The Sinhalese Perspective of Old Age; a Sociological Analysis

Abstract

Sri Lanka is unique as the fastest aging nation in South Asia with its regionally unparalleled indicators of social development. Social gerontological theory proposes ageing as a socially constructed entity varying across cultures. Adopting the new paradigm of anthropology which posits culture as a totality actively constructed by the human actors, the study captured the socially constructed culturally specific experiences of Sinhalese old age. Dimensions of elderly experience analyzed in the study include elderly activity, religiosity, attitudes, coping and successful aging, elderly problems and issues of welfare. The study focused on the elderly experiences both in the spheres of family and work, and was sensitive to diversity of experiences across gender, age and cultural- ecological settings. This research employed a mixed method approach. The qualitative component of the study employed cultural domain analysis utilized the techniques of free listing and pile sorting (N= 100) aimed at capturing the cultural meaning of ‘being old’. In addition, sixty in-depth qualitative interviews were carried out in 5 selected communities. The quantitative data were collected in a survey of 400 elders (N=400) in households randomly selected from the five cultural geographical zones of urban, semi-urban, estate, rural/traditional villages and agricultural colonization schemes in the Districts of Colombo, Kalutara, and Rathnapura. Cultural domain analysis enabled finding 68 culturally meaningful traits and five elder types namely ‘family oriented positive’, ‘predominantly religious’, ‘active and integrated’ , ‘sick and disintegrated’ and ‘life style elders.’ Elderly experience pertaining to said fields of analysis is reflective of variations pertaining to gender, age and culturalecological zones. The patterns of engagement and disengagement varied across the living sectors. Majority of elders were active in their old age. Disengagement was a process in which activities were replaced and shadowed meaningfully. Majority of Sinhalese elders show a high level of religiosity with sector wise variations. Female elders were more religious and were more emotionally involved with the religion compared to male counterparts. Religion is one of the most prominent coping mechanism and key means of maintaining solidarity among elders. Elders show a vast attitudinal diversity as some elder attitudes changed on the basis of living sector and gender. This study strongly suggests that all elderly problems are closely bound with their living socio-cultural and physical environment, and whatever the approaches for resolution of elder-related problems should be sensitive to the ecological setting they live in. Clear majority of problems impact more on female elders. Elderly experience suggests that strengthening the family economy and, inter and intra- familial relations and community based welfare should be considered as an integral parts of Sinhalese culture based elderly welfare. The Sinhalese experience of aging stands in contrast to the Western model of ‘new ageing’ as the two models view embodiment of old age differently. The Sinhalese old age is a phenomenon highly integrated with family and community which is considerably distant to the ‘ageing’ in Western, modernized world.