Old persons’ bodily interaction with media in nursing homes

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine E Swane
Keyword(s):  
Nursing Homes ◽  
Old Age ◽  
The Body ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Regular Feature ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Physical Functions ◽  
Ageing Body

Old persons in nursing homes suffer from complex diseases, pain and the loss of physical functions and memory. They embody the notion of ‘deep old age’, the ‘fourth age’, as recipients of personal care, medicine, meals and organised activities. People in nursing homes are also part of a society in which media have become a regular feature of everyday life. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Danish nursing homes, this article explores old persons’ subjective interaction with media technologies and material objects. Embodiment and agency are central analytical concepts for understanding residents’ use of media artefacts when the body is in pain and loses functionality. With theories of domestication and biographical situation, this article reveals how media are important for residents in making an institutional dwelling ‘their home’. Media seem to bridge the gap between institutionalisation and a long life’s preferences and participation in social and cultural worlds. This article forms part of ‘Media and the Ageing Body’ Special Issue.

scholarly journals Leisure in old age: disciplinary practices surrounding the discourse of active ageing

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaroslava Hasmanová Marhánkova
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
The Body ◽  
World Health ◽  
Active Ageing ◽  
Demographic Ageing ◽  
Disciplinary Practices ◽  
Ageing Body ◽  
Health Organization

In the 1990s, the World Health Organization adopted the term ’’active ageing’’, which currently represents a key vision of old age in Western societies facing the situation of demographic ageing. The meaning of the idea of active ageing is based on the concept of individuals actively and systematically influencing the conditions of their ageing through selfresponsibility and self-care. The aim of this article is to map how the idea of active ageing is constructed and the implications it presents with regard to the way in which seniors relate to their experience of old age. It concentrates on a specific segment of senior-oriented social services (centres for seniors that offer leisure time activities and educational courses) that represent an institutional context for the manifestation of the discourse of active ageing. A three-year ethnographic study was conducted in two such centres in the Czech Republic. The article focuses on various strategies for the disciplining of the ageing body. It points out that these disciplinary practices are an integral part of the daily running of the centres and that the seniors who intensively engage in them have internalised the idea of an active lifestyle as the most desirable lifestyle in old age. Active ageing was constructed by them as a project that must be worked on. Through the ’’technologies of self’’ embedded in the imperative of the necessity to move or do something, they participate in the production of the discourse of active ageing as a form of discipline of the body. At the same time, the article outlines how the idea of active ageing as the ’’correct’’ form of ageing influences the self-conception of these seniors and their attitudes towards ageing and their peers.

scholarly journals To be Forever Young? Towards Reframing Corporeal Subjectivity in Maturity

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Schwaiger
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Cultural Perceptions ◽  
Age And Gender ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Ageing Body ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Relationship

In this paper I examine the relationship between the body in midlife and subjectivity in contemporary western cultures, drawing on both social constructionist and psychoanalytic perspectives. Referring to recent theoretical accounts, I take the position that how we are aged by culture begins in midlife, and that this period is therefore critical in understanding how the body-subject in western consumer cultures is aged and gendered through culturally normative discourses and practices. I also address the gendering of ageing bodies, and argue that, like the feminine, ageing has been marked by ambiguity and lack. This ambiguity has presented a problem for dualistic age theories, in that it has been difficult to theorize the ageing body productively since the binary language used to theorize it already devalues old age. I contend that our tacit understanding of both male and female ageing bodies is as discursively constituted as ’feminine’, based on cultural perceptions of loss of bodily control and the ambiguity of ageing bodies that become increasingly recalcitrant in the ’correct’ performance of cultural age and gender norms. Finally, I inquire whether alternative, non-dualistic perspectives might be developed that redress this problem, and disrupt the alignment of ageing with negative associations such as lack and loss, perspectives that, rather than associating gendered ageing with decline, loss or lack, associate it with the goal of living an abundant life into deep old age.

scholarly journals Transcending the Corporeal in Later Old Age?

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 591-592
Author(s):  
Paul Higgs
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Later Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Health And Social Care ◽  
Remote Island ◽  
Ageing Body ◽  
The Life Course

Abstract This symposium addresses the older body and later life. It focusses on the cultural and social implications of the corporeality of the ageing body. Specifically it seeks to explore the degree to which it is possible to transcend the constraints brought about by the body in later old age. Drawing the distinction between the third and fourth ages for understanding contemporary ageing the papers address three important dimensions of later old age. The first presentation by Gilleard directly addresses the corporeality of late old age noting its seeming undesirability and limitation. Gilleard posits that not only does the ageing body impact on the lived experiences of those in later old age but also acts as a cultural reference point for the representation of this period of the life course. Eliopoulos presents preliminary results from her qualitative study on social exclusion of individuals aged over 80 living in remote island environments of the Pacific Northwest. The research considers how such environments might, even in the absence of high levels of health and social care resources, mitigate some of the constraints associated with the ageing body. The chair, Paul Higgs will discuss the issue of ageism and how it is abstractly inscribed on the ageing body; often with little reference to the lived experiences of older people themselves. He will call for a more reflexive approach to ageism. Overall, the symposium seeks to draw gerontological attention to the complexities and possibilities surrounding the ageing body at later ages.

Media and the ageing body: Introduction to the special issue

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilie Givskov ◽  
Line Nybro Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
The Media ◽  
Ageing Body ◽  
Changing Practices ◽  
The Relationship

In this introductory article we offer a frame for understanding the relationship between the ageing body and the media as the focus for this special issue. As societies age, issues of representations of old bodies and people’s practices and embodied experiences with media technologies requires a deeper investigation. At the same time, contemporary society is undergoing processes of mediatization, which invites us to think of the ways in which media can be said to play a role in changing practices or changing representations regarding the older body. The introduction is concerned with this duality: the changing sociocultural conditions for the ageing body and the changing authority of media and its role for the ageing body. Finally, we briefly introduce the articles that are part of the special issue ‘The ageing body and the media’.

Local biology: bodies of difference in ageing studies

1999 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 677-689 ◽  
Author(s):  
PIA C. KONTOS
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Physiological Process ◽  
The Body ◽  
Ageing Body

In this article I critically examine the biology/culture dualism in the context of old age. Regarding the contextualisation of the interrelationship between biology and culture, previous studies have not adequately explored the interaction between the physiological process of ageing, the physical and social surroundings of the body and the body's intentionality. I suggest ways in which anthropological and feminist advances in deconstructions and reconstructions of the body can be deployed in the study of old age. In particular I draw upon Margaret Lock's concept of ‘local biology’. This offers an opportunity for the development of gerontological theory that focuses upon the interactions between the ageing body, its experience and its locality.

scholarly journals Active seniors and old farts

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (30) ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Scheel Thomasen
Keyword(s):  
End Of Life ◽  
Elderly People ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Physical Rehabilitation ◽  
The Body ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
And Training

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among elderly people in physical rehabilitation in Denmark, the article examines aging with disease and frailty as a process of moral becoming. Employing Cheryl Mattingly’s notion of Moral Laboratory (Mattingly 2014), the article shows how life in old age, when changed by disease and the onset of frailty, is marked by striving, failure and success in the endeavour to create a good life in a constant negotiation with the body that seems to have grown a will of its own. In the training centers the body is a malleable and controllable entity known through tests and training routines, underlining individual responsibility and an active senior life as a moral value. The body does not necessarily comply with the defined goals, and other possible futures come into play, where ‘old age’ can be an explanatory resource in accepting frailty as part of life and the end of life rehearsed and orchestrated.

scholarly journals Ageing and the Limiting Conditions of the Body

1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 80-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard ◽  
Paul Higgs
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
The Body ◽  
Dependency Theory ◽  
Physiological Ageing ◽  
Physiological Fitness ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Ageing Body ◽  
Age Structured ◽  
Post War ◽  
Biological Foundation

The twentieth century has seen a remarkable shift in thinking about old age. For increasing numbers of people reaching retirement there are numerous competing and contradictory messages about how age and ageing are viewed in contemporary society. The lack of any simple linear relationship between chronological age and physiological fitness and the evident variability with which physical ageing expresses itself challenges a determining biological foundation for old age. Structured dependency theory suggests that much of what we accept as ‘ageing’ arises from social practices rather than physiological ageing. More recently there has been a growing reaction to this position, particularly to some of its resource implications. Several writers have begun to seek once more to place a limit around ageing whilst claiming to restore a social meaning to the final stage of life. Others have challenged the emphasis upon a biomedical view of old age and sought a return to a greater acceptance of ‘finitude’. At the very same time there is a renewed vigour in modernist claims to ‘put ageing into reverse’ as popular medical and self-help literature offer to make the promise of rejuvenation a reality. Biologists themselves have begun to question the determinacy of a genetically fixed lifespan. The appearance, disappearance and re-appearance of the body in gerontology parallel evolving post- War social policies toward health and disability. Debates around the limits of the ageing body illustrate the powerful links between gerontology, culture and contemporary social theory.

Touchy-Feely History: The ‘Stuff’ of American Culture

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-18
Author(s):  
Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Research Perspectives ◽  
Economic Trends ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
New Research

This state of the field essay examines recent trends in American Cultural History, focusing on music, race and ethnicity, material culture, and the body. Expanding on key themes in articles featured in the special issue of Cultural History, the essay draws linkages to other important literatures. The essay argues for more a more serious consideration of the products within popular culture, less as a reflection of social or economic trends, rather for their own historical significance. While the essay examines some classic texts, more emphasis is on work published within the last decade. Here, interdisciplinary methods are stressed, as are new research perspectives developing by non-western historians.

Narrating Society: Enacting ‘Immigrant’ Characters through Negotiating, Naturalization, and Forgetting

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanne Boersma
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Work ◽  
Immigrant Integration ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Global Perspectives ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Media And Communication

This article scrutinizes how ‘immigrant’ characters of perpetual arrival are enacted in the social scientific work of immigrant integration monitoring. Immigrant integration research produces narratives in which characters—classified in highly specific, contingent ways as ‘immigrants’—are portrayed as arriving and never as having arrived. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork at social scientific institutions and networks in four Western European countries, this article analyzes three practices that enact the characters of arrival narratives: negotiating, naturalizing, and forgetting. First, it shows how negotiating constitutes objects of research while at the same time a process of hybridization is observed among negotiating scientific and governmental actors. Second, a naturalization process is analyzed in which slippery categories become fixed and self-evident. Third, the practice of forgetting involves the fading away of contingent and historical circumstances of the research and specifically a dispensation of ‘native’ or ‘autochthonous’ populations. Consequently, the article states how some people are considered rightful occupants of ‘society’ and others are enacted to travel an infinite road toward an occupied societal space. Moreover, it shows how enactments of arriving ‘immigrant’ characters have performative effects in racially differentiating national populations and hence in narrating society. This article is part of the Global Perspectives, Media and Communication special issue on “Media, Migration, and Nationalism,” guest-edited by Koen Leurs and Tomohisa Hirata.

Measuring Exposome Associated with Health

2020 ◽  
pp. 46-50
Keyword(s):  
Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Remote Sensing ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Biological Effect ◽  
High Resolution Mass Spectrometry ◽  
The Body ◽  
Ecological Environment ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Resolution Mass

The concept of exposome has received increasing discussion, including the recent Special Issue of Science –"Chemistry for Tomorrow's Earth,” about the feasibility of using high-resolution mass spectrometry to measure exposome in the body, and tracking the chemicals in the environment and assess their biological effect. We discuss the challenges of measuring and interpreting the exposome and suggest the survey on the life course history, built and ecological environment to characterize the sample of study, and in combination with remote sensing. They should be part of exposomics and provide insights into the study of exposome and health.

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