RETIREMENT VILLAGES: SEGREGATED COMMUNITIES?

John McDonald

Abstract This article* reviews the literature,on the relationships among retirement village residents. Based upon the available American data, such villages can be said to be segregated communities. Comparable Australian data is sadly lacking. The American findings and theoretical frameworks are critically analysed before extrapolating to the Australian situation. It is hypothesized that the integration of villages into wider society (strongly advocated by Australian committees of inquiry) may occur at the expense of ‘community’ among the residents.

Introduction The title o f this paper reflects two central concerns

which have captured the interests of retirement village researchers. The notion of ‘segregation’ has been hotly debated on moral grounds, proved the bane of residential planners and regulatory bodies, and has spawned a series of empirical studies. The nature and bases of ‘community’ in retirement villages has also been a consuming interest. This paper aims to provide a critical analysis of what is known about retirement villages as segregated villages. I will review the theoretical and empirical knowledge, and examine the methodological approaches which have guided the research.

In the first section, 1 examine the notion of ‘segrega- tion’ by trying to account for the attention it has received, and by identifying the major dimensions of retirement village segregation. Several major findings arise from this exploration: Australian retirement villages are not as segregated as is generally believed, migration to a retirement village is more often volun- tary than forced, and the degree of segregation that is experienced by village residents is often viewed positively.

The second section explores some of the conse- quences of segregation for the development of com- munity. Ethnographic studies are identified as one of the three major methodological approaches to retire- ment village research. I review the findings this ap- proach has offered, and then critically examine some explanations put forward for the formation of ‘com- munity’ or an ‘age subculture’ in retirement villages. Special attention is given to the theoretical and em- pirical implications of segregation.

The final section involves a broader critical analysis of the theory, method and data. In particular, I reject the notions of traditional community that researchers have employed, identify some of the underlying

This study was supported by a grant from the La Tmbc School of Social Sciences Research and Trawl Grants Committee.

assumptions of the widely used functionalist perspec- tive, and isolate several important variations in Australian retirement villages (compared to the United States where almost all the research has been carried out).

Before commencing, it is necessary to describe some of the key features of retirement villages. Any attempt at a rigorous definition would, I feel, obscure the diversity of this form of housing. A retirement village is a segregated housing complex providing indepen- dent living units for residents of older age groups. Ad- ditionally, it may provide medical, transport, recrea- tional or other facilities for the residents, and may of- fer on-site, ongoing care such as serviced apartments or nursing home accommodation. In most instances a manager is employed to organise the day to day runn- ing of the village. This article is particularly concerned with resident-funded retirement villages, a concern which reflects the entry of private developers into the retirement housing market and the introduction of resident-funded schemes in Australia over the last decade. !%regation: Its Nature and Extent

Resident-funded retirement villages have attracted substantial public and professional interest. Howe’ notes that, by comparison, governments and other agencies have given little attention to the dependent elderly living in aged persons’ housing. She argues that it is the autonomy and political clout of the indepen- dent aged (who are the consumers in resident-funded schemes) that has led to concerns such as those about the segregative nature of retirement housing.

While this is true, I believe that it has also been the recent entry of numerous commercial developers into a market, once the domain of religious and charitable organisations, that has prompted a number of com- prehensive evaluations (see, for example, the ‘Com- mittee of Inquiry into Resident Funded Retirement Villages’,’ and ‘Resident Funded Housing for Elderly People”). The profit motive underlying the provision of housing for the older person pricks the public’s con- science. The supposition is that profit agencies are motivated by a capitalistic spirit, whereas non-profit agencies are guided by a charitable ethos which exer- cises a ‘positive influence on the quality of response to social welfare needs’.‘

Evidence of this concern with segregation is seen in the Committee of Inquiry’s adoption of a philosophy of integration. It recommended that ‘resident funded retirement village developments should be considered part of the neighbouring community, rather than separated living complexes’.’ Further, the conviction that segregation of the elderly is unnatural or undesirable is readily seen in advertising material.

40 Austraiian Journal on Ageing, Voi. 5, No. 2, May 1986.

Many villages boast that they ‘still belong to the sur- rounding community’, provide ‘easy access to public transport, shops and churches’ and ‘offer access to all leisure amenities’ .

Underlying these claims are the negative connota- tions of ‘segregation’ of the aged. I t reflects a belief that older people will be happiest i f they remain in their own homes or local areas after retiring.b As Dempsey’ shows, this can be true. Remaining in a small country town can provide a sense of rootedness. an established status, and continuity of relationships. However, other studies show that retirement migra- tion can heighten the enjoyment of one’s retirement years’. The recent trend for retirees to migrate to the warmer coastal areas of Australia is evidence of this. As ROSOW’ argues, the social interests of older people may be better served in settings where there is a high concentration of age peers. He points out that there is little evidence that the mere physical integration of older and younger persons necessarily means that meaningful social relationships will develop. The geographic isolation evident in retirement villages. Swartout (cited blangumlo) suggests, may only make visible some of the social boundaries clready present. However. before we can examine the consequences of such segregation, we must pose the question: In what ways can retirement villages be said to be segregated?

Structurally, retirement villages can be considered to be segregated in at least three senses: by the age and social class of the residents, and by the geographical boundaries of the village.

1 ) Age Segregation. Australian resident funded retirement villages are age-segregated only in the sense that a minimum age exists (usually pension age, sixty- five for men and sixty for women). Even though such age restrictions apply, i t is not unknown for individual village populations to show an age range of between twenty to thirty years. The generational differences between those who have been called the ‘young old’ and the ‘old old’ are widely recognised. The conclu- sion is that even though retirement villages are age- segregated, they are not age-homogeneous.

2) Social Class Segregation. Resident funded retire- ment villages are also,segregated in terms of the social class background of the residents. Although one Australian report claims that ‘all socio-economic groups were represented amongst unit occupants’,” i t would be more accurate to say that the residents are asset-rich with the great majority being former home- owners. Sale of the family home usually finances the purchase of a village unit which can range in price from $40,O00 to over $200,000. In villages where the ingoing charges are heavily subsidized, residents from a lower social class background may become upwardly mobile.’*

3) Geographic Segregation. In Australia, resident funded retirement villages are generally located in middle and outer urban areas, and larger country cen-

tres. They are geographically segregated in the sense that they occupy clearly demarcated territories. But by being located in or near established urban areas, they are not socially or functionally independent. The same cannot be said for some geographically isolated villages in the United States. These tend to be located in distant rural or coastal sun-belt areas, and are characterised by their immense size and self- sufficiency. However, Heintz” has detected a more re- cent trend for New Jersey retirees to relocate fairly close to their former residence or place of employ- ment, even though they are affluent enough to move to the more distant, traditional retirement areas.

In structural terms, then, retirement villages are perhaps not as segregated as is popularly believed. However the three dimensions of segregation con- sidered above are not the ones of greatest concern to the public and professionals; for them, the crucial issues have been the degree of functional and social segregation. Underlying this concern is the fact that segregation, per se, is negatively valued. Relocation to a village is taken to signify withdrawal. It is deemed to be an act of disengagement. Wild“ argues that the elderly in modern society are becoming increasingly segregated. He sees that Australia’s lower-stratum ag- ed are being forced by the property market to spatially and socially segregate, but that the middle-stratum ag- ed are increasingly choosing to segregate themselves by migrating upon retirement. Evidence of this is seen in the growth of retirement villages. Further, he argues that the retirement village phenomenon represents an attempt by the middle-stratum aged to overcome their marginal position. They have a desire to belong, and a wish to overcome the restricted opportunities and status marginality imposed by retirement. Although empirical research in Australia is sadly lacking, the American experience bears out his argument. Jones, for example, observes that ‘an older person must either accept diminished status in the community or find a new status system. Retirement communities of- fer the best way’.” Perkinson’s research confirms that a new cultural system is possible. She reports that

competitive, achievement-seeking types of behaviour and relationships had been replaced by an emphasis on personal qualities such as friendliness, trust, concern, helpfulness and lack of self-pity.“

However, the validity of this comparison is suspect. Essentially, Perkinson is comparing pre-retirement work relationships with post-retirement neighbour relationships. Such endearing qualities as trust, open- ness, and willing assistance may well have been present in her residents’ pre-retirement neighbour relation- ships, too.

Further, explanations which centre upon the seeking out of a new status system are not entirely consistent with the reasons offered by residents themselves for opting for village life. Typically, residents cite health

Australian Journal on Ageing, Vol. 5. No. 2, May 1986. 41

concerns, garden and house maintenance difficulties, a desire for companionship etc.’ Thus, it is not segregation that is sought, but the facilities and lifestyle afforded by village living. One reviewer reported that age-segregation is rarely i f ever cited as a motive for moving to a retirement village. However, many of the residents come to view age-segregation as a positive value.’”

A number of conclusions can be drawn from the preceding analyses. First, contrary to negative public and professional attitudes towards segregation, the residents of retirement villages come to view their residential arrangements positively. Relocation to a village often leads to renewal and re-engagement. I t may re-integrate the older person whose family and friendship networks have gradually eroded. ROSOW” shows that village residents are often able to capitalise on the extensive friendship pool available. Secondly, the decision to relocate to a village is often undertaken voluntarily. For married, middle-class retirees, villages are not seen as a last resort. Finally, the residential segregation of the elderly in villages does not preclude involvement in wider society. Heintz observed that retirees who relocated to villages in metropolitan fr- inge areas are still ‘active and contributing participants in the day-to-day activities of the larger society’.” The exact degree of functional and social segregration of residents remains an empirical question specific to each village. Villages appear to range from fairly in- tegrated (such as those described by Heintz above) to isolated (as Jacobs” described the majority of residents in Fun City). The following section examines some substantive and theoretical implications that segregation has for the development of ‘community’ in retirement villages.

Segregation and Community Perkinson“ describes how empirical research on

retirement villages in the United States has been characterised by two distinct methodological ap- proaches; during the 1960’s by social-pyschological studies of life satisfaction, and throughout the 1970’s by ethnographic studies. To this I would add a third approach - social network studies - which has not been as widely used nor as distinctive in its periods of application as the first two. In this section, I aim to briefly review the findings produced by the first and third approaches and look at the implications they have for the creation of community in retirement villages. However the central task here is to critically analyse the findings, explanations, and underlying assumptions of the ethnographic method.

During the IW’s, retirement villages were seen as the ideal testing ground in which to resolve the activity/disengagement debate. Village residents were assumed to have ‘disengaged’, while those still living in the wider society were ‘engaged’. The social- psychological studies of the 1960’s sought to examine the consequences of segregation for retired people.

Quite consistently, they revealed that persons living in age-segregated settings reported higher levels of life- satisfaction and morale than their counterparts in wider society. These positive effects have been explain- ed by the friendship opportunities, the lifestyle geared around leisure activitiesb and an unidentified antece- dent that may predispose a retiree to both retirement migration and higher morale.

Social network studies have been used intermittently over the past decade and a half. Some of the findings hcre are consistent with the life-satisfaction studies. yet others reveal no strong patterns. As expected, residents in age-segregated housing report more new friends and interaction with neighbours” and increas- ed social contact afforded by the close proximity of age peers.2’ Marriage has been found to be a signifi- cant intervening variable. Married persons are less likely than singles to have friends inside the facility.’: and are likely to have more primary relations.” Retire- ment housing residents have been found to engage in less interaction with kin*O and their closest friends?’ than those in wider society. Jonas*? tells us that k in in- teraction on the outside has a positive effect on close friendships inside. Hochschild qualifies this by telling us that a qualitative difference exists. Among her residents, a ‘sibling bond with neighbours only emerges when relationships with children are in order’.” Despite this, one network study fpund that friendships arc not as strong a determinant of suppor- tive relations as family bonds.?’ This lack of consisten- cy in the findings is due to a number of factors: varia- tions in the degree of institutionalisation in the facilities, lack of comparability in the indicators of key variables, differences in the length of time the facilities had been operating (socialising with neighbours and visits from kin tend to be very frequent in the first year or so), and the isolation of the facility from the sur- rounding community. With such diversity, i t is not surprising that few consistent results have emerged. To some extent, the ethnographic studies are skirting these problems of quantification by describing, and, to a lesser extent, trying to account for these social phenomena.

The ethnographic approach to retirement village research has been widely used during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Most of the earlier studies were concerned simply with describing group processes among the residents; some of the later ones have additionally at- tempted to account for the community formation among the residents. With only two notable excep- tions,” I* these ethnographers have discovered that village residents enjoy intimate and satisfying relation- ships with each other, develop age-appropriate status and normative systems, build role models for suc- cessful ageing, and display a strong sense of belong- ing. Osgood, in summarizing these studies, says we get

, , . a positive picture of these (retirement villages) as integrated, tight-knit communities. offering

42 Australian Journal on Ageing, Vol. 5, No. 2, May 1986.

residents a source of friends. meaningful role rela- tionships, age-appropriate roles, norms and values and mutual aid in times of sicknes and crisis.!’

Rose’“ was one of the first to suggest that age- concentrated environments could provide the milieu for the development of an age subculture such as that described above. The ethnographic studies have large- ly borne out this hypothesis (though there has been little evidence of political activism - and such a development has been explicitly rejected by Heintz”). When retired people interact with each other significantly more than they interact with persons in other groups, they develop a distinctive set of mean- ings and ialues. Rose also notes that a number of forces can inhibit the development of an age sub- culture; among these are the maintenance of e?cternal group inbolvement, including family contact between elderly parents and their adult children, as well as the influence of competing reference groups. The degree 0 1 segregation thus emerges as an important es- planatory factor. The ethnographic studies from the United States tell us that, by and large, retirement villages are indeed, segregated communities. However, I would argue that a closer and more critical analysis of these findings and explanations is warranted.

Osgood’s’’ recent research provides a useful starting point. She undertook a comparative study of three dif- ferent retirement villages in the United States. One of her main aims was to identify the factors that facilitated the high degree of integration of the residents . Fol lowing Ross2” , she examines ‘background factors’ which include social and cultural homogeneity, size, investment and irreversibility, similar reasons for relocating, standardized living units, and the physical layout; and ‘emergent factors’ which include the formal social organisation, community-wide events, self-government, leadership, common values, mutual aid and solidarity as a response to outside threats. She concludes, however that none of these factors distinguish the three villages she studied. Rather, i t is ‘age-segregation, per se, (that) forms the basis of social integration and com- munityness in these three because this is the only characteristic common to the three villages.

However, when Osgood refers to age-segregation as the basis for integration, she clearly can’t claim it as a sufficient condition. Jacob’saq study of Fun City’s in- visible, passive, isolated residents, plus the plight of institutionalised aged people” indicates that age- segregation does not always lead to integration. Nor is it a necessary condition. A local study of older people ‘in a country town,’ as well as Townsend’s’* investiga- tion reveals that integration into local community life is possible without segregation. This means that Osgood must be treating age-segregation as a con- tributing condition. That is, age-segregation merely provides an opportunity for the development of mean- ingful social roles and community spirit - but it does

not guarantee i t and nor is i t essential. Given the above, I believe Osgood’s conclusion to

be simplistic because i t overlooks the influence of several important intervening variables. Two of them - selection forces and social segregation - will be considered here.

Although the decision to enter a retirement village is more often than not a voluntary one, certain selection forces play a large part in channelling a particular type of person into this form of housing. Three processes - self-selection, selective recruitment and network recruitment” - mean that those who enter retirement villages are in some ways different from other older people in the general population. Self-selection occurs when potential residents seek out villages that will meet their perceived needs. Selective recruitment by village developers also operates insofar as sales are pitched at a particular target group. Active, younger, upper-middle class retirees may be offered ‘leisure packages’, and older retired persons may seek or be lured by villages which offer ‘independence with security’. Finally, network recruiting by village residents of k i n . old friends and neighbours also operates to pull ‘like’ people together. Therefore, Osgood’s conclusion that age-segregation is the basis for integration overlooks the point that the very pro- cess of segregation involves selection. Whenever we examine the composition of a particular retirement village, we are not dealing with a random sample of older people. Within individual villages, the residents are likely to share significant commonalities in terms of social class background, reasons for entering, value sets, perceived needs etc. These commonalities repre- sent important intervening variables that will have consequences for the development of community within the village. Perhaps the reason why Osgood failed to detect any similarities other than age- segregation was because her comparisons were made between villages rather than within them.

The second important intervening variable that Osgood overlooks is that of social segregation. We have already noted that retirement villages in the United States tend to be more geographically isolated and self-sufficient than those in Australia. In drawing her conclusions, Osgood fails to take account of this degree of segregation. Earlier in her book she notes that the three villages she studied are all ‘somewhat isolated and insulated’ and that ‘life . . . is carried on amost exclusively within the confines of the particular geographical space’. ’‘ This social and functional segregation is a crucial intervening variable. Rose’s theory*’ would suggest that the development of an age subculture within Osgood’s retirement villages can be partly explained by the social segregation, rather than simply the age-segregation as she asserts.

A Critical Approach The foregoing analysis of Osgood’s investigation

serves to illustrate that a critical approach to the

Australian Journal on Ageing, Vol. 5. No. 2, May 1986. 43

American ethnographic studies is needed - par- ticularly i f i t is to be applied to the Australian scene. Not only are Australian retirement villages different in terms of location, scale and function etc.. but we must examine how the functionalistic perspective has in- fluenced the nature of the research findings, and we must question the relevance of our assumptions about ‘traditional community’ when dealing with planned retirement villages. The following section considers these issues, among others.

Though diverse, Australian retirement villages dif- fer in many significant respects from those that have been the object of empirical studies in the United States. Apart from the locational difference mention- ed earlier, important variations can be observed in size (some American villages contain several thousand residents. One, Leisure World, has around 15,000 residents whereas the largest Australian village con- tains only several hundred residents), degree of self- sufficiency (some American villagps offer ‘total lifetime package deals’ whereas most Australian villages offer recreation facilities and some medical services but are by no means self-sufficient), age (com- mercial American villages have been in existence for thirty years, whereas the resident-funded market in Australia is only ten years old), marketing (until recently, American villages attracted retirees from in- terstate, whereas most Australian recruitment has been regional), as well as in management style and clientele.

These structural factors are likely to have a signifi- cant effect on the social relationships of the residents. For example, with Australian villages generally being much less self-sufficient and less geographically isolated, the residents are more likely to retain signifi- cant external ties. This may account for the small percentage of isolated village residents reported in one Australian case study.12

Ethnographic studies of retirement villages can also be criticised for their lack of rigour. Researchers have tended to use value-laden concepts, many of which are vague and poorly defined. There is a distinct lack of adequate operationalisation. The concept of ‘com- munity’, for example, is often used in an evaluative rather than a descriptive way because it carries positive connotations. Not only is it imbued with ideas of the good life,” but it has proved to be a most slippery con- cept indeed. In various studies it has been taken to mean the existence of a collective conscience, or a sense of belonging, or a common value and normative system, or an enclosed local social system - or all of these. The idea of ‘integration’ has been given similar loose treatment. Often it seems that the definitions of particular concepts have been used to fit the situation at hand. The lack of rigorous and systematic opera- tionalisation of indicators does not facilitate the ac- cumulation and generalisation of our knowledge.

Not only have many researchers used concepts in a vague and shifting way, but they have proceeded in

their investigations after assuming that community (or a sense of i t ) already exists in the age-segregated set- ting. This sort of assumption is evident in the works of Osgood whose purpose was to identify the ‘nature, kind and extent of social integration and ‘community- riess’ in these communities”” and Johnson who posits ‘since mobile-home parks are voluntarily created com- munities’” but not in the works of Hochschild” or Jacobs, ’’ :h even though the former did discover a thriving community. In the cases cited above, ‘com- munity’ is taken to refer to a localised human settle- ment and also to the quality of the relationship between people - neither is a pre-requisite for the other, but they appear to be used inter-changeably.

Assumptions about the existence and nature of com- munity reflect the functionalist perspective inherent in the ethnographic approach. Functionalism emphasizes the stability, harmony and uni ty of village life. Its ap- plication would involve an attempt to describe the totality of the village, to identify the major institutions and to show their inter-relationship, and to show how the ‘system’ functions and maintains itself. Further evidence is seen in the identification of bases of com- munity in the writings of Osgood:’ and ROSS;” there is no similar consideration of those factors which inhibit the development of community. Conflict, change and power have been acknowledged in some of the more sophisticated studies (for example, ROSS” and Fry’“) but usually recognised only insofar as they contribute to the adjustment or equilibrium of the social system. M y argument here is that the positive nature of retire- ment village life reported in ethnographic studies is partly attributable to the doniinant consensuaVfunc- tionalist perspective which lays down a conceptual schema (including terms such as normative regulation, integration, social solidarity etc.), determines the nature of the research questions, and predisposes a researcher to the selective observation, emphasis and interpretation of data.

The influence of methodological frameworks on research questions and findings has wide theoretical acknowledgement,J* and gained prominence with Lewis’.‘’’ re-examination of a Mexican village originally studied by Redfield.“

A fourth reason why we need to adopt a critical ap- proach to the idea of retirement villages as idyllic com- munities is specifically because such a claim figures so large in the sales promotions of private developers. Following the American example, Australian villages have been given idyllic-sounding, peaceful, rural names - such as ‘Oak Tree Hill’, ‘The Lakes of Cher- rybrook’, ‘Village Glen’ and ‘Oak Grange’. Village developers promise ‘an atmosphere of peace and tran- quillity among the residents’, ‘a sense of belonging in a caring community’, ‘a complete social life through the community and amenities centre’ and ‘to create the feeling of a permanent, settled neighbourhood’. (All of these names and promises are taken directly from a sample of brochures of Australian retirement villages.)

44 Australian Journal on Ageing. Vol. 5, No. 2, May 1986.

Entrepreneurial claims such as these represent what Fry’: calls the ‘commoditization of culture’. That is. resident-funded retirement village developers sell more than bricks and land, thcy sell ‘community’ itself. This is what village residents mean when they say thai they came looking for ‘a way of life’ rather than merely ‘a place to live’. At an empirical level, the ‘commoditiza- tion of culture’ raises questions about the extent to which tlie quality of human relationships can be plan- ned, and the extent to which retirement villages are an ideal solution to the aged ‘problem’. At a theoretical level, it strongly suggests that some of the assumptions about traditional communities are not valid when wc deal wi th retirement villages - the issue to be taken up nest in this paper.

Fry’” argues that urban anthropologists should re- ject the notions of traditional community. As resear- chers have shifted their empirical base from pre- industrial to urban societies, their original assump- tions about the nature of community are no longer valid. More specifically, she argues that urban coni- munities are not culturally homogeneous, that their social and territorial organisat ion is not congruent. and that they are not natural entities. Therefore, Fry argues, some forms of modern social organisation are better understood if we view them as commodities. I t is evident. however, that a number of retirement billage ethnograplicrs persist i n using the concept of community in its !raditional sciise.

For instance, the consensual culture in retirement villages is frequently explained in ternis of tlie homo- geneity of the residents.” :’ This has produced a tendency for researchers to treat the village as a totali- ty ; as an isolated social system encapsulating a single, universally acknowledged, coherent body of norms, values and beliefs. Consequently, there is little ap- preciation of an individual’s contrary position, or the possibility of a competing value or normative system. When competing values or unconventional behaviour is recognised, it tends to be treated as functional (that is, deviance serves to delimit the boundaries of accep- table behaviour), or explained in terms of incomplete socialization or errant personality. In my opinion, these assumptions about homogeneity and consensus have produced an overly-deterministic view of behaviour. Norms have been taken as independent variables governing human behaviour; little emphasis is placed on those forces and factors which shape the normative order. Jacobs” formally acknowledges this. While he concedes that social conditions determine the success or failure of individual adjustment, he also urges researchers to consider the influence of the in- dividual on the social structure and culture. Perhaps the predisposition to a consensual view of culture is most clearly suggested in Osgood’s work. Following Olsen,” Osgood believes that communities allow their members ‘to satisfy their needs through the formation of symbiotic role relationships’ and that communities are composed of ‘interlinking groups and associations’ in which ‘social control is evidenced through deeply in-

ternalized norms and values or through (the) applica- tion of sanctions’.‘‘ This idealization of community often diverts attention away from its negative aspects: the lack of individual autonomy, the rivalry and bit- terness between factions, and the ill-treatment of those who don’t fit in.

Fry’s’’ second major criticism is in the assumption o f territorial and social congruency. She argues that urban communities are not the isolated, self-contained units that primitive tribes were. More than three decades ago, Steward observed this as one of the fail- ings of ethnographers:

For community studies investigators usually select small localised social segments, for these are assum- ed to constitute cultural sub-groups . . . The ethnographic method . . . is open to criticism . . . because i t treats the local group as i f the larger socie- t y did not exist.“

As i t applies to retirement village ethnography, then. greater account must be taken of the political, economic and social relationships between the village and wider society. Investigators must not only ex- amine the impact of external forces, but in turn. ex- amine how the village and the residents themselves af- fect wider society. I t \vould be incorrect to say that villaye ethnographers have totally ignored these dimensions (Hochschild,” for example. devotes an en- tire chapter to the integration of her old age communi- ty into the broader social context). Rather, they have not given i t due theoretical and empirical considerat ion.

The final criticism concerns the naturalness of vil- lage developments. Unlike pre-industrial communi- ties, some modern communities are commercial con- cerns. They are the product of entrepreneurs, urban planners, salesmen and managers. Fry” identifies t hree structural conditions arising from this commodi- tization that affect community formation: land tenure, involvement of the entrepreneurs in com- munity life, and the financial solvency of the develop- ment. Unlike other bases of community (listed earlier in this paper) identified by ethnographers, Fry’s ap- proach assists in our understanding of these com- munities as commodities. In revising our notions of traditional community, our conceptual framework becomes much more consistent with the empirical bases of retirement village developments.

Concluding Comments This paper set out to answer the question: ‘Are

retirement villages segregated communities?’ Judging from the available American data, the answer to this question must be ‘yes’. The larger, more self-sufficient villages were found to be relatively isolated from wider society, and exhibited community in most of the con-

Australian Journal on Ageing, Vol. 5. No. 2, May 1986. 45

bentionally.defined ways: as a geographically defined territory, as ‘we-feeling’, as a shared value and nor- mative order, and as a localised social system. One of the implications of this finding is that the formation of community (made possible by the homogeneity and age-segregation of the residents) may be inversely related to the degree of integration into wider society. Thus, the integration of villages (strongly advocated in government reports) may occur at the expense of ‘community’ among the residents.

Another central aim of this paper was to make a number of substantive distinctions between American and Australian villages. Because so little local research has been carried out , only a few tentative suggestions could be put forward regarding the implications of these distinctions for the formation of community. The smaller sizes and selection processes for entry to Australian villages would increase the potential for the formation of community, but the regional recruit- ment, location in established urban areas, and lower degree of self-sufficiency would probably work against i t . The bases of community identified by Ross,2q Fry,)a Keith,‘6 and Osgood” can be for- mulated into hypotheses and used to test the local situation. Such an approach has the advantage of generating comparat ive d a t a and cumulat ive know ledge.

In this paper I also critically analysed the func- tionalist paradigm of the ethnographic approach. I argued that the positive reports of village life are due, in part, to the assumptions. research questions. and conceptual framework of this approach. A reworking of this approach, as well as a rejection of the assurnp- tions of traditional community i s necessary for any future research.

John i\.lrDonuld. fosl-grudiiore srudcnr. Depurinrcnt of Sacrulog.v, Lu Trohe Unrversi- I?, Birnduora. Vir. 3aq3.

AUTHOR’S N O T E :

ond ro Ken Denipse.v for reuding an eurlier draft. T h u n h w e due 10 Burburo Muoheirrs for us.vsruntl wuh ryping.

REFERENCES I Howe. A. The Retirement Housing klarket: Demand, Response

and Responsibilities. Paper presented at a seminar on Housing for the Retired and Elderly. Ian Buchan Cell Research Centre. University o f Sydney, 1984.

2 Government o f Victoria. Committee of Inquiry into Resident Funded Retirement Villages. hlelbourne: Government Printer, 1984.

3 Victorian Council on the Ageing. Resident Funded Housing for Elderly People. Melbourne: Victorian Council on the Ageing, 1980.

4 Gilbert. N. Welfare for profit: Moral. empirical and theoretical perspectives. Journal of Social Policy, 1984, 13, 63-74. p. 69.

5 Government of Victoria. op. cit.. p. 37. 6 Bultena. G. and Wood, V. The American retirement community:

Bane or blessing? Journal of Gerontology. 1969, 24, 209-217. 7 Dempsey, K. Old People and their Children: An Australian Case

Study. La Trobe University: Sociology Paper No. 8. n.d. 8 Prinsley, D.. Kidd. 6.. Howe, A. and Cameron, K. The

Experience of Retirement Migration to Phillip Island and I t s Impact on the Community. National Research Institute for Gerontology and Geriatric hledicine: Occasional Paper in Gerontology. No. I. 1979.

9 Rosow. I. Social Inlegration of the Aged. New York: Free Press, 1967.

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39. 219-22h. p . 22.1.

xn.

46 Australian Journal on Ageing, Vol. 5, No. 2, May 1986.