‘So long as there's hair there still’:displaying lack of interest as a practice for negotiating social norms of appearance for older women

Although women's appearance is theorised as being central to their identity and social currency, much prior research has argued that as women age, other aspects of their lives assume a higher priority than their appearance. Nevertheless, they continue to invest time in appearance practices. In undertaking these various appearance practices, older women have to negotiate a range of conflicting social norms of age-appropriate appearance, such as managing the balancing act between ‘letting themselves go’, on the one hand, and looking like ‘mutton dressed as lamb’, on the other. This paper contributes to the growing literature on older women's attitudes to their appearance and related practices. Drawing on data from a two-year research project in a hair-salon catering primarily for older clients, I examine the question of the importance to women of their appearance through the lens of their hair-care practices. Focusing on a group of nine female clients aged 55–90 in a small hair-salon in southern England, I show how participants in their talk and embodied presentation display shifting orientations of investment/interest (or lack of interest) in their appearance. Comparing participants’ appearance practices, with their talk in two sequential environments in which a possible interest in appearance is made particularly salient, I argue that these shifting orientations reveal participants’ subtle negotiation of competing social norms of appearance for older women

Ageism and interactional (mis)alignment:Using micro-discourse analysis in the interpretation of everyday talk in a hair-salon

In the fifty years since Robert Butler coined the term, ageism remains one of the most widely-experienced forms of discrimination in Europe. Some forms of ageism seem overt and easy-to-identify; in many cases, though, it is invisible and deeply rooted in everyday life. This applies, too, to ageism-in-interaction, which, as I argue in this paper, can be very subtle, deeply embedded in a web of routines and expectations generated over a longer interactional history. I illustrate this embeddedness of ageism-in-interaction by focussing, as a case-study, on an encounter in a hair-salon between an 83-year-old woman and her stylist, aspects of which we might initially be tempted to attribute to the stylist's orientations to the client's (older) age. However, as I show, closer scrutiny of the emergent interaction, combined with progressive widening of the analysis to encompass data outside this focal exchange, suggests more nuanced understandings of what is going on. As I also aim to show, the nose-to-data attention to the emergent interactions in this case-study, informed by conversation analysis and combined with wider ethnographic knowledge, is the tool-kit we need to reveal the less visible instances of ageism-in-interaction.</p

Tired, but not (only) because of age:An interactional sociolinguistic study of participants' variable stances towards older-age categorial explanations in everyday hair-salon talk

A growing body of research examining age-in-interaction has revealed the way in which people orientate to stereotypical associations of aging. However, relatively little attention has been given to the way older-age categorial terms and expressions are used in everyday, non-medicalised settings and the kinds of identities thereby achieved. In this study I aim to bring to the fore and explain the variability of stances towards older-age terms and expressions in an ordinary setting, a hair-salon. I explore this variability by scrutinizing in detail cases where older women resist another’s use of aging to explain their ailment or complaint, and contrast these with cases where the same women, in the same appointment, themselves invoke older age to explain or intensify their own problem. Drawing on audio-recorded conversations between clients and salon-workers and using the micro-discourse analytic tools of Conversation Analysis and Membership Categorization Analysis, I show that these seemingly inconsistent orientations to older age emerge out of the unfolding sequential context and the different projects in which participants are engaged in interaction. I further show that older age is not the only or main identity orientated to in such uses in this setting. The discussion as a whole highlights the value of adopting an age-blind approach to the data and of examining people’s use of older-age terms and expressions in a range of ordinary settings

Image resonance in the many-body density of states at a metal surface

The electronic properties of a semi-infinite metal surface without a bulk gap are studied by a formalism that is able to account for the continuous spectrum of the system. The density of states at the surface is calculated within the GW approximation of many-body perturbation theory. We demonstrate the presence of an unoccupied surface resonance peaked at the position of the first image state. The resonance encompasses the whole Rydberg series of image states and cannot be resolved into individual peaks. Its origin is the shift in spectral weight when many-body correlation effects are taken into account

Phylogenetische Untersuchungen an Arten der Gräser-Gattung Aira L. anhand karyologischer und molekularbiologischer Methoden sowie In situ-Hybridisierungen

Innerhalb der Poaceae stellt die Gattung Aira einen Polyploidie-Komplex aus diploiden und tetraploiden Arten dar. Dieser ist für phylogenetische Verwandtschaftsforschungen interessant, da bei den durch Hybridisierung entstandenen tetraploiden Arten z.T. Unkenntnis über die parentalen Genome herrscht. Die Systematik der Gattung und die phylogenetischen Beziehungen der Arten zueinander wurden durch den Einsatz verschiedener Methoden untersucht. Da die Gattung durch gemeinsame morphologische Merkmale sehr stabil ist, erfolgt eine klare Differenzierung primär anhand karyologischer Daten. Die Sequenzierung der cpDNA bzw. nrDNA zeigt aufgrund einer geringen Divergenz einen begrenzten taxonomischen Wert, was sich in einer schlechten interspezifischen Abgrenzbarkeit widerspiegelt und auf eine spät stattgefundene Abtrennung der Arten hinweist. Durch RAPDs und der GISH konnten bei zwei Arten der allopolyploide Ursprung nachgewiesen und die parentalen Genome detektiert werden

Theory of inelastic lifetimes of low-energy electrons in metals

Electron dynamics in the bulk and at the surface of solid materials are well known to play a key role in a variety of physical and chemical phenomena. In this article we describe the main aspects of the interaction of low-energy electrons with solids, and report extensive calculations of inelastic lifetimes of both low-energy electrons in bulk materials and image-potential states at metal surfaces. New calculations of inelastic lifetimes in a homogeneous electron gas are presented, by using various well-known representations of the electronic response of the medium. Band-structure calculations, which have been recently carried out by the authors and collaborators, are reviewed, and future work is addressed.Comment: 28 pages, 18 figures, to appear in Chem. Phy

Sozialraeumliche Differenzierung in Freiburg im Breisgau eine faktorialoekologische Untersuchung von Stadtstrukturen, ihrer Veraenderung zwischen 1970 und 1980 und ihrer Bedeutung fuer die Wohnzufriedenheit

UuStB Koeln(38)-9Y5369 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman

Ageism and interactional (mis)alignment: Using micro-discourse analysis in the interpretation of everyday talk in a hair-salon

AbstractIn the fifty years since Robert Butler coined the term, ageism remains one of the most widely-experienced forms of discrimination in Europe. Some forms of ageism seem overt and easy-to-identify; in many cases, though, it is invisible and deeply rooted in everyday life. This applies, too, to ageism-in-interaction, which, as I argue in this paper, can be very subtle, deeply embedded in a web of routines and expectations generated over a longer interactional history.I illustrate this embeddedness of ageism-in-interaction by focussing, as a case-study, on an encounter in a hair-salon between an 83-year-old woman and her stylist, aspects of which we might initially be tempted to attribute to the stylist’s orientations to the client’s (older) age. However, as I show, closer scrutiny of the emergent interaction, combined with progressive widening of the analysis to encompass data outside this focal exchange, suggests more nuanced understandings of what is going on. As I also aim to show, the nose-to-data attention to the emergent interactions in this case-study, informed by conversation analysis and combined with wider ethnographic knowledge, is the tool-kit we need to reveal the less visible instances of ageism-in-interaction.</jats:p