Self-transformation and Re-engagement of the Elderly People in Risky Peri-urban Chiang Mai

Abstract

In a peri-urban area situation, which is one characterized by rural-urban interpenetration, changes are in progress owing to the on-going urbanization process. This study attempted to investigate what happened to the local elderly people, especially the young-olds, or elderly people aged 60-75, how they fared within such a context. The study involved observation, participation, casual conversations, inquiries, and in-depth interviews with 13 informants. It was found that changes in Rim Wiang mainly worked to affect the elderly people in multiple ways. Previously, they had lived in a rather inward-looking community where they were closely related to one another through traditional mechanisms. However, in the current of the on-going urbanization process, the elderly people found themselves encountering several changes as a result of such changes. Under the circumstances, they were largely impacted in such a way that those changes adversely affected the sustainment of their normal lives, putting them at risk of life’s insecurity in their old age. Such risk led to their adaptation through their re-engagement, by means of various strategies. The study found that their re-engagement was likely to be rooted in several factors including health, economic status, fear of becoming companionless, gender, and, most important of all, network mix. Their re-engagement spontaneously shifted them into a new social re-configuration where, at one end, the elderly people could be couched as ones with their close-knit work as a pivotal network and, at the other end, the elderly could be couched as ones with their loose-knit networks as the pivotal networks. In the close-knit network, the elderly people’s relationships could be mainly characterized by expressive ties while the networks of the elderly people of the latter group were mainly characterized by instrumental ties. This study found that the elderly people with a network mix of expressive ties and instrumental ties experienced their re-engagement differently. Those with a network mix of expressive networks as pivotal networks were likely to re-engage themselves within the community while those with a network mix of instrumental ties as pivotal networks were likely to re-engage themselves externally. Simultaneously, their selves were seen to have transformed from one state to another in the process as they proceeded from relaxed country folk to actively connective folk so as to live as normal members of society within such a rural-urban context.