Illuminating Existential Meaning: A New Approach in the Study of Retirement

Mattias Bengtsson; Marita Flisbäck

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.17.1.12

Authors

Mattias Bengtsson University of Gothenburg, Sweden https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3147-8712
Marita Flisbäck University of Borås, Sweden https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5611-6323

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.17.1.12

Keywords:

Retirement, Phenomenological Approach, Existential Imperative, Beingtoward-Death, Second Birth, Social Inequality

Abstract

Current discussions on the importance of retirement are largely built on statistical analyses of longitudinal data showing that well-being seldom changes from before to after entering retirement, but is rather mainly dependent on the individual’s social resource position. In contrast, qualitatively oriented researchers underline that the retirement process is a complex life transition that needs to be further illuminated. To do this, however, we need to advance new theoretical and methodological perspectives. In this article, an existential sociology approach is outlined, emphasizing the multifaceted spectra of lived experiences and meaning-making in the retirement process. The phenomenological approaches of existential sociology allow us to consider how the exit from working life is created in the processes of motion rather than as expressions of static positions. A merit of this approach is that retirement as an empirical case may say something general about being in transition as a basic social condition. In the article, we discuss how a socio-biographical methodology, based on longitudinal qualitative interviews, helps us capture how existential meaning is formed and reformed in the ambiguous situations which arise in similar life-course transitions. Theoretically, we especially draw on concepts from the existential anthropologist Jackson and the phenomenological tradition of existential philosophers such as Arendt and Heidegger.

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Author Biographies

Mattias Bengtsson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Mattias Bengtsson is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His work covers areas such as meaning-making in the retirement process, existential driving forces among older employees, work as a calling, social class and ideological orientations, in-work poverty, transnational union cooperation, and transformations of Swedish welfare state policies.

Marita Flisbäck, University of Borås, Sweden

Marita Flisbäck is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Borås, Sweden. Her research has focused on careers in the arts and culture sector, creative entrepreneurship, questions of recognition, and existential meaning-making in low-status occupations and the retirement process.

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