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.

This chapter approaches the concrete, everyday lives of older persons in the Vineyard region. We examine how people living in towns, in villages, alone or in shared housing, organise their lives. Daily trajectories, typical interactions, everyday encounters are described. The chapter first examines informal encounters and networks, daily interactions, occasional meetings, and the importance of social interactions. Both the role of ‘lighthouse watcher’ and tenuous ties are put to the fore. Second, the chapter follows interactions taking place in an institutional setting, a day-care centre. Here also, people can develop meaningful activities and reveal their engagements, while the frame can offer a containing function. Altogether, this chapter shows how evolving material, social and symbolic environments are deeply related to people’s development in older age.

Chapter 1 starts by exploring the history of the term ‘settlement’. Having traced its emergence in the seventeenth century, the chapter investigates the making of the ‘settlement’ act of 1662. A study of parliamentary records uncovers the emergence of new legislation in the post-Restoration context and illuminates the final stages of the process when amendments were made that shaped the settlement legislation for centuries to come. Subsequent laws led to the introduction of new ‘settlement certificates’. The third section traces the spread of the ‘settlement’ system and its impact on both local administrations and the negotiating strategies of the poor – central issues pursued throughout the book. These explorations draw on records from two corners of England, Sussex in the south-east and Lancashire in the north-west. Additional sources are employed from metropolitan London and other localities.

By 1776, when a parliamentary survey was held to assess poor law expenditure in England and Wales, the ‘settlement’ system was a familiar feature in local communities, regulating access to poor relief and if necessary removal since the previous century. The introduction explores the broad historiography on the topic and suggests how key provisions emerged in the Restoration era, a development examined in Chapter 1. The discussion proceeds to introduce the arguments of the remaining chapters, in which some of the unintended consequences of the legislation are explored: from the emergence of a huge body of administrative forms to the regulation of kinship and family for the purposes of migration, and on to impacts on parish and county administration, community life, and even the state’s capacity to mobilise forces for large-scale international wars.

The fifth chapter turns to war and peace. The role of England’s poor relief system in assisting war efforts has been suggested by scholars. This chapter argues that were it not for the development of settlement laws, one can only wonder whether the ‘fiscal-military state’ would have enjoyed such support. The chapter shows how the responsibilities of the parish officer expanded to assist the fiscal-military state, and the roles taken by the county administration. It also explains how the New Militia, established at the start of the Seven Years’ War, relied on the parish’s administrative apparatus and employed the settlement legislation in sophisticated ways. However, as time went by complexities arose. The greater the needs of recruitment and disbandment, the more the eighteenth-century state relied on the mechanisms of parish settlement; at the same time, military needs also led to partial suspension of the settlement laws.

Chapter 4 focuses on the impact of the settlement laws on local community life. A rare personal diary by a Sussex village shopkeeper (1754–1765) records his activity as a parish officer and helps to paint a detailed canvas, and to connect the history of parish administration with studies of gender and the social order. This chapter also returns to the legal framework to explore further the responsibilities of the overseer of the poor and the parish vestry.

The conclusion brings together the book’s several arguments to explain the impact of the settlement legislation on family, community, and national life during our period. Discussions highlight how legal changes taking place in the Restoration era, and developed thereafter, affected English society and state formation in ways little imagined by the legislators, and how the focus on parish settlement has brought together an array of fields not often studied together and has enabled the book to engage with local experiences as well as broad processes of historical change.

Chapter 2 branches out to study one of the most noticeable – if unintended – impacts of the settlement legislation: the emergence of a huge body of administrative paperwork relating to the settlement of the poor. This chapter begins with the role of printers and stationers, masters of the metropolitan Stationers’ Company, who played a key role in the production and distribution of the settlement forms. Drawing on our north-western and south-eastern samples, the chapter explores how the business of forms took root. It also investigates the continued and highly significant use of manuscript. Influential social and political theorists – from Max Weber to Michel Foucault – have emphasised state control of bureaucratic procedures. Here we see how, while dealing with the settlement laws, influences emerged from the bottom up, as stationers, scribes, local officers, and even paupers contributed to the rise of the form.