OLDER PEOPLE AND SOCIAL PARTICIPATION: EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT FORMS, «BLIND SPOTS» AND TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE CONDITIONS OF PANDEMIC AND POST-PANDEMIC REALITY

Relevance of the article is determined by the fact that over the past two years, under the conditions of forced restraint of social activity of older people in the face of the risks of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been changes in preferences and forms of their social participation. Since 2022, there has been a return to the previous «pre-pandemic» practices of participation of older people, but it occurs mainly without taking into account the pandemic experience and the transformations of the participation culture that have taken place.
The purpose of the article is to discuss the «blind spots», explicit and implicit forms of social participation of older Russians and transformations of the participation culture occurring in the pandemic and post-pandemic period. Research methods: metaparadigm of critical gerontology, systems and comparative approach, active aging theory, questionnaire survey method.
The results of the study allow us to talk about the transformation of the culture of participation of older Russians. So, some seniors have reduced their activity or turned to non-participation strategies in order to safely age. Others switched to their own interests, the interests of the immediate environment and local communities. Still others have become more active, offered new forms of participation and solidarity, gained experience in resisting restrictions and adapting to the pandemic and post-pandemic world. At the same time, there are implicit forms of social participation of older people in social practice, for example, addressed to intra-family or local social spaces, implemented in routine practices and not subject to reflection and evaluation. Despite the fact that older Russians make a significant contribution to the life of their immediate environment, communities, territories, they rarely consider themselves socially active, which reinforces the stereotypes of passive and unproductive old age.
Conclusions. The discovered «blind spots» in our ideas about motives, factors, forms of social participation of older people determine new issues and promising tasks for the sociology of aging and social gerontology. Further study of various forms of social participation at an older age, primarily by qualitative methods, can contribute to the recognition of the invisible contribution and improvement of the status of older people, optimization and productive use of their potential not only in the interests of the family, local communities, but also for the development of territories, civil society institutions, civic and patriotic education of youth, etc.