Abstract
This chapter reflects on an ethnography in salsa classes undertaken to explore the intersections between gender, ageing and wellbeing among women in midlife. I explore what the combination of participant observation with a focus on the sensory, and life history interviews, produced and contributed towards the understanding of what it meant to age well. Concepts of respectability and safety were interwoven with understandings of wellness and age, and ageing well meant ageing differently, to their past selves and to the generation of women before them. Stepping away from spaces normally associated with health research, and from biomedical framings of life stages, enabled an exploration of the dynamic and situated nature of what counts as being well, what might threaten this and how understandings of health, gender and ageing change over time.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Ethnographies and Health: Reflections on Empirical and Methodological Entanglements |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
| Pages | 141-157 |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2018 |