In this chapter, the lives of a few older persons living in the Vineyard region are presented. After explaining how interviews were carried out and the life stories collected and analysed, and sketching the sociocultural environment of the Vineyard region, the chapter presents six short case studies, that of three women, two men and a married couple, that is, seven persons. For each person, I present their current situations and living arrangements and the transformation of their convoy of care during two and a half years. On this basis, I characterise their unique developmental trajectory: where do they come from, what did they live through? What ruptures and transitions did they experience, what resources did they find and what did they learn from them? What are their interest and engagements and how did they evolve with time? How much do they remember and imagine? What can we say about their domains of conduct and their reconfiguration over time? How, from there, can we see a unique life trajectory, a singular melody emerging from each of these lives, unfolding in the same region?

This chapter operates in four main movements. First, it presents the Vineyard region: its geographical features, its political organisation, its demography and the inhabitants, and a few relevant facts about its cultural history that help situate its current transformation. Second, it presents the genesis of the new ‘medico-social plan’ that frames the policies of housing and ageing in the region and thus reshapes the landscape of care. Third, it retraces the movements of its recent evolution, from its planning to its implementations, with its various setbacks. The dialogical position of the researchers, and their potential role in these changes, are finally discussed. A short synthesis closes the chapter.

In this chapter, the lives of persons are put in dialogue with the transformation of the Vineyard region, thus highlighting complex transactions. How did changes in policies affect daily interactions in which older persons live, or the possibilities open to them when experiencing ruptures? How could they, in turn, draw on their experience to participate in daily arrangements or social transformations? And finally, what does it mean to be involved, as researchers, in some of these dynamics? This chapter reflects on the dialogical case study perspective chosen to approach ageing in the Vineyard region. It first examines how propositions, voices or perspectives emitted sociogenetically, shape or enter in dialogue at the other levels, and how ontogenetic or microgenetic dynamics are expressing or shaped by other dynamics. It then focuses on dialogues, misunderstandings, blind spots and tensions in such a complex case. Finally, it shows how, as researchers, we participated in this regional dialogue via an art-based method – theatre – that could be seen as a dialogical catalyst.

Over the years, and at the margin of psychology, there have been interesting and original lines of reflections on ageing based on careful observations of older people’s lives in their environment. First, the environment came to the fore in approaches developed in dialogue with geography, which started to apprehend it as a landscape of care. Second, ethnographies of ageing gave in-depth understanding of development in age in more or less supportive, more or less formal environments. Third, psychoanalysis developed its reflection on ageing as it saw its steady change. It has theorised the specificities of the ageing psyche, while showing its multiple determinations. Put together, these three lines of studies pave the way for a rich, case-study based approach to development in older age, where people are understood as deeply related to the evolving environments in which they live.

This introductory chapter presents the paradoxical status of ageing today: most people wish to live long, yet nobody really wants to get old… Ageing still appears as a scary, unknown country. The present book, concluding almost ten years of research on ageing, aspires to bring a fresh look on what becoming older may entail. It has a double aim. First, as a basic goal, it proposes a new theory of psychological development in older age. Second, it highlights the importance of the environments in which people age, and the role of well-thought-out policies to support development with age; it has thus a more applied goal. This introductory chapter then presents the outline of the volume.

This final chapter proposes a more reflective stance on the overall project of a regional, dialogical case study and considers the many ways by which it can be said to be dialogical. First, it recalls that research itself is always emerging as part of many collaborative dialogues around a theme, which itself can be evolving over time. Second, it highlights that a regional case study entails per definition a collective dialogue with a region and its actors, often beyond the specific project itself. Third, it summarises the deliberate use of techniques mobilised to catalyse dialogue with the region – here, participatory and art-based methods, among others. It also clarifies the type of intervention led when adopting a dialogical epistemological and ethical stance. Finally, the chapter closes with the more general implications of the present study to reflect upon dialogical approaches.

Avoiding the normative language of ’successful’ or ’positive’ ageing, this book suggests that the quality of life of older persons is related to whether they can pursue their engagements, maintain the social relationships they find suitable and find a satisfying evolution of their dynamic patterns while supporting an orientation to the future. This chapter suggests that a changing landscape of care is likely to constitute a landscape of affordances for older persons, from which they can draw resources to support their development. It then reflects on the issues of moving house as part of the dynamics of ageing in place; moving may actually be part of developmental dynamics. This leads to the question of the right place to age and the timing of moving. The chapter further highlights the many shapes that living in place can take; finally, the chapter concludes with a series of recommendations.

This chapter presents past promising streams of studies aiming to describe and understand ageing. First, environmental gerontology approached ageing in relationship to the supportive or constraining role of the environment, and especially, of modalities of housing. Grounded in Lewin’s work, initiated by Powell Lawton in the 1970s, it disappeared at the turn of the millennium. In developmental psychology, a series of authors, such as Charlotte Büher, Robert Havighurst, Erik Erikson and others initiated comprehensive approaches to ageing as part of the course of life. Eventually, these were also replaced by more cognitive and normative approaches, and were mostly absorbed into lifespan psychology.

This chapter rejuvenates the promising but lost field of environmental gerontology. Environmental gerontology threatened to disappear after the death of its initiator, Powell Lawton. The chapter reviews recent developments and problems in these approaches, and shows how the sociocultural perspective presented here may offer a satisfying way to pursue these efforts. The first section comes back to the core concepts of spaces, places and affordances. The next one proposes a dialogue with two propositions made by Lawton: first, the importance of an ideographic approach to environments of ageing, to which we have proposed a regional case study. Second, Lawton made a typology of modes of housing for older persons, calling for intermediary ones; I propose a revised typology. Finally, I integrate our findings in terms of human development together with an ecological understanding of ageing, thus sketching a more complete psychology of ageing in a changing environment.

This theoretical chapter first proposes, within an open dynamic approach, a vocabulary to address the embodied person and their experience, and the material, social and symbolic environments in which they live, which are experienced physically, relationally and interpreted via semiotic processes. Then, it highlights the implications of a regional case study for the theorising of human development, notably, thanks to its attention to the interdependency between socio and microgenetic dynamics and ontogenesis. Further, it proposes a new series of concepts and dynamics to account for development in older age, where people are likely to find new ways to develop in a world whose forces may feel progressively more adverse. Hence, the model of reconfiguration of domains of conduct needs to be completed by an understanding of envelopes that supports centripetal dynamics, borrowed from psychoanalysis. Finally, the chapter examines the implication of this proposition for the theorising development in the lifecourse.

Sociocultural psychology of the lifecourse, which examines the development of the persons in their changing environments, offers here the frame for our exploration of development in older age. Although it has largely addressed the development of children, youth and adults, it has only recently started to approach the specificities of developing with age. This chapter retraces the ontological and epistemological foundation of this approach. It then further explores three sets of concepts of foremost importance when approaching development in the lifecourse into older age: those related to dynamics of distancing and imagining, core when examining semiotic processes in human development; those of interests and engagements, which emphasise sense-making and affects; and what regards the domains of conduct in which people engage. The chapter then sketches the specificities of development in older age within people’s material, social and symbolic environment.

The exploration proposed here is pursued through a complex, regional case study. Regional case studies enable delineating a portion of the world, with a consistent set of institutions and policies as well as geographical and material conditions that set the frame for people’s lives, and to identify the complex dynamics by which sociogenetic, microgenetic and ontogenetic transformation co-occur. This chapter presents how we approached, conceived and analysed this case study. To start with, I define my approach to ageing as a form of personal engagement, which progressively developed into a collaborative project. After showing the relevance of a regional case study for sociocultural psychology of the lifecourse, I present the fieldwork, the data collection, an overview of the participants and the main line of the analysis.