Social practices of active longevity of elderly Ural citizens

The article explores active longevity as a set of social practices carried out by older people and understood as a social community. We study various definitions of social practices, looking at both traditional and new social practices. There are distinguished such types of activity as physical, leisure, educational, family-related, etc. The study considers the influence of internal and external factors under the impact of which there appear subgroups in the structure of the community of the elderly, these demonstrating different values and social practices. Among various factors, time planning is highlighted, which affects the reproduction of new social practices. It is argued that the emergence of new types of activity means the emergence of new subgroups in the structure of the social community that have a higher speed of response to the new or temporality. The authors of the study employed a sociological method: there was conducted a questionnaire survey of 417 citizens of the Sverdlovsk region aged 60 and older. Contradictions between the ideas of active longevity contained in the Active Longevity Strategy, regional comprehensive programs, and real actions of the elderly community have been revealed. Although there is no serious discrepancy in understanding the essence of active aging, there is a low coverage of older people with new social practices. The authors are convinced that promising research areas are related to such issues as the optimization of internal and external factors that affect the consolidation of active longevity as a set of social practices.