Doświadczenie starości seniorek i seniorów z terenów wiejskich Beskidu Sądeckiego

Abstract

The work deals with the problem of experience of old age by seniors living in rural areas of Beskid Sądecki. Issues are focused around different planes/spaces (for example, daily life, family, village community, religion, memory of the past, conditions of life in the countryside) constituting a person's life in the final stage of life, taking into account the socio-cultural context. The dissertation consists of five essential parts: In the first part of the work, I have analyzed the problems focused on historical and definitive decisions concerning key concepts for this dissertation, such as old age, experience, everyday life, reflective thinking. In the second part of the work, I have characterized the rural environment and its related conditions. I have made this description in the context of the various planes connected with the existence of old people, family, local community. The third part is a presentation of methodological aspects of own researches. I justified here the accepted procedure of qualitative research and the choice of the biographical method. I also presented the subject matter of research, goals, research issues, and content analysis methods. Additionally, I made the characteristics of the rural areas of the Beskid Sądecki - the area of my empirical research - and the people who constitute my research group. The fourth part of the work is focused on issues related to Sądecczyzna. I showed in it the specificity of this region, its culture, beliefs, and tradition, and I described the population of this area. The fifth part is the analysis of empirical research along with the presented models of interpretation. I have identified five models of old age experience: a model of old age entangled in fear; model of praise and criticism of old age; model of religiosity, spirituality and transcendence; memory model of what is important and worth remembering; model of "being-in-country-world" based on the narratives of the old participants of my studies in the Sądecczyzna region. Such a procedure of ordering and presenting the analysis of the empirical material has allowed me to express in a concrete and substantive way the specificity of the phenomenon I was investigating. The narrative content - shaped reflection on the past, present, future, and individual and collective experiences, the sense and significance attributed to them, the ways of describing relationships with space, significant people, place, home - was my starting point for creating an image of old age seniors living in the rural area of Beskid Sądecki. This image, as it turned out, was determined by the broad socio-cultural contexts associated with the specificity of their space of life. The rich tradition of this region, customs, beliefs, and some sort of mental habits permeated to the personal world of meanings of my interlocutors, implying thoughts and motives for action.