경로당 노인의 일상과 사회문화적 관계:전라북도 전주시의 아파트 경로당 사례

Abstract

This paper is aimed to study old people’s social relations, cultural rules and conflict patterns based on their every day life in a hall for the aged. As for the old today, the social life in the hall is also important as much as the life of their families or relatives. As for the eticperspective, the old are likely to be seen as a negative, simple, and homogenous group. Through this study with the emicperspective, however, I have studied how the old make a relation each other, what kind of values and rules they use to communicate, and what characteristics they have in the way of revealing their conflicts. As a result, I have found that the old have 1) active and positive attitudes toward every day life in a hall of the aged, 2) social relations with complex cultural values and norms involving egalitarian emotions, 3) not homogenous but dynamic features which cause divisions and conflicts of classes, gender, and generation having formed since the past. Finally, in this paper, I suggest that the division by gender and generation is a crucial cause of conflict as well as an important variable which forms old people’s social network in a hall for the aged, while the stratum consciousness stemmed from the social division doesn’t have much influence on building it up. I’m expecting that the emicperspective to understand old people’s desires will be constructively helpful to resolve their multidimensional problems.