Journal of Environmental Psychology (1983) 3, 299-313

ARTICLES
P L A C E A N D P E R S O N A L IDENTITY IN O L D AGE:
OBSERVATIONS FROM APPALACHIA

G R A H A M D. R O W L E S
Department of Geology and Geography,
West Virginia University,
Morgantown, West Virginia, U.S.A.

Abstract
This paper explores the phenomenon of attachment to place in old age. Three
complementary dimensions of attachment--physical, social and autobiographical
insideness--are identified from a three year in-depth study of elderly residents of
an Appalachian community. It is argued that autobiographical insideness may be
particularly important to old people in sustaining a sense of personal identity and
may be adaptive in old age. The paper develops the hypothesis that the increasing
mobility of current elderly generations is resulting in changing manifestations of
attachment to place. Whereas the old-old (persons over 75 years of age) remain
strongly attached to their proximate physical environment, the young-old (those under
75 years of age) appear to be developing identifications with places that involve greater
emphasis upon vicarious involvement in displaced settings.
'How can we live without our lives?
How will we know it's us without our past'
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, 1939.

In the past few years a growing body of research has reinforced literary commentaries
on the way individuals experience a sense of place and develop emotional attachment
to particular locales (Bachelard, 1969; Bollnow, 1967; Buttimer, 1976, 1980; Howell,
1983; Pocock, 1981; Relph, 1976; Seamon, 1979, 1981, 1982; Tuan, 1977). Much of
this research suggests a direct relationship between attachment to place and well-
being. Indeed, scholars are now able to isolate consistent themes underlying the
intuitive validity of accounts such as Steinbeck's description of the Joad family's
trauma at having to leave their home and abandon treasured personal posses-
sions (Steinbeck, 1939; Salter, 1981).

One group for whom attachment to place is widely acknowledged to be

especially important is the elderly--particularly the old-old, defined as persons over
75 years of age (Neugarten, 1974), who tend to have low mobility and often are
characterized by lifelong residence in a single setting. There exists a prevalent image
that growing old is associated with intensification of attachment to and emotional.
involvement in known and familiar places (O'Bryant, 1982; Gelwicks, 1970; Mont-
gomery, 1977). As Townsend wrote in his classic study of old people in East London:
'Old people's wish to live independently was reinforced by a deep attachment to
their homes .... Home was the old armchair by the hearth, the creaky bedstead, the
polished lino with its faded pattern, the sideboard with its picture gallery and the
lavatory with its broken latch reached through the rain. It embodied a thousand
memories and held promise of a thousand contentments. It was an extension of per-
sonality' (Townsend, 1963, p. 38).

0272-4944/83/040299 + 15 $03.00/0 ~) 1983 Academic Press Inc. (London) Ltd

300 G.D. Rowles

This paper explores aspects of old people's attachment to place and illustrates ways
in which such attachment is intimately linked to preservation of a sense of
personal identity (Reference note 1). The paper distinguishes between the young-old
and the old-old in developing a hypothesis that attachment to place is assuming new
forms. While attachment to place for the old-old is often very much grounded in lifelong
familiarity with a single physical setting, the greater historical mobility of the cur-
rent young-old generation is such that, for them, attachment to place increasingly
entials vicarious involvement in a variety of geographically dispersed locations. One
consequence of this is that affinity for the proximate physical setting may be less
intense for the young-old.

The Colton Study

The empirical basis for the discussion is a participant observation study of elderly
residents in Colton (Reference Note 2), a declining rural Appalachian community
(Rowles, 1980, 1981a, 1981b, 1983). In 1920, when today's elderly were in their youth,
Colton was a bustling railroad and coal mining community of over 800 people. In
common with many small towns in this area, the community has experienced
economic decline and population outmigration since the depression of the 1930s as
the more able and adventurous younger people departed to seek employment outside
Appalachia. As employment opportunities became more scarce, other residents, reluc-
tant to abandon Colton as a place ofresidence, were obliged to commute to nearby
towns. Finally, a significant number of unemployed residents remain due to inertia
and a cultural affiliation for this milieu that is characteristic of much of the
Appalachian region (Weller, 1965; Miernyk, 1967). By 1980 the population of Colton
had dwindled to less than 420 people. Seventeen per cent of this population comprised
persons over 60 years of age (U.S. Census 1980).
Many of the elderly who remain have spent their entire lives in the region, some
of them in this very community. Over the years they have witnessed profound
changes in their environment as Colton has undergone a process of physical decay
and social transition. The outcome is a contemporary setting presenting images of
grime, abandonment and desolation. Yet, to the elderly who remain, this place is
far more than the dilapidated homes, boarded up stores, and bulldozed lots apparent
to the outsider.
Commencing in 1978, three years of intensive participant observation research were
undertaken with a panel of elderly residents of Colton and its surrounding 'hollows'.
The panel was selected during the first year of the study following a period of
residence in the community and preliminary in-depth interviews averaging two hours
in length with 32 elderly persons. The panel chosen from this sample was selected
to provide broad representation of Colton's elderly population (Rowles, 1981a).
Originally 13 individuals were enlisted in the study. However, the replacement of
two participants who died during the fieldwork meant that the panel actually studied
eventually numbered 15 people. The final panel consisted of 11 women and four
men ranging from 62 to 91 years of age. Seven participants were under 75 years
of age (young-old) and eight were over 75 years of age (old-old).
The methodology employed in studying the attachment to place of this panel is
based upon a lengthy tradition of participant observation and ethnographic
research that focuses on the generation of hypotheses from detailed case study re-
 Place and Personal Identity in Old Age 301

search (McCall and Simmons, 1969; Spradley, 1979). The approach is premised upon
the belief that the development of grounded theory requires a phase of exploratory
immersion within the social arena of concern in order to develop appropriate re-
search categories and themes (Blumer, 1969; Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Such
immersion is particularly useful when the intent, as in this study, is to gain entry
into the phenomenological worlds of elderly people because it facilitates the
establishment of empathy with participants and the development of a common
language and terminology (Rowles, 1978a; Von Eckartsberg, 1971). Having estab-
lished a high level of rapport with individual panel members, the researcher then
becomes a translator, communicating the 'text' of the exchange for an audience of
scholarly peers who generally have limited experience of the phenomenon under
study.
Due to the intimacy of relationships between researcher and participant there are
clearly a number of limitations to this approach. Small samples sometimes biased
towards particular sub-populations, considerable time investment (often measured
in months or years), descriptive presentation of findings and researcher involvement
throughout the research process is inevitable. However such 'contamination' is an
integral component of the research because it imbues emergent hypotheses with an
authenticity and immediacy not obtainable from other approaches; because it gen-
erates a climate in which participants are more willing and able to reveal subtle dimen-
sions of their experience, and because it often leads to insights that are inaccessible
using alternative methods.
In concrete terms the research process in Colton involved becoming part of the
everyday lives of the study participants. This entailed participating in routine
activities like grocery shopping, watching the soap operas, attending church, visiting
friends and family and even whiling away evenings sitting on the porch watch-
ing activities on the street below (Lozier and Althouse, 1975; Rowles, 1981b). It also
involved sharing in 'special activities' such as bake sales at the Senior Center or trips
to the doctor in the county seat (14 miles away), visits to individual participants
when they were in the hospital and attendance at the funerals of departed friends.
In sum, the research process involved the full array of interactions that are part of
the development of any interpersonal relationship.
Once a high level of rapport was established with the research panel it was possible
to supplement observation and informal tape-recorded interviews with more formal
approaches to data collection that emerged as relevant during the progress of the
research. Eventually, over 800 h of unstructured tape-recorded interviews were supple-
mented by a variety of measures including space/time activity diaries (collected over
a two-year period), cognitive mapping tasks, photography (including aerial photo-
graphy of the area surrounding each participant's home), a significant places inven-
tory and a treasured personal possessions inventory (Rowles, 1981a). In addition,
each participant was driven around the community for several hours in order to
photograph and record their observations on locations they identified as having par-
ticular meaning in their lives. Finally, social support network measures were designed
to elicit information on the social meaning of place.
Data anlysis was primarily inductive. Tape-recorded exchanges were transcribed
and organized within an array of categories. A particular fragment of conversation
would reveal a place related theme that seemed consistent across several par-
ticipants. When this occurred, the tapes were searched for further corroborative or
302 G.D. Rowles

amplifying evidence or for contradictory statements. Data from the formal measures
were also interpreted in relation to the emergent categories. Finally, as an overall
perspective began to evolve, ongoing dialogue with the participants during repeated
visits served to provide some internal validation of individual themes. The outcome
was the development of a coherent perspective on the panel members' attachment
to place.

Attachment to Place in Colton

Great variation was found among individual participants. However, a pervasive theme
was a sense of 'insideness' that differentiated Colton and its surroundings from the
world beyond the community and instilled a feeling of attachment that was par-
ticularly strong among the old-old participants. The concept of 'insideness' has been
explored by a number of scholars (Buttimer, 1980; Seamon, 1981; Relph, 1976). In
this context, 'insideness' appeared to involve three components: a physical, a social,
and a psychological or, more specifically, an autobiographical affinity with the
Colton environment (Rowles, 1980).
A sense of physical insideness in Colton had become taken-for-granted. Over many
years, each participant had developed an inherent 'body-awareness' of every detail
of the physical configuration of this environment. In the same way that few of us
have to count the stairs when we ascend to bed each night (a fact that becomes pain-
fully apparent when we remember those rare occasions when we have taken an extra
step), so too had most of the Colton elderly internalized a sense of the pathways
they traversed during the regular rhythm and routine of their daily lives. Each old
person, over the years, had developed an intimate familiarity with environmental
barriers, slippery places and pathways affording frequent physical supports to com-
pensate for an unsteady gait (see O'Bryant, 1982; Seamon, 1979; and Seamon and
Nordin, 1980 for elaboration on this theme). Such familiarity provided com-
pensation for progressive sensory decrement and enabled the study participants to
continue traversing spaces that, from a sensory perspective, would appear to be beyond
their level of physiological competence.
Physical intimacy was supplemented by a sense of social insideness stemming from
integration within the social fabric of the community. To live in Colton as an old
person was to become part of a multigenerational social order. Within this order,
social credit was derived from contributions to family and the community made over
the span of each individual's life. Old people could draw on a reservoir of accumulated
social credit as they grew progressively more vulnerable and in need of assistance.
Indeed, there existed in the community an expectation that those in a position to
provide assistance to the old person would furnish support as an accepted part of
their obligation to the community, as they themselves accumulated status (Lozier
and Althouse, 1974; Rodeheaver, 1982).
At the same time, the Colton elderly were part of an age peer group 'society of
the old'. This subculture, focused on the Senior Center and sustained through an
intensive telephone network, was characterized by a distinctive set of values and norms
of behavior. Belonging to the 'society of the old' entailed becoming part of a help-
ing network, an age peer group community of mutual concern that invested itself
in the welfare of its members. Both practical and social support were derived from
integration within this social network (Rowles, 1983). More important, such social
 Place and Personal Identity in Old Age 303

integration conveyed status and a sense of belonging. As 83 year old Beatrice, a par-
ticularly well respected member of the community, observed: ' I f I lived anywhere
else, I'd be a nobody. I wouldn't have the position I do'.
The way in which social insideness translates into attachment to place is illustrated
by the sense of reassurance expressed in the participants' perception that Colton is
a place in which they are 'known' and know others. The sense of identity that results
from this can be appreciated in relation to data on the age peer group social
awareness network of the study panel. At one point in the research, each participant
was asked to identify individuals she or he knew 'Well', 'Well enough to talk to',
or 'By sight or reputation', from a list of all the elderly people living in the Colton
area (Reference Note 3). It was found that the median number of age peers known
'Well' was 76. An additional 21 age peers (median) were known 'Well enough
to talk to'. Clearly, in Colton there is a large network of age peers who, although
they m a y be infrequently in contact with each other, imbue Colton space with an
aura of intimate social immersion by virtue of their mere existence.
M a n y of these age peers are individuals with whom relationships have developed
over a lifetime of residence in a shared space. Indeed, it is clear that attachment
to place in Colton involves critical historical dimensions that give this environment
a temporal depth of meaning. Autobiographical insideness embraces not only the place
of the present but also a series of remembered places, of which the drab contemporary
setting is but a remnant. F o r each old person in Colton, this place is not merely
the physical setting I can view, nor the contemporary social milieu I have described.
It is a mosaic of 'incident places'. This point is perhaps best illustrated by reference
to a drive I took with 87 year old Bertha to visit some of the places in and around
Colton where she had lived in her youth.
We passed 'old Graveney's cabin' which, Bertha explained, was known as the place
'where the slaves used to stay'. Nearby was the 'swimming pond' where her 'kids'
used to go swimming. The cabin was gone, and the pond had become clogged with
mud and weeds and 'all overgrown'. We passed the remnants of a tree which, 80
years previously, provided a lofty vantage point from which she was able to sight
the dentist as he rode into the valley and, having done so, to make herself scarce
before his arrival in Colton. Farther on, she showed me a crevice in a large boulder.
'We used to get dirt back in underneath there ... for our house lawn, and for the
porch box where flowers growed so good'. We came to the 'Green Tree', an impos-
ing oak which served as a childhood rendezvous. 'The kids on that end of the country
road and us kids would come over here and meet and play'. We passed the place
where she was born and raised in a family of 21 children. The farmhouse had dis-
appeared. In its place stood a mobile home. But for Bertha the old 'home place'
still existed. There was the now abandoned farmstead where a daughter died of
pneumonia, the family gravesite, indeed, a host of places richly imbued with meaning
in terms of events which transpired within them (Rowles, 1980, pp. 161-62).

Such autobiographical insideness is a pervasive theme, although, as will be illus-

trated, it has a diversity of manifestations. Over the years, as 'incident places' have
accumulated within each old Colton resident's autobiography, she or he has become
more and more a part of the place to the point where it has become an extension
of self.
The three dimensions of insideness are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they
represent complementary aspects of a central rubric pervading the older par-
304 G.D. Rowles

ticipants' attachment to the Colton environment--an attachment that has evolved

and intefisified throughout their lives to the point where it is difficult to disentangle
underlyi0g casual relationships. The relationship between a sense of insideness and
attachment to place is clearly a transactional one. However, the degree to which attach-
ment to Colton, or indeed, a sense of insideness, is a function of residential inertia
rather than the need for a sense of security, a fear of venturing 'outside' or a more
positive inherent desire to 'belong' is difficult to ascertain.
Although physical and social insideness are certainly important components of
the older person's attachment to places, it is the realm of autobiographical insideness
that is most provocative and potentially illuminating because, as will be illustrated
in the remainder of this paper, it provides the basis of the symbiosis of attachment
to place and personal identity in old age.

Characteristics of Autobiographical lnsideness

Several important features of autobiographical insideness can be identified from more
in-depth analysis. First, it is generally taken-for-granted and rarely overtly com-
municated. Few of the participants could easily articulate the basis of their attach-
ment to place. For example, 70 year old Jennifer Rose claims an affiliation with the
place where she lives that defies apparent logic. She lives on an isolated stretch of
country road in a small house that is difficult to maintain. Her children both live
more than 100 miles away. Yet she refuses to relocate to a more supportive setting.
Following many hours of dialogue it was possible to develop a level o f rapport allow-
ing her to articulate the underlying rationale for her feelings. She has a historically
based social affinity for this place. Though her husband is dead and her children
live far away, the rooms are still in a sense 'inhabited' by the people who years ago
made them important social spaces. She can visualize her children as they played
in the yard. She can look across the road and view the shell of the garage her husband
started to build so many years ago--~a project never completed. But the support and
sense of immersion in place that derives from such involvement remains implicit--
taken-for-granted rather than easily explicable.
A second feature of autobiographical insideness appears, at first glance, to
contradict the argument just presented regarding reluctance to move. Certainly, auto-
biographical insideness is supported by physical participation in the spaces wherein
remembered events transpired. But physical proximity while helpful & not essential.
This is because old people, indeed all of us, have the ability to project ourselves
vicariously into environments displaced in space and/or time. We do not need to
be present in order to participate in a place. Elsewhere, I have explored this pheno-
menon of 'geographical fantasy' and suggested that it involves the ability to project
oneself into the places of one's past (reflective fantasy) or to become involved vicar-
iously in contemporary spaces that may be spatially removed such as the location
where one's children reside (projective fantasy) (Rowles, 1978b). This point is well
illustrated by reference to the trip with Bertha. Several days before our drive she
outlined to me in great detail the path we would be following and the places we
would see. 'Yes, I got it all planned; and I got to go and show you'. She was able
to provide vivid descriptions of incidents that transpired in the places we were to
view. What is remarkable about this is that I subsequently discovered she had not
been down the path we traversed for several decades.
Probing a little deeper, it is apparent that autobiographical insideness may embrace
 Place and Personal Identity in Old Age 305

a plethora of 'incident places' spanning the space/time trajectory of the individual's

entire lifespan. It may involve not only spatially displaced settings but also proximate
locations remembered as they existed at different points in the individual's life.
Individual locations m a y become imbued with a temporal depth of meaning. For
example, the same location m a y be remembered as a wooded lot where a person
stole her first kiss, a grocery store built some time later where she worked for
several years and as an abandoned fire-gutted building in the present. In sum, we
m a y think of each individual as placed at the vortex of an array of 'incident places'
selected from the reservoir o f locations that make up the totality of the individual's
life history.
This brings us to a fourth and perhaps the most critical characteristic of
autobiographical insideness. Autobiographical insideness represents an attachment
to places that is essentially self-created and to a degree fictional. Ernest White has
elegantly summarized the essence of what he terms the 'grand fiction' each person
generates to define his or her life:
'When I tell the story of my life, it is largely made up of the images I create of the
places of my life. Remembering the places and the emotions as I once experienced
them is a tricky business. I don't exactly discover the past of my life by remember-
ing events. In fact, I invent my past as a grand fiction, the myriad details of which
fit into a coherent pattern that is called a self concept. There is much twisting and
bending of the original event so that it can fit into the model of what I say I am,
and what I say the world is. I suppose we could suggest here that even the original
event as it is experienced by the individual is imaged and given meaning in ways
totally unique to him. Its poetization is further advanced by the distance of time
and the act of remembrance' (White, 1972, pp. 3-4).
More recently, Howell has also noted that:
'Places are affectively redefined in the course of utilizing them in reminiscence, self-
concept reviews, problem solving, social role maintenance and other operations'
(Howell, 1983, p. 99).
There is abundant evidence within the transcripts of the study participants' inter-
views that reinforces the distinction between the objective and the self-
created images of the places o f their past. With only one exception, the participants
described the Colton of their childhood as a pleasant physical setting, far superior
to its present dirty run-down condition. The exception was Bertha who, to my sur-
prise, confided one day that the Colton of the present was far cleaner than it had
been in the past. Review of photographs taken in 1911 revealed that the community
was indeed characterized by dirt and grime at this time. These photographs and sub-
sequent discussion with the participants confirmed that the hillsides along the
entire valley had been defoliated as a result of air pollution. Yet the place was
idealized and remembered in a positive light. The participants rarely referred to
accidents on the railroad or the epidemic that afflicted and led to the deaths of many
of the children in the early 1900s. However, the dance floor at Stuart's store and
the fact that he would often have fresh oysters transported from Baltimore for impor-
tant functions were often mentioned. As Bertha remembered this place:
'They had four sets (square dancing) in there, and a piano ... and a man who played
that piano. Oh, my Lord, I can just hear him today. Oh, it was just so nice then,
nicest times in there, and that floor was just as slick as a whistle'.
When individual participants were reminded of the discrepancy between their re-
306 G . D . Rowles

collections and the less positive reality of the Colton o f their youth the initial reaction
was often one of mild surprise. This reaction was sometimes followed by a rational-
ization that they were allowing memories of the good times when the community
was prosperous and socially alive to color their image o f the physical setting of the
time with a more positive hue.
The creative 'grand fiction' of a past and of the places that provided the stage
upon which each participant's biography was played out was sustained through three
basic mechanisms. First, sustaining the fiction involved the preservation of certain
artifacts to serve as cues to immersion in the places of the past. Many of the
participants kept photographs and photograph albums, frequently identified as their
most important treasured personal possessions (see also, Sherman and Newman, 1977).
Audrey, 83 years old, provides a typical illustration:
'Look at that little picture over there of my mother and myself. On the desk. I was
going through an old box when Evelyn (daughter-in-law) was here. She always gets
the old pictures out. Likes to look at them. And we found that. So the other day
I was thinking about my mother, cause I always had my mother all my life, and I
was thinking about her. And I had that little picture. And I put it up there. Now
I can look at Morn when when I sit down and say a prayer. And that day (when
the photograph was taken), it made me so happy. It was taken in Schenley
Park in Pittsburgh, one Sunday afternoon. We took her to supper and went over
to Schenley Park. That was about 1948 ... 49'.
Audrey also possessed an old rocking chair. Some of the lacquer and staining had
been removed as a result of her mother's hands constantly rubbing the arms of her
favorite chair. Audrey refused to have the arms revarnished, preferring instead to
keep this reminder of her mother's former presence.
The created image of a past is also sustained through ongoing participa-
tion in a familiar place, although, as has been noted, remaining in the place of the
past is not essential for its preservation in consciousness. It became apparent during
driving trips around the community that particular locations served as a trigger to
bringing latent dimensions of autobiographical insideness to the fore. Passing the
now empty lot upon which had stood the home where Audrey lived as a child pro-
voked a stream of reminiscences--it resurrected a place.
'We were all born there .... My mother was born there, my sister, myself, my son,
my sister's son, we were all born there. And my mother died there of course, we
all were born there, we were born in the same room. My nephew from Hartford
wrote and wanted some information about the family, and I wrote all that to him.
I told him the lot is there but no house. 'My grandmother, my mother, your mother
and me and you, and my Albert were all born there in the same room, in the same
house'. And I said, 'I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same bed' ... nothing there
now but the ground. I should have kept it. I don't know, I sort of had a heart-felt
feeling for that lot there, but when we went to Pittsburgh to live, I let it go. I think
about it so often. I thought, well, I'll never need it, and I let it go, let it go for taxes.'

Finally, communication among age peers who shared in the experience of the
Colton environment throughout their lives served to reinforce a consensual 'grand
fiction' of what the place had been like. Frequent telephone contact among the age
peer group 'society of the old' provided a forum for the exchange of reminiscences
and the creation of social consensus about the place of the past. In one sample week
(January 5-11 1980), Audrey spent 12 h 55 min and Jennifer Rose 11 h 28 min convers-
ing with age peers on the telephone. Such conversations provided more than merely
 Place and Personal Identity in Old Aae 307

a medium for reinforcing images of places past. In the process of dialogue, they sus-
tained a shared internalization of the world, a social space conducive to a sense of
social identification and well being in old age (Buttimer, 1969; Ley, 1977).

Autobiographical Insideness and Personal Identity

Ultimately, autobiographical insideness and the resulting attachment to place are
highly personal and idiosyncratic. Each individual's autobiographical i n s i d e n e s ~
the events and places she or he chooses to remember and inhabit vicariously--is
intimately related to a sense of self.
A primary theme within Audrey's perception of her life's contribution is the role
she played in caring for her mother who became blind and disabled before her death
in her nineties. This care was provided at great personal sacrifice. She recalls that
such behavior was expected:
'People stayed together as families. You know, they took their father and mother
and grandma and grandfather. I've known families where the grandmother,
grandfather and the mother and father, they take them all in'.
This ethos of the obligation and nobility of family care and support remains a focal
motif in Audrey's life; its preservation gives meaning to her existence. Con-
sequently, it is not surprising that she had surrounded herself with artifacts that rein-
force her perception and serve as cues to reimmersion in the places where she spent
time with her m o t h e r - - t h e photographs, the old chair, and other remembrances.
Walter, 84 years old, provides a second example. His life was focused on the rail-
road where he worked for many decades. The trains no longer stop in Colton, but
this critical component of his life is preserved in the old railway bells and other
railway memorabilia he keeps in his house. Outside his home, in the front yard, he
has built a working assemblage of signals and railway lights that facilitate his resur-
rection of the aura of his past. Eighty-six-year-old Dan provides a final particularly
evocative illustration of the selective creation of an environment and the retention
of artifacts to express a sense of self and sustain images of a past. Dan is a burly
ex coal-miner who, following the premature death of his wife in the early 1930s,
assumed the role of 'mother' to five children, as well as breadwinner. The influence
of this domestic role is clearly apparent from a visit to the rooms where he now
resides at his daughter's home. Certainly, there are the guns and other artifacts con-
sonant with the machismo coal-miner role. However, Dan also collects fragile glass
and ceramic ornaments. His rooms are filled with china plates, glass vases and
statuettes, wall plaques and other brick-a-brae revealing more conventionally feminine
aspects of his life.
Each of these illustrations are examples of environmental arrangements involving
the preservation of key artifacts that sustain within individual elderly Colton
residents a sense of autobiographical insideness in the places of their lives. The process
of generating this sense of insideness is an active and creative one. It involves project-
ing a sense of self into the space in which one resides and, in many cases, of
creating a place which is an expression and at the same time a constant reminder
of the person one once was, or at least believes oneself to have been. Place and per-
son become fused; each becomes an expression of the other. The process of
decorating places as expressions of identity is not, of course, the sole preserve of
the elderly. Hansen and Altman (1976), for example, have shown its significance for
308 G.D. Rowles

student populations with respect to the relationship between personalization of college

dormitory rooms and adjustment in an academic setting. However, it is suggested
in the following section that such personalization may serve an important develop-
mental role for the elderly.

Autobiographical Insideness and Adaptation in Old Age

The process o f imbuing places with meaning as expression of one's identity serves
several purposes. First, it preserves an ongoing sense of belonging within a place
that on the surface and to the outsider may appear to have undergone fundamental
transformation. The creation of identity through autobiographical insideness also
provides a set of reminders of the contribution one made to one's community and
family--place comes to represent a scrapbook documenting the achievements of a
lifetime. Finally, the creation of identity through autobiographical insideness provides
a sense of continuity between what has happened and what can be passed on to
the future.
More important than these processes, however, is the role which autobio-
graphical insideness may play as a component of adaptation in old age. A significant
body of literature on aging suggests that an increased propensity for reminiscence
and reflection on the events of one's past may be a distinctive characteristic of grow-
ing old. Butler has suggested that individuals may go through a process he terms
life review (Butler, 1963). The process of life review involves reminiscing on events
of one's life in an attempt to 'make sense' of it as a whole and to generate and sus-
tain a self concept in old age (Lewis, 1971; Lieberman and Falk, 1971; McMahon
and Rhudick, 1967; Merriam, 1980).
During this process, the remembrance of events clearly implies the remembrance
of the places in which those events transpired. I have already argued that the re-
membrance of incident-places as part of autobiographical insideness is highly selective
and closely linked to the 'grand fiction' that the individual develops of his or her
personal history and identity. It, therefore, follows that place--either place ex-
perienced, or in the case of Dan's rooms or Walter's railroad yard, place created--
can assume a role as literally part of this identity. In the context of the life review,
it becomes clear that to abandon these places, either physically or, more importantly,
cognitively, is to give up identity. In sum, there may be an important developmental
rationale underlying old people's attachment to place.

Changing Manifestations of Attachment to Place: A Hypothesis

The majority of illustrations from Colton cited thus far are drawn from the ranks
of the old-old, a group with lengthy residence in the community and a strong re-
luctance to relocate. Many of the young-old panel members display far less vehemence
in their reluctance to move, and their attachment to Colton space seems less intense.
Sixty-six-year-old Bill has resided in his sparsely furnished house by the railroad
tracks for 17 years. Yet when asked if he had any attachment to Colton he was quick
to respond: 'I don't. No, I don't. I never did likc Colton that well ... I would leave
in a minute if I could'. Segments from a conversation on the same topic with 62
year old Lucinda reveal a similar lack of commitment.
Lucinda: 'I don't think it's important to me. I like the people, but as far as the
town, I don't like the town, it's too dirty, it's got a railroad track in the
middle of it ...'
 Place and Personal Identity in Old Age 309

Graham: 'That's different from most of the people I've talked to .... A lot of the
people I talk to say, "I can't explain it but Colton is my home, and I
never want to leave here, and I want to die here"--those kind of
things . . . . '
Lucinda: 'Well, some people have lived here all their lives. I guess they would
feel that way.'
H o w can we account for this difference? There are a variety of possibilities. The
first is a developmental explanation: one might posit that these young-old people
have yet to attain the age where attachment to place becomes an adaptational response.
A second possible explanation is that the phenomenon of attachment to place is not
universal; in other words, some people's lives are premised on an attachment to place
while others do not possess any innate need for place attachment. This argument,
of course, would not account for the consistent pattern of variation according to
age observed in Colton.
A third explanation is that the difference between the young-old and old-old is the
result of generational or cohort differences in the life histories of the two groups
that have resulted in different manifestations of attachment to place. The old-old
tend to have spent more of their lives in a single setting. Beatrice and Walter, a
married couple in the study panel, have resided their entire lives in locations less
than a quarter of a mile from their birthplaces. The array of incident places within
the grand fiction of their lives are heavily focused within the vicinity of the home
in which they have resided for the past 60 years. On the other hand, Bill, Lucinda,
and m a n y of their young-old age peers come from a generation that has
experienced a gradual increase in standard of living and expectations and increasing
mobility throughout their lives. They have resided in a variety of different settings.
As Bill observed:
'Actually, I haven't spent too much time in Colton in my life. I spent the biggest
part of my younger days over around Saltsman and Bowers; so Colton really don't
have as much for me as it does for those other old people because I never spent
that much time here'.
Consequently, their grand fiction is a collage of incident places that are far more
geographically dispersed. Their involvement with place is not so intimately inter-
twined with the local physical setting.
Does this mean that attachment to place, the very thing we have argued m a y be
extremely adaptive in old age, will soon become little more than a romantic m e m o r y
of a bygone era? I think not. Rather, it is hypothesized that attachment to place in
old age is assuming new forms that involve the integration of a variety of incident places
from geographically dispersed settings comprising the environments of the old person's
life. Increasingly, vicarious involvement in displaced settings is substituting for physical
presence in a single environment. This substitution is accompanied by a variety of
mechanisms, such as those I have discussed, that serve to sustain and reinforce a
creatively developed and maintained grand fiction of place attachment that is less
tied to the contemporary physical setting.

Some Implications
It is certainly possible, despite efforts to select a panel incorporating a broad range
of elderly residents, that the participants in this research are not fully representative
of Colton's elderly population. Personal bias in the selection process m a y have pre-
cluded enlisting depressed or embittered individuals (Reference Note 4). One might
310 G . D . Rowles

question the extremely positive image projected by the panel as overly optimistic,
although recent literature on the rural elderly in a variety of contexts strongly re-
inforces such a perspective (see, for example, the extensive review by Lee and Lassey,
1980). Even if the panel is representative, it must be acknowledged that it comprises
a group reflecting a distinctive 'way of life' of a particular social class within a single
rural Appalachian community at a particular point in time. Clearly the situation in
urban environments and in other cultural settings may be entirely different. Finally,
the hypothesis presented is derived from study of a limited number of elderly persons
representing barely two generations. The small sample size and limited North
American context of the study requires that findings be viewed with the caution neces-
sary in interpreting any ethnographic case study.
The argument developed in this paper, assuming it is supported by further re-
search, carries a number of significant implications regarding the role of place in
adaptation to old age. It is clearly necessary to acknowledge that attachment to place
is a multidimensional phenomenon involving physical, social and psychological com-
ponents, each of which may function somewhat independently and vary in their
manifestation among different age cohorts. An old person, after a period of adjust-
ment, may be able to establish a physical insideness within a new setting following
relocation. Social insideness may develop subsequently as new friends are made and
social relationships develop. However, autobiographical insideness within the new
physical setting may take far longer to attain due to the need to accumulate a
reservoir of memorable and self defining incidents within the new environment.
A fundamental reorientation of perspective regarding the nature of old people's
transactions with place is also in order. Such a reorientation requires reduced emphasis
upon the role of old people as passive respondents to the physical and architectural
form of the immediate environment and greater emphasis upon the active role they
play in creating places and imbuing them with meaning.
Closely linked to this is acknowledgement of the degree to which old people's pre-
sumed attachment to their proximate environment may be, in part, a self-
fulfilling prophecy and as much an artifact of the relative locational immobility of
past elderly cohorts as of any inherent desire to remain in a single setting. Recent
work by Kahana and Kahana has strongly suggested that old people are often quite
adventurous and adaptive when it comes to relocation (Kahana and Kahana, 1983).
Moreover, many of today's young-old have not resided sufficiently long within a
single setting to accumulate the temporal depth of meaning and intensity of auto-
biographical insideness within a single place that characterizes Colton's old-old.
Finally, it is apparent that relocation for an elderly person constitutes a critical
threat to the sense of 'insideness' that may have come to pervade his or her relation-
ship with a familiar environment. A plethora of studies have documented the
resulting trauma (Tobin and Lieberman, 1976; Pastalan, 1983). However, few of these
studies have probed the phenomenology of the alienation, loss and grief that is often
the experiential essence of severance from place; the sense of separation from personal
history and identity conveyed in Steinbeck's account of the Joad family's re-
location. In this context, practitioners and others concerned with the elderly may
perhaps derive solace from the possibility that components of autobiographical inside-
ness may be transferable. One's memories of places that form the settings of the
grand fiction of oneself cannot be easily erased. When relocation is absolutely neces-
sitated by declining health or unavoidable circumstances, it should be possible to
 Place and Personal Identity in Old Age 311

transfer some of the artifacts that old people surround themselves with to preserve
their identity. Dan's plates can be moved with him, Audrey can keep her photographs
and the rocking chair. Each person could retain at least a vestige of a sustaining
sense of place given these supports and other forms of assistance in easing the
transition to the new environment (Gelwicks, 1970; Rowles, 1979). Clearly, the task
of those responsible for reducing relocation trauma is to identify and reinforce trans-
ferable components of attachment to place, acknowledging that other elements may
have to be abandoned. Through such a process it may be possible to develop support
models for the unavoidable relocation of the elderly that no longer result in the separa-
tion of the individual not only from a familiar locale but also from their identity.

Reference Notes
(1) The empirical research reported in this paper was supported by a grant from the
National Institute on Aging, AG00862. I would like to extend my thanks to Anne
Buttimer (Lund University, Sweden), Lucille Nahemow (West Virginia University),
Shirley O'Bryant (Ohio State University) and David Seamon (Kansas State University)
for extremely helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
(2) All proper names used in this paper are pseudonyms.
(3) This list was compiled from a membership roster of the Colton Senior Citizens
Club and supplemented by information on the location and characteristics of other old
people in the community that was obtained during the three years of field research.
(4) It should be noted here that scores on a variety of life satisfaction and morale scales
administered during the field research were uniformly high.

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Manuscript received." 13 April 1983

Revised manuscript received." 18 October 1983