IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v53y2001i10p1383-1396.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

"No strength": sex and old age in a rural town in Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • van der Geest, Sjaak

Abstract

This article is part of a larger project on social and cultural meanings of growing old in a rural community of Ghana, the fieldwork for which was carried out between 1994 and 2000. It deals with ideas and practices concerning sex among the elderly. Informal conversations were held with individual elders and with groups of people that were middle-aged and young. Sex was generally regarded as a matter of "strength", which was diminishing at old age. For men the concept of strength specifically referred to sexual potency, whereas for women "strength" was part of a more general feeling of physical power and the ability to perform the many activities expected from being a man's sexual partner. Sex at old age is looked at with a considerable amount of ambivalence. On the one hand, it is something that the elderly should have left behind them. On the other hand, sex confirms the vitality and status of the elder. If sex is practised at old age, it should be orderly and restrained, "respectful".

Suggested Citation

  • van der Geest, Sjaak, 2001. ""No strength": sex and old age in a rural town in Ghana," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 53(10), pages 1383-1396, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:53:y:2001:i:10:p:1383-1396
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(01)00222-2
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gloria Chepngeno‐Langat & Jane C. Falkingham & Nyovani J. Madise & Maria Evandrou, 2012. "Concern About HIV and AIDS Among Older People in the Slums of Nairobi, Kenya," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(9), pages 1512-1523, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sex Strength Old age Kwahu Ghana;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:53:y:2001:i:10:p:1383-1396. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.