PROCESSES OF EXCLUSION AND NEW RURALITY: COMMUNITY CHANGE IN THE LIVES OF RURAL OLDER PEOPLE

Abstract Rural settings are sites of rapid change. Now sharing many of the processes that characterise their urban neighbourhood counterparts, older people’s rural communities, even those in remote locations, are being altered by forces driven by gentrification and population churn. While the potential for displacement is apparent, the extent to which older people respond to these processes is not well understood. The degree to which these shifting contexts produce new exclusionary mechanisms for older people to contend with and new opportunities for them to exploit has yet to be sufficiently explored. This paper aims to address the intersection of exclusion and community change in the production of a new rurality for older people. The analysis will 1) present an overview of the relevant international literature, and 2) highlight the current and emerging exclusionary processes that are impacting on the lives of older people using data from individual narratives and time-use diaries.


LIVING IN RURAL CONTEXTS: TOWARD A CRITICAL INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE ON RURAL AGING
Chair: Kieran Walsh, NUI Galway, Galway, Ireland, Ireland Co-Chair: Mark Skinner, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada Despite a growing focus on rural ageing, international literature in this field remains underdeveloped in critical and interdisciplinary perspectives. Reflecting traditional divisions across geographic, gerontological and health literatures, how we understand experiences of growing older in rural settings can still be characterised by a narrow, applied approach. This has implications for our capacity to disentangle multifaceted lived realities from rural contexts, and macro socio-economic and structural environments. There then remains questions about the ways in which the study of rural ageing needs to develop to direct policy, research and practice agendas to be a more critical reflection of these complexities. This symposium aims to draw together interdisciplinary critical perspectives on ageing and rurality as a means to advance this development. It will consider different theoretical approaches and major cross cutting challenges in relation to rural ageing. Burholt and Scharf will examine how critical gerontology has raised awareness of the heterogeneity of rural ageing across social justice elements of demography, resources, recognition and representation. Keogh and Walsh address these same elements in relation to the empirical intersection of exclusion and change in the production of a new rurality for older people. Cutchin and Rowles present a pragmatist theoretical perspective to encapsulate the essence of rural integration within an ever-changing milieu. Poulin et al. offer a critical approach to rural gerontological health that emphasizes intersectionality in the formation and development of older adult health. Herron and Skinner explore the intersectional construction of dementia and mental health in rural settings for older adults.

CRITICAL SOCIAL GERONTOLOGY AND RURAL AGING
Vanessa Burholt, 1 and thomas Scharf 2 , 1. Swansea University,Swansea,United Kingdom,2. Newcastle University,Newcastle,England,United Kingdom This paper examines the extent to which critical gerontology has raised awareness of the heterogeneity of rural ageing in High Income Countries (HICs) and compare this to our knowledge of the issues that are associated with rural ageing in Low to Middle Income Countries (LMICS). We will draw on Nancy Fraser's social justice framework to summarize key issues around: (1) Demography (such as globalization, urbanization, counter-urbanization and rural population ageing); (2) Resources (individual material and social resources; community resources such as access to services); (3) Recognition (social status, cultural visibility through social participation and cultural worth through valued social roles); (4) Representation (in social, health and rural development policies; and in private sector and NGO approaches). We argue that an intersectional approach that takes into account location and context (structural/economic/political) alongside other dimensions of oppression and/or privilege can provide a better understanding of the experience of ageing in rural areas.

PROCESSES OF EXCLUSION AND NEW RURALITY: COMMUNITY CHANGE IN THE LIVES OF RURAL OLDER PEOPLE
Sinead Keogh, 1 and Kieran Walsh 2 , 1. National University of Ireland Galway, Galway, Ireland, Ireland, 2. Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, Galway, Galway, Ireland Rural settings are sites of rapid change. Now sharing many of the processes that characterise their urban neighbourhood counterparts, older people's rural communities, even those in remote locations, are being altered by forces driven by gentrification and population churn. While the potential for displacement is apparent, the extent to which older people respond to these processes is not well understood. The degree to which these shifting contexts produce new exclusionary mechanisms for older people to contend with and new opportunities for them to exploit has yet to be sufficiently explored. This paper aims to address the intersection of exclusion and community change in the production of a new rurality for older people. The analysis will 1) present an overview of the relevant international literature, and 2) highlight the current and emerging exclusionary processes that are impacting on the lives of older people using data from individual narratives and time-use diaries. Rural aging as we have conceived of it in the gerontological literature of the past 50 years no longer exists, if it ever did. In this presentation, we contribute toward a reframing of the discourse on rural aging through a critique of established views of rural aging as an ecological, cultural, and phenomenological experience. We argue that each view is limited in its ability to encapsulate the essence of rural living and community. Our critique provides a context for a dynamic perspective on rural aging that embraces the situational uniqueness of each rural environment. We introduce that perspective, based in John Dewey's philosophy, and grounded in the idea of situationally defined manifestations of place integration within an ever-changing milieu. We conclude with a discussion of key implications, including how this perspective reshapes the roles of researchers and older rural residents in the process of ongoing rural gerontological inquiry.

LEVERAGING CRITICAL RURAL GERONTOLOGY TO IMPROVE RURAL GERONTOLOGICAL HEALTH Laura Poulin, 1 and Neil Hanlon 2 , 1. Trent University, Ontario, Peterborough, Canada, 2. University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, British Columbia, Canada
A critical approach in rural gerontology has led to a better understanding of the complex interplay between older adults unique aging experiences and the multidimensional and dynamic communities in which they live. The evolution of critical rural gerontology will be explored, outlining why a similar approach is needed in rural gerontological health. In particular, rural gerontological health literature must expand beyond a deficit focus that homogenizes older adult health experiences and recognize the complexities of negotiating older adult health within multidimensional rural spaces. Inherent in this approach is recognizing the intersectionality of older adult health as well as the need to study rural gerontological health as an experience enhanced and inhibited by interactions within and across formal health services, informal social services and informal care. This approach will contribute to innovations in policy and practice addressing the burgeoning interest of how to effectively care for older adults in rural settings.

Rachel Herron 1 , 1. Brandon University, Manitoba, Canada
People living with dementia can experience significant barriers to meaningful participation in their communities, particularly in underserviced rural and small-town settings. Drawing on a multi-method pilot study employing observations, diaries, focus groups and interviews in rural Canada, we examine the potential of an innovative dance program developed by Baycrest Health Sciences and Canada's National Ballet School, to transform the experiences of people living with dementia and the rural places in which they live. Our findings identify moments, processes, and places of transformation throughout the program including moments of individual self-expression; changing interactions with staff, volunteers, and carers; and changing relationships with home and community. We argue that art-based programs can challenge dominant assumptions about people living with dementia and contribute to the creation of more just health and social care in rural places. In doing so, we illustrate the value of critical arts-based approaches to aging in rural places. Scientists from many disciplines have recently suggested changes in research practices, with the goal of ensuring greater scientific integrity. Some suggestions have focused on reducing researcher degrees of freedom to extract significant findings from exploratory analyses, whereas others concern how best to power studies and analyze results. Yet others involve ensuring that other interested researchers can easily access study materials, code, and data, to help with re-analysis and/or replication. These changes are moving targets, with discussions and suggested practices ongoing. However, aging researchers have not yet been major participants in these discussions, and aging journals are just starting to consider open science policies. This symposium, sponsored by the GSA Publications Committee, will highlight transparency and open science practices that seem most relevant to aging researchers, discuss potential challenges to implementing them as well as reasons for doing so, and will consider how aging journals may implement these practices. Open science practices to be considered include: preregistration, open data, open materials and code, sample size justification and analytic tools for considering null effects. Presenters from a range of areas of aging research (lab, secondary data, qualitative) will show examples of open science practices in their work and will discuss concerns about, and challenges of, implementing them. Then, editorial team members will discuss the implications of these changes for aging journals. Finally, discussant Jon King will give NIA's perspective on the importance of encouraging open science practices in the aging field.

OPEN SCIENCE IN GERONTOLOGY: IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLISHING
Derek M. Isaacowitz 1 , 1. Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States One big push in open science is to change journal practices to encourage a more transparent and replicable scientific record. I will start by considering why these issues are important from the perspective of a journal editor. The Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines were