"Active living": transforming the organization of retirement and housing in the U.S

Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, March, 2003 by Paul C. Luken, Suzanne Vaughan

We examine the transformation of the social institutions of retirement and housing in the US in the latter part of the 20th century. Using institutional ethnography we explicate a woman's experience relocating to an age segregated community. Her relocation is predicated upon ideological practices that reconceptualize retirement as "active living" and the construction of a setting in which retirees engage in this new lifestyle. We demonstrate the textual mediation of this ideological and organizational reformation through an examination of an advertising campaign undertaken by the Del Webb Development Corporation in the marketing of Sun City, Arizona. The advertising texts provide an ideological code to manage and reorganize at multiple sites the social relations of one segment of the housing industry under late capitalism.

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In this paper we examine how texts enter into social processes to articulate and redefine the social organization of housing and retirement practices in the latter part of the 20th century in the US. We explicate one woman's experience of moving from Youngstown, Ohio, to Sun City, Arizona, in 1978, and in doing so, show how her activities are embedded in actual spheres of changing social relations which are textually mediated through advertising. The method we use is that of institutional ethnography. As institutional ethnographers we begin with an experience of a particular subject and the subject's experience becomes a point of departure. From there we seek to explicate that experience by discovering its social determinants. The subject's account of her experience leads us to a consideration of specific texts. (For a description of institutional ethnography see Campbell, 1998; Grahame, 1998; Smith, 1987. For works examining texts and social processes in other institutional arrangements see de Montigny, 1995; Diamond, 1992; Griffith, 1992, 1995; Jackson, 1995; Kinsman, 1987; McCoy, 1995, 1998; Mueller, 1995; Mykhalovskiy, 1999; Ng, 1995; Reimer, 1995; Smith & Smith, 1990; Swift, 1995; Townsend, 1998; Turner, 1995; Walker, 1995.)

We interviewed Ursula Roberts on several occasions about her experiences in housing herself and family over her life. (1) We introduce her to you through a brief biography, and then we present her account of a specific period of her life when she moved to Arizona with her husband, Al, and took up residence in Sun City. The account is in the form of a reconstructed narrative that we compiled from her words. In the account she spoke of seeing advertisements about Sun City in the Youngstown, Ohio, newspaper. That led us to the Sun City Area Historical Society to recover some of the advertisements that she might have seen in the early 1970's. We also examined earlier ads and present some of them in this paper. We read these ads as textual practices in the exercise of power that reconceptualize housing and retirement under advanced capitalism (Walker, 1995). We begin with the biography.

Ursula Roberts was born in 1917, the oldest of two daughters, and reared in a small town in Pennsylvania. During her childhood her mother was a housewife and her father was a sales manager for an automobile dealership. After graduating from high school, she attended college briefly and then began working for J.C. Penney. In 1938 she married Al Roberts, who began working for Ursula's father. Ursula ended her employment when Al began working for J.C. Penney also, and within a few years they had two children.

During WWII Al worked in a defense-related industry, and after the war he sold groceries wholesale. In 1952 Al entered the insurance business as a general agent. He was quite successful and soon was running offices for a national company, Washington National Life Insurance. Since Al was frequently called upon to rectify troubled agencies, the family moved from city to city quite often. From 1952 until Al's retirement in 1977, many of Ursula's activities revolved around caring for her two children and her husband who had his first massive heart attack when he was 45. She was very active in country clubs wherever she lived, and golfed whenever she could. She also maintained their households where they liked to have friends over for bridge, dancing, and dinners. Al had another heart attack in 1977 in Youngstown. We begin with Ursula's own narrative at this point.

      And the company told him to walk out and close the door and
   never walk back in again. He said he couldn't afford to do it and
   they said, "Yes you can." So they made all the arrangements and
   that was it. So anyhow Washington was very, very good to us and got
   us all settled back so we could have a nice retirement, and that
   was it.

      Well he was on disability for a while, but not for too long.
   He went on disability when he was 50 because he wasn't able to
   work and he couldn't collect social security. And he had disability
   insurance, so he got a good disability pension, money every month.

      We lived there in Youngstown for five years, and then we came
   out here after he retired. He was probably retired for a year
   before we moved out here. I know he was. Before he became ill the
   last time, I wanted to come out to Sun City. They were advertising
   Sun City a lot then in the papers. I didn't want to live in
   Youngstown for the rest of my life 'cause I didn't like Youngstown,
   period.

      Now Al's working just before his whole episode, before he had
   to retire, and we were going to go to New Orleans to a convention;
   and I said, "Well, why don't you take three weeks off, and we can
   drive out to Sun City," 'cause it was advertised in the paper, "and
   I would like to see it, and maybe it will give us an idea, as to
   maybe we would like to retire out there when you become 65." And he
   said, well, he said he couldn't take the time off. He just couldn't
   take three weeks and he said, "I don't think it's worth our time
   going out there unless we could take three weeks because, you know,
   it's a long trip out and then go down to New Orleans, be there a
   week or so." So he said no. So I said, "Well, okay." Well then in
   the meantime, he had his heart attack and gets sick. And once he
   got well he wasn't going back to work; and I said to him, "Well,
   why don't we take the time now and go out and take a look?" So he
   said, yes. So we drove out here; and we still went the convention
   in New Orleans. 'Cause this happened so fast that it was
   unbelievable, from the time he said no to, you know, he got sick
   so we still were able to go to that convention in New Orleans. So
   that's what we did. We drove out here then we went to New Orleans.

      We came out here and saw a house and we talked about buying
   it and, you know, this was the same time as Youngstown Sheet and
   Tubes was going down the drain. And that place closed up, you
   know. See Youngstown was a sheet, a steel town and they just closed
   up real fast. And we had a lot of friends that worked for Youngstown
   Sheet and Tube. You know, they were executives and they all lost
   their jobs just like that. But anyhow it went down the drain and we
   knew when we came out here so we were afraid to buy a house out
   here for fear we have to sit on that house for goodness knows how
   long. And we had made up our minds we were not going to move
   out until we'd sold our house. We put it on the market. And we sold
   our house in three weeks time.

      So we got on a plane and then we flew out and the house we'd
   liked was sold. And so this street was brand new, wasn't even
   completely in yet. And, the man that had this house, he decided
   that he wanted to move to Florida. He didn't want this place. He
   was living here in Sun City and he went to Florida. So we came out
   here and bought the house from this man. We didn't finance this
   house. We paid cash for it, and so that was end of that.

      This section up here, this area up here was just finished in 1978.
   When we moved into this house the streets weren't quite finished
   yet. So it was all brand new up here. The country club was brand
   new. They had just finished the clubhouse when we moved in. So
   everything was brand new when we moved here, you know. We
   had a nice life here. It was very enjoyable.