Authors:Vera Gallistl, Viktoria Parisot First page: 11 Abstract: Despite gerontology’s growing interest in culture, relatively little attention has been given to older adults’ participation in theater. This paper addresses this gap by developing field theory as an analytical tool to conceptualize processes of cultural disengagement in later life. Ten older individuals (60+ years) were invited to investigate their access to three different theater spaces in Vienna. The investigation was documented through participatory observations, qualitative interviews, and photo diaries. The results highlight three specific sets of rules that are relevant in theater: Rules about 1) the ageing body, 2) mobility, and 3) subjectivities. Furthermore, these rules are age-coded, which means that many of the rules visitors in theaters have to follow to be able to participate in theater are not easily followed by older adults. Finally, this article outlines the potential of field theory for gerontology and highlights the importance of studying processes of cultural disengagement in later life. PubDate: 2022-10-17 DOI: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3506 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Kristina Grünenberg, Line Hillersdal, Jonas Winther Pages: 23 - 50 Abstract: Digital technologies have become essential components in the organisation and delivery of elder care. With this article, we want to contribute to the study and discussion of the role and effects of monitors and telecare solutions in situated care practices. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among elderly citizens and healthcare workers in Denmark during the early phases of the corona crisis, we explore the introduction of screen-based technologies in eldercare and their implications. Our focus is particularly on what health professionals must do, to accomplish meaningful encounters through screens. In this context, we introduce the concept of “window work” to highlight how screens are active participants in care and how they frame and delimit what health practitioners can see, do and achieve in everyday care practices in significant and often unpredictable ways. PubDate: 2022-04-21 DOI: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3541 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Ariel Almevall, Päivi Juuso, Karin Zingmark, Carina Nilsson First page: 25 Abstract: An increasing number of people are growing older and living longer in their homes. This study aims to describe key stakeholders’ (politicians, managers, and professionals) perceptions of a good life for single-living oldest old persons living at home with extensive needs for support. Interviews with stakeholders were analysed with content analysis. The analysis resulted in the theme: An incongruence between intentions and actions in promoting a good life for the oldest old. Our findings show a gap between intentions and actions, which caused feelings of powerlessness in the key stakeholders. To promote a good life for the oldest old persons, a congruence is needed between individual awareness and the prerequisite of promoting a good life. Developing methods that identify and bridge gaps between intentions and actions could support the abilities of organisations to promote a good life for the oldest old persons with extensive needs for support. PubDate: 2022-08-03 DOI: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.2234 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Hannah Zeilig, Laura Dickens, Paul Camic First page: 33 Abstract: The importance of museum-based interventions for people with dementia has been increasingly appreciated. Yet, there is relatively little known about the psychological and social impacts of these interventions. To address this, the authors undertook a systematic review to elucidate these aspects of museum-based programmes for people with mild-to-moderate dementia. Four electronic databases were searched systematically, and eleven studies were included. Key findings were synthesised thematically, and six themes were identified: mood and enjoyment, subjective wellbeing, personhood, cognition, engagement, and social outcomes. These positive findings suggest that museum-based interventions for people with a mild-to-moderate dementia can offer a range of valuable benefits. This review also clarified that further mixed-methods studies and wait-list controlled studies, to clarify the factors that benefits may be attributed to, will contribute towards a more robust evidence base. In turn, this would positively impact funding and guide policy in this area. PubDate: 2022-08-12 DOI: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3532 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Katariina Tuominen, Ilkka Pietilä, Marja Jylhä, Jari Pirhonen First page: 49 Abstract: Assisted living facilities are presented as the older person’s home but, at the same time, defined by institutional and communal characteristics. Using Goffman’s (1974/1986) concept of frame, we aim to find out how home, institution and community frames define social roles and shape social relationships and interaction in assisted living facilities. Directed content analysis was used to analyse the data consisting of observations, one group discussion and ten individual interviews with residents in an assisted living facility. We found that the home frame was characterised by meaningfulness, spontaneousness and informality of social relationships and interaction, whereas the institution frame by indifference and formality of them. Acknowledging and tolerating other people was not only central in the community frame but also dissociating oneself from some people. Frames can shed light on how different interpretations of the multifaceted social environment of assisted living affect homeliness of the facility and well-being of the residents. PubDate: 2022-08-03 DOI: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3540 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Sara Marie Ertner Pages: 51 - 76 Abstract: Scholars of ageing and technology are becoming increasingly interested in how technology and ageing can be seen as mutually constitutive, an interest that is beginning to form new research agendas, alliances and fields of their own. Different concepts have been used to theorise and analyse this relationship of mutual construction. This article explores a concept from Science and technology studies, which has not previously been put in direct relation to ageing, namely the concept of infrastructure. It proposes the notion of “infrastructuring ageing” as a theoretical-analytical approach for studying the mutual constitution of ageing and technology. This approach implies slightly new versions of, or attentions to, the non-human actor, agency and socio-technical transformation, and opens up to fresh ethnographic views on the social, material and techno-political transformations of ageing. PubDate: 2022-04-21 DOI: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3556 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Chris Gilleard First page: 73 Abstract: This paper is concerned with the relationship between selves as subject positions and the experience of aging. The existing psychological literature on “subjective” and “objective” age, it argues, has failed fully to engage with the idea of subjectivity, focusing instead upon what are ascribed and attributed identities. In contrast to treating age and ageing as some object-like characteristic potentially applicable to both things and persons, this inquiry explores the internal experience of ageing and whether such experience can realise an authentic subject position. In begins with an outline of De Beauvoir’s views of the “unrealisability” of such a subject position and proceeds to consider whether her views are the necessary consequence of the phenomenological existentialism of Sartre and Heidegger that frames her thesis. Such foreclosure on De Beauvoir’s part, I conclude, is not inevitable, and, ultimately, there is a choice between what may be termed a Sartrean or a De Beauvoir position on the possibility of realising an authentic subjectivity of age. PubDate: 2022-10-18 DOI: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3487 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Nicole Dalmer, Kirsten Ellison, Stephen Katz, Barbara Marshall Pages: 77 - 101 Abstract: As a growing body of work has documented, digital technologies are central to the imagining of aging futures. In this study, we offer a critical, theoretical framework for exploring the dynamics of power related to the technological tracking, measuring, and managing of aging bodies at the heart of these imaginaries. Drawing on critical gerontology, feminist technoscience, sociology of the body, and socio-gerontechnology, we identify three dimensions of power relations where the designs, operations, scripts, and materialities of technological innovation implicate asymmetrical relationships of control and intervention: (1) aging bodies and the power of numbers, (2) aging spaces and the power of surveillance, and (3) age care economies and gendered power relations. While technological care for older individuals has been promoted as a cost-effective way to enhance independence, security, and health, we argue that such optimistic perspectives may obscure the realities of social inequality, agist bias, and exploitative gendered care labour. PubDate: 2022-04-21 DOI: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3499 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Vera Gallistl, Anna Wanka Pages: 103 - 126 Abstract: Internet practices of older adults are multifaceted and go beyond a “use” and “non-use” binary. In this article, we suggest a valuation approach towards Internet practices in later life that explores Internet practices not as “use” or “non-use,” but rather asks which forms of Internet practices are valued in later life, and which ones are de-valued. For this valuography, we draw upon different data sources, including interviews with older adults, to explore the multiple “goods” and “bads” through which Internet use in later life gets valued. The findings suggest two registers of value: autonomy and innovation. Valued Internet practices in later life are therefore done by an autonomous, older individual and include innovative technologies. We conclude that a performative, reflexive, and value-oriented understanding of Internet practices sheds light on the “Internet Multiple,” or the many different shapes the Internet takes in older people’s lives that go beyond a “use” and “non-use” binary. PubDate: 2022-04-21 DOI: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3563 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Anoop Choolayil, Laxmi Putran Pages: 127 - 153 Abstract: Older adults are often portrayed as incompetent digital citizens, mostly stemming from the popular perception of older adults as “digital immigrants.” The purpose of this research study was to study how older adults can effectively engage in digital platforms. Following a qualitative approach, 30 older parents who have emigrated children (15 males and 15 females) from Kerala, India, were interviewed who were active users of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The findings show how the respondents embraced digital technologies stemming from perceived emotional benefits associated with intergenerational contact, without which they would not have ventured into the digital space. From seeking emotional goals initially, the respondents gradually started pursuing intellectual goals in the digital world. The varying degrees of expertise of older adults in the digital space indicate that they cannot arbitrarily be categorised as digital immigrants. Instead, they are “digital citizens” who gradually better themselves in social networks, information literacy and social participation online. PubDate: 2022-04-21 DOI: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3504 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Gabrielle Lavenir Pages: 155 - 179 Abstract: The experience of older adults who play video games illustrates the contemporary challenges of ageing and the strategies that ageing individuals set up to navigate them. The ethnography of a video game workshop dedicated to older adults in a French cultural centre offers an opportunity to examine how a group of 15 women aged 60–82 years exert their agency as technogenarians (Joyce & Loe 2011). In order to fully engage in their play, the workshop’s participants have to manage complex and sometimes contradictory expectations concerning who counts as a player and what is an acceptable way to play. They cobble together available discursive resources to manoeuvre around notions that interfere with their practice. The result is a distinctive play style through which the participants reclaim a right to subvert expectations and, at long last, play. PubDate: 2022-04-21 DOI: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3530 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Helen Manchester, Juliane Jarke Pages: 181 - 213 Abstract: The promise of technology to provide solutions to the global concern of ageing populations has largely been unfulfilled. We argue that this is, in part, related to design processes that fail to take account of the rich material lives of older people, and that often adopt stereotypical views of older people as frail, vulnerable and unskilled. We draw on empirical data from two co-design projects, to suggest the contributions that material gerontologists could make to design teams creating technologies for ageing populations. We suggest material gerontologists bring three key elements to interdisciplinary design teams: (1) making visible the intra-action of humans and non-humans in co-design processes; (2) reconfiguring co-design response-ably with older adults; and (3) reimagining possible outcomes of technology design. We believe that this approach can result in the design of products, services and innovations that respond better to the heterogeneous needs and life-worlds of older adults. PubDate: 2022-04-21 DOI: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3531 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Michael Annear, Tetsuhiro Kidokoro, Yasuo Shimizu First page: 1 Abstract: This study explored expectations regarding aging among a diverse cohort of undergraduates in Japan. A concurrent mixed methods design was employed with online administration of the Expectations Regarding Aging scale (ERA-12), and open-format and demographic questions among 133 culturally diverse undergraduates in Tokyo. Independent samples t-tests, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), descriptive statistics, and thematic analysis were used to explore the data. ERA-12 scores and physical and cognitive function subscale results revealed negative perceptions about the aging process, while scores on the mental health subscale were significantly higher and positive. No significant differences emerged based on gender or cultural background. Qualitative data analysis revealed student awareness of lifestyle influences on health in later life, concerns about current health and risk factors, and potential to transcend negative physical changes by finding meaning in other aspects of life. Understanding expectations regarding aging among younger cohorts may inform gerontological education and public health promotion to support a life course approach to healthy aging. PubDate: 2022-03-30 DOI: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3335 Issue No:Vol. 15, No. 1 (2022)
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