Revisiting the debate on violence, abuse and mistreatment suffered by the elderly

Abstract

Brazil is going through significant and profound changes in its age structure, with this the contingent of elderly people only tends to increase. Concomitant to this increase, the challenges that the country tends to face in the face of these transformations also grow in the same proportion. In this aspect, the objective is to revisit debates about maltreatment and abuse suffered by the elderly and explore the analytical productivity of the concept of violence and demography in order to think about the contemporary relationship. In this sense, we adopt a sociological approach to the topic of violence. To this end, we started from some ideas of Norbert Elias, Michel Foucault, Max Weber, Michel Misse, Willem Schinkel and Thomas Hobbes. All relate violence to power, like Foucault, however some turned to the understanding of its source (Hobbes), configuration (Elias), to the modern State that holds a legitimate monopoly of its use (Weber), others to the understanding contemporary sociology of violence in the problematic that involves structure and subject (Skinkel, Misse). It is concluded that the various forms of violence suffered by elderly Brazilians constitute social practices that violate rights enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of 1988 and in the Statute of the Elderly. Therefore, it is necessary to safeguard and protect the rights of the elderly. Despite the countless possibilities and contexts in which they originate, the various expressions of violence can be properly treated, prevented and reduced.