ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the literature that connects older people to natural outdoor environments. Socio-cultural perspectives underpin the discussion. It examines some of the perspectives drawing on older people's insights into their engagement in natural places and explores how outdoor places have meanings that impact on the identity and lifestyle of older individuals. The chapter also explores some of the unifying arrangements that bring together approaches to research on older people in the outdoors. The outdoors is an ecosystem of places in the open air where older people connect to nature, to one another and to themselves. Contemporary discourses such as active ageing and successful ageing are influential lenses to critically examine the role of the outdoors. Successful ageing and its comparable concepts such as active ageing, positive ageing, ageing well and healthy ageing, are dominant, contemporary discourses. The World Health Organization considers population ageing as one of humanity's greatest triumphs but also one of the greatest challenges.
