Elderliness in a rural Mexican town in Michoacán, Mexico

Abstract

The objective of this research is to talk about elderliness as a sociological category and social analysis of a population sector from ethnographic references of a rural town in the state of Michoacan: Nogales Mexico. For this purpose, we describe who these older adults are, what they do, how they live, what they work, what they do on a daily basis, what position they occupy within the family, among other things. The method used is qualitative and ethnographic, since we are interested in generating data from the reality itself to describe what is currently happening with the lives of the elderliness in rural communities in Michoacan. From this, a definition of what should be understood by elderliness in space and concrete time is given. As can be read in the results of this exploratory research, elderliness is not a term that should be used in a general way, since this population sector has its own particularities and specificities according to the place to which it refers, for the case that concerns us, elderliness in Nogales, obeys a characterization of a lifestyle, practices and habits that day by day configures and reconfigures the category of what it is to be an elderliness or an older adult.