The Eye of Beauty: Creating a Place for Elite and Aging Elders

Abstract

In the last twenty years retirement and assisted living communities have become fixtures of the American aging landscape. The material and ideological organization of this industry not only indicates corporate preparation for the "graying of America" but represents the proliferating and changing representations of the elderly in our country. This study broadly aims to understand the moral geographies created through the industry's integrated and segregated models of elder care as well as the ideological formation of good health as a symbol of ideal moral "citizenship" in retirement and assisted living communities. More specifically, this dissertation explores how one small development company in the southwest sought, through an organizational discourse known as the Eye of Beauty, to diminish the social marginalization experienced by older elders in America. I argue that the material environments of retirement and assisted living communities "frame" their residents in ways that have deep implications for elder identities, identity management, and cultural citizenship and that the Eye of Beauty brought an effective challenge to the dominant classificatory and hierarchical authority of the industry.