spaces where “management” is a stakeholder, can be both welcome and disconcerting. However, since these relocations were voluntary, study participants weighed the benefits of moving with remaining in their current spaces that could be difficult to maintain and navigate. Third, this paper presents case studies set in the current long-term care landscape, where variety of residential spaces in continuums of care (independent living, assisted living, skilled nursing facilities) elicit different types of transformations, informed possibly by unique sets of semiotic ideologies and practices. This study shows that these transformations represent differing regimes of value, some within kin networks informed by intergenerational differences on ownership, consumption, and accumulation. They could also be informed by differences in perceived mobility, based on one’s health or available transportation modes.

Gerontological scholars have investigated relocation have in terms of triggering events such as health or death of a spouse (Wiseman, 1980), types of moves such as amenity moves, moves near kin and institutional moves (Litwak & Longino, 1987) and interactions between one environment and an individual’s physical and cognitive abilities (Lawton & Nahemow, 1973; Wahl and Oswald, 2010). Analyzing relocation from a semiotic perspective enhances the literature on household disbandment processes and place-making skills (Ekerdt 2006; Luborsky et al. 2011; Rowles & Watkins, 2003) because the analysis calls attention to the detailed social interactions that inform these processes. Regimes of values based on competing semiotic ideologies are experientially grounded with role transformations as potential consequences. The roles of older adults and kin as well as older adults in institutional frames deepen our understanding of continuity, disruptions and the labor involved in the moving processes. A semiotic lens that highlights otherwise overlooked socially significant practices may help pave the way for families and professionals to support older adults in the process of moving, as well as help older adults understand what’s at stake in moving.

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Mud room in Relation to House

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Lighting Home for Safety

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Mud room

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High Cabinet Shelves in Senior Living

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Cutouts of Furniture Rolled up in the Trunk

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Cutout of Table