Olhares sobre o envelhecer: uma leitura de gênero no centro de Santa Maria

Abstract

Perspectives on the aging falls within the field of aging studies as one of many ways to look at, and think about, the various possibilities of living the old age, from a reading of gender in the center of Santa Maria. This is a qualitative survey conducted for eleven months, which used techniques such as participant observation, some formal interviews and, predominantly, informal interviews/conversations. The theme of this research relates to the representations and meanings of signals that define bodies and subjects identified as old. I understand that the way men aged 60 years or more produce meanings about aging is part of a field, dynamic and conflicting, of practices and discourses production that allow subjects recognition and grouping identified as old or not from certain physical laws. In this sense, the different ways to classify the subjects and the meaning they acquire to define ways of aging have implications on how different actors act against human aging. Old age, as age category, has served to classify people of a certain age as belonging to this age group and thus, identifying them as old people. However, classifying people who are in the same age group from a homogeneous category as "the" old age becomes very problematic, since despises the complex differences that exist within the group of subjects identified as old, besides the fact that anyone will hardly recognize himself as old, because the old age is always associated with decay, sickness, senility and the proximity to death. Therefore, I propose a reading of gender to understand how the ways of being men and women and different social constructions of male and female make the representations and practices of men with regard to aging. In this sense, the gender knowledge do not only creates meanings about men and women relations, but also organizes the sociability spaces as gendered spaces. I propose to understand, therefore, that the grammar of space set the center as a public space of men's everyday sociability, as a principle of the sexual vision and division of the world, which form a system of perception, thought and action categories, and allows to bring into play values and images of aging from the humor expressed in jokes and in conversations imbued with playfulness about body and sexuality. Sexuality, in this context, becomes an important tool to understand how a series of body condition confirm when someone may be considered old. I intend to demonstrate how the body marks, which define the capacity for sexual activity - represented by the erection - report on the representations of what is considered being old or not. This is how I seek to grasp how sexuality becomes, in the context of the city center, one element among many others, to understand how these men are meaning aging.