JournalTOCs

International Journal of Ageing and Later Life
Number of Followers: 1

This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Online) 1652-8670
Published by Linköping University

[7 journals]

A home, an institution and a community – frames of social relationships
and interaction in assisted living
- Authors: Katariina Tuominen, Ilkka Pietilä, Marja Jylhä, Jari Pirhonen
  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
  Issue No: Vol. 15, No. 2 (2022)
Perceptions of a good life for the oldest old living at home
- Authors: Ariel Almevall, Päivi Juuso, Karin Zingmark, Carina Nilsson
  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
  Issue No: Vol. 15, No. 2 (2022)
Ageing with digital technologies: From theory to agency and practice
- Authors: Magdalena Kania-Lundholm, Helen Manchester
  Pages: 9 - 21
  PubDate: 2022-04-21
  DOI: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.4309
  Issue No: Vol. 15, No. 2 (2022)
Window work: Screen-based eldercare and professional precarity at the
welfare frontier
- 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)
Infrastructuring ageing: Theorizing non-human agency in ageing and
technology studies
- 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)
Ageing, embodiment and datafication: Dynamics of power in digital health
and care technologies
- 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)
The internet multiple: How internet practices are valued in later life
- 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)
Transcending borders and stereotypes: Older parents’ intergenerational
contacts and social networking through digital platforms
- 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)
Beyond the silver gamer: The compromises and strategies of older video
game players
- 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)
Considering the role of material gerontology in reimagining technology
design for ageing populations
- 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)
Expectations regarding aging among ethnically diverse undergraduates in
Japan: a life course perspective on anticipated health and meaning in
later life
- Authors: Michael Annear, Tetsuhiro Kidokoro, Yasuo Shimizu
  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)