Spaces of Ageing - New Horizons of Mobility and Materiality in Later Life

Cultural gerontology is an uprising issue combining gerontology and cultural anthropology. Material aging studies is part of this joined perspective. This panel views aging as an anthropologic phenomena, that is not only embedded in life course but also in space, place and material things.

Zusammenfassung

Beschreibung

The material and spatial 'turn' in the social sciences has opened new questions and desires to understand how humans are embedded and emplaced in their socio-material surroundings (Andrews, 2013). Age and aging exemplify present and future arenas of socio-material entanglements in and through time and space. For example, the digitization of elderly's everyday life, but also the growth of mobile and e-health-applications for older people give a small insight on what is and will be possible. Thus, the role of the material world and the ways we move through it bears a great analytical potential for contemporary debates in anthropology.

Material aging studies, a research perspective at the intersection of cultural anthropology, environmental gerontology, and the sociology of ageing, is concerned with older adults' positions, practices and perceptions in and of space, place, and materiality. It approaches space and age as co-constitutive phenomena that mutually shape each other.

Rooted in material gerontology this panel addresses the question: How do older adults appropriate, perceive and shape the spaces they move in and through, and how are ageing subjectivities and bodies in turn shaped by these spaces? Contributions may address 1) spaces and materialities of later life; 2) spatial and material entanglements of elderly care; 2) (cross-border) mobility, migration, memory and sense of home; 3) digital spaces and digital mobility in later life; as well as 4) innovative methodological approaches to capture the spatiality and socio-materiality of ageing and later life.

Convenors:
Anamaria Depner (University of Heidelberg)
Anna Wanka (Goethe University Frankfut)
Cordula Endter (German Centre for Gerontology)

Paper proposals can be submitted here: https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easa2020/p/8608

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