Ageing in Everyday Life: Materialities and Embodiments 9781447335924

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AGEING IN A

GLOBAL CONTEXT

AGEING IN EVERYDAY LIFE Materialities and embodiments EDITED BY STEPHEN KATZ

AGEING IN EVERYDAY LIFE Materialities and embodiments Edited by Stephen Katz

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Policy Press North America office: University of Bristol Policy Press 1-9 Old Park Hill c/o The University of Chicago Press Bristol 1427 East 60th Street BS2 8BB Chicago, IL 60637, USA UK t: +1 773 702 7700 t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 f: +1 773-702-9756 [email protected] [email protected] www.policypress.co.uk www.press.uchicago.edu © Policy Press 2018 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 978-1-4473-3591-7 hardcover ISBN 978-1-4473-3593-1 ePub ISBN 978-1-4473-3594-8 Mobi ISBN 978-1-4473-3592-4 ePdf The right of Stephen Katz to be identified as editor of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Policy Press. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the editor and contributors and not of the University of Bristol or Policy Press. The University of Bristol and Policy Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Policy Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design by Policy Press Front cover image: Boatyard at Mgarr, Malta, © Patricia Stamp Printed and bound in Great Britain by by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Policy Press uses environmentally responsible print partners

Contents Notes on contributors v Acknowledgements ix Series editors’ preface x one

Introduction 1 Stephen Katz

Part 1: Materialities 23 Part 1: introduction 25 Stephen Katz two Things and possessions 29 David J. Ekerdt three Reinventing the nursing home: metaphors that design care 45 Susan Braedley four The ever-breaking wave of everyday life: animating ageing 63 movement-space Gavin J. Andrews and Amanda M. Grenier five What’s exotic about The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel? Cinema, 83 everyday life and the materialisation of ageing Sally Chivers six Between ageing and ageism: portrayals of online dating in 99 later life in Canadian print media Julia Rozanova, Mineko Wada and Laura Hurd Clarke Part 2: Embodiments Part 2: introduction Stephen Katz seven Closer to touch: sexuality, embodiment and masculinity in older men’s lives Linn J. Sandberg eight Ageing bodies, driving and change: exploring older body–driver fit in the high-tech automobile Jessica A. Gish, Amanda M. Grenier and Brenda Vrkljan nine Dancing with dementia: citizenship, embodiment and everyday life in the context of long-term care Pia Kontos and Alisa Grigorovich

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123 125 129

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Why clothes matter: the role of dress in the everyday lives of older people Julia Twigg eleven Our Fitbits, our (ageing) selves: wearables, self-tracking and ageing embodiment Barbara L. Marshall twelve Afterword. Relational entanglements: ageing, materialities and embodiments Kim Sawchuk Index

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Notes on contributors Gavin J. Andrews PhD is a Professor at the Department of Health,

Aging and Society, McMaster University, Canada. He is co-editor of Ageing and Place (2005), Soundscapes of wellbeing in popular music (2014), and Geographical gerontology (2018), co-author of Health geographies: A critical introduction (2017), and author of Non-representational theory and health (2018). As a geographer of health and gerontology, his interests include the dynamics between space/place and ageing, healthcare work, holistic medicine, psychological and neurological disorders, health histories, fitness cultures and music. Susan Braedley MSW PhD is an Associate Professor at the School of

Social Work and Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University, Canada. Her research focuses on the changing conditions of care and ageing in post-welfare states, with attention on relations of gender, race, class and immigration. She is co-editor of Troubling care: Critical perspectives on research and practices (with Pat Armstrong, 2013) and has written other books, chapters and articles on these topics. Sally Chivers PhD is Professor of English and Gender & Women’s

Studies at Trent University, and a founding member of the Trent Centre for Aging and Society. Her research focuses on the gerontological humanities, care systems, and media studies of age, gender and disability. She is the author of From old woman to older women: Contemporary culture and women’s narratives (2003) and The silvering screen: Old age and disability in cinema (2011), and co-editor of The problem body: Projecting disability and film (2015) and Care home stories: Aging, disability and long-term residential care (2017). David J. Ekerdt PhD is a Professor of Sociology and Gerontology

at the University of Kansas and serves, in 2018, as President of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA). He studies and has published numerous articles on work and retirement, material culture and ageing, and the way that older adults in various cultures view their personal futures. He was editor of the Encyclopedia of aging (4 vols, 2002). Jessica A. Gish PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of

Health, Aging and Society at McMaster University, Canada. Her work examines intersections between the corporeal reality of ageing and how technological development inspires new ageing experiences

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and forms of bodily management for older people. Her latest project explores embodied dimensions of driving and older people’s use of a high-tech automobile. Amanda M. Grenier PhD is a Professor in the Department of Health,

Aging and Society, the Gilbrea Chair in Aging and Mental Health, and Director of the Gilbrea Centre for Studies in Aging at McMaster University, Canada. Her research is on life-course transitions, social constructs of frailty, homelessness among older people, precarious ageing, and social isolation among low-income seniors. Her publications include Transitions and the lifecourse: Challenging the constructions of ‘growing old’ (2012), and Ageing, meaning and social structure: Connecting critical and humanistic gerontology (with Jan Baars et al., 2014) and she is writing new books on homeless and precarious ageing. Alisa Grigorovich PhD is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Dalla Lana

School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her research focuses on health equity and ethics, with a particular interest in the interplay between sexuality and ageing. In her postdoctoral research she is examining the management of sexuality in the context of dementia and long-term residential care. Laura Hurd Clarke PhD is Professor in the School of Kinesiology at

the University of British Columbia, Canada and author of Facing age: Women growing older in anti-aging culture (2011). Her research examines how older adults’ perceptions and experiences of their ageing bodies are influenced by age, gender and health norms. She has published on the impact of ageism, ableism, gender ideals, healthism, heterosexism and social class on older men’s and women’s body image, appearance management practices and engagement in self-care and health promotion. Stephen Katz PhD is Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology, a founding

member of the Trent Centre for Aging and Society, and Distinguished Research Award recipient at Trent University, Canada. He is author of Disciplining old age (1996) and Cultural aging (2005) and numerous publications on ageing bodies, quantifying technologies, critical gerontology, biopolitics, and cognitive impairment. His current research is on the neuro-cultural aspects of aging memory and health technologies, and a new book: Age, mind and body in later life.

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Notes on contributors

Pia Kontos PhD is a Senior Scientist at Toronto Rehabilitation Institute-

University Health Network and Associate Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, Canada. She is a critical scholar committed to the humanistic transformation of long-term dementia care. She has published across multiple disciplines on embodiment, relationality, ethics and dementia, and has created numerous research-based media and theatrical productions to foster culture change. Barbara L. Marshall PhD is Professor of Sociology, a founding

member of the Trent Centre for Aging and Society, and a Distinguished Research Award recipient at Trent University, Canada. She researches and has published books and articles in the areas of gender, sexuality, ageing and technologies, and is currently principal investigator on the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) funded research-project, ‘Digital culture and quantified aging.’ Julia Rozanova PhD is Associate Research Scientist at the Yale School

of Medicine. Her publications include critiques of successful ageing and polarised ageism in the media portrayals of later life. Her current programme of research is funded by the National Institute on Mental Health and by the American Medical Foundation and focuses on polarised ageism in the context of new HIV diagnoses among older adults in Ukraine. Linn J. Sandberg PhD is a Lecturer in Gender Studies at Södertörn

University, Sweden. She is the author of Getting intimate: A feminist analysis of old age, masculinity & sexuality (2011) and other peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on sex and sexuality in later life. Currently she is working on dementia, gender and sexuality and she is the principal investigator of an interview study on Alzheimer’s disease, sexuality, intimacy and coupledom. Kim Sawchuk PhD is a Professor in Communication Studies

at Concordia University, Canada, and the Director of Ageing, Communication, Technologies: Experiencing a Digital World in Later Life (www.actproject.ca). She holds a Concordia University Research Chair in Mobile Media Studies and for the past ten years she has written extensively on the ways that older adults negotiate ongoing changes in the technological landscape, with a particular focus on wireless mobile media.

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Julia Twigg PhD is Professor of Social Policy and Sociology at the

University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. She has written widely on age and embodiment, recently focusing on the role of dress in the material constitution of age in several published articles and in her book Fashion and age: Dress, the body and later life (2013). She is actively engaged in debates around cultural gerontology and co-editor (with Wendy Martin) of The Routledge handbook of cultural gerontology (2015). Brenda Vrkljan PhD is an Associate Professor in the Occupational

Therapy programme in the School of Rehabilitation Science and an executive member of the McMaster Institute for Research on Aging (MIRA), McMaster University, Canada. Her research focuses on transportation mobility, medical risk, and ageing, including the impact of advanced vehicle technologies on behind-the-wheel behaviour. She is the co-lead researcher of the Canadian Driving Research Initiative for Vehicular Safety in the Elderly (Candrive), which includes a large, prospective, multi-site cohort study that tracked the health and driving patterns of Canadians aged 70 and older. Mineko Wada PhD is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Science and

Technology for Aging Research (STAR) Institute at Simon Fraser University, Canada. She has published on constructions of sexuality in later life and older adults’ self-presentations in online dating profiles. Her current work focuses on older adults’ perceptions of home in long-term care settings.

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Acknowledgements This collection, Ageing in everyday life: Materialities and embodiments, would not have been possible without the encouragement and guidance of Toni Calasanti and Chris Phillipson, two of the academic editors for the Ageing in a Global Context series, from Policy Press. I am immensely grateful to them both, and to Toni especially, for working so diligently and patiently with me on the reviewing and editing process. The Policy Press series editors, Isobel Bainton, Jess Mitchell, Rebecca Tomlinson and Laura Vickers, have been wonderful, always helpful and confident in my vision for this book. I owe many thanks to the anonymous reviewers who provided insightful and constructive feedback on earlier proposals and drafts. This book (as with all my work) only came to life with the loving support, wisdom, optimism and humour of my wife and best friend, Patricia Stamp. Her beautiful photograph also graces the cover of this book. Above all, I am indebted to my colleagues, who have contributed chapters to this book that sparkle with their scholarly brilliance and writing talent and have transformed our work together into a collaborative adventure in critical ageing studies.

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Series editors’ preface Chris Phillipson (University of Manchester, UK), Toni Calasanti (Virginia Tech, USA) and Thomas Scharf (Newcastle University, UK) As the proportion of elders worldwide continues to expand, new issues and concerns for scholars, policy makers, and health and social care professionals emerge. Ageing in a Global Context is a series of books, published by Policy Press in association with the British Society of Gerontology, which aims to influence and transform debates in what has become a fast-moving field in research and policy. The series seeks to achieve this in three main ways. First, the series publishes books which rethink key questions shaping debates in the study of ageing. This has become especially important given the restructuring of welfare states, alongside the complex nature of population change; both elements opening up the need to explore themes which go beyond traditional perspectives in social gerontology. Second, the series represents a response to the impact of globalisation and related processes; these contributing to the erosion of the national boundaries which originally framed the study of ageing. From this has come the emergence of issues explored in various contributions to the series, for example: the impact of transnational migration, cultural diversity, new types of inequality; and contrasting themes relating to ageing in rural and urban areas. Third, a key concern of the series is to explore interdisciplinary connections in gerontology. Contributions provide a critical assessment of the disciplinary boundaries and territories influencing the study of ageing, creating, in the process, new perspectives and approaches relevant to the 21st century. Given this context, we are pleased to be able to include in this series a book that takes an interdisciplinary, critical look at the everyday worlds of elders. The editor, Stephen Katz, has been at the forefront of theory and research on social worlds and subjectivities, and the combined chapters he has assembled illuminate everyday worlds in a manner that bridges theory and research with policy and practice. Together, the nuanced theoretical and empirical chapters illuminate ways that ageing experiences are physically mediated. As such, the book is essential reading for policy makers, scholars, and practitioners interested in improving elders’ quality of life.

ONE

Introduction Stephen Katz

This book is a timely collection that explores the materialities and embodiments of growing older today, opening onto a richly interdisciplinary field of imaginative research about subjective lives and social worlds. We use ‘materialities’ as a term to identify the various places, technologies, things, rhythms, designs, mobilities and environments in which our experience of ageing is grounded and observable. ‘Embodiments’ is a complementary term we use to highlight the ways in which the cultural processes of ageing are physically mediated and experienced. For example, menopause or longevity may be obvious corporeal events, but they are embodied as subjectively meaningful through cultural and symbolic practices. By focusing on materialities and embodiments, this book’s premise is that understanding ageing invites a commitment to witnessing, interpreting, documenting and caring about our intimate and daily worlds of meaning. The contributors to this volume, all experts in ageing and critical gerontological scholarship, make original forays into these everyday worlds. They select often taken-for-granted moments, spaces, things and experiences that evoke what it means to grow older, creating guidelines to thinking further about the consequences of new political, economic and global changes for older generations and ageing populations. While this book is about Western societies, its theoretical and methodological contributions to ageing studies are envisioned as relevant to other parts of the world, especially those experiencing the prospects and challenges of expanding ageing populations. I was inspired to create this volume by my years of presenting, teaching and publishing research on ageing. I have been fortunate to be part of a community of critical gerontologists who have introduced to ageing studies influential concepts and resourceful methods from traditions outside of gerontology, in particular Marxist political economy, phenomenology, feminism, LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) and disability studies, the health humanities, media and performance studies, post-structuralism, and social studies of science and technology. I am also grateful that my work and collaborations

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have been included in leading texts on critical gerontology (Katz, 2003, 2010), cultural gerontology (Katz, 2015), feminist age studies (Katz, 1999; Marshall and Katz, 2006), the gerontological humanities (Katz, 2000; Katz and McHugh, 2010) and ageing futures (Katz and Whitehouse, 2017). I am especially encouraged by the positive reception of my ideas by healthcare workers, policy managers, occupational therapists, social workers, psycho-geriatricians, nurses and other professionals whose daily work with older people involves dealing with tough situations, such as falls, isolation, neglect, unsafe environments, overburdened staff and end-of-life decisions. They and others who care for the bodies and wellbeing of their clients, foster supportive family and community relationships and make salient the trivialised and overlooked problems of ageing do so much to shape critical gerontological practice and knowledge making. In addition to my academic work, my teaching has played a large part in my conceiving this book. For more than three decades I have taught university courses oriented to the ‘inside’ of sociology, not as an established analytical perspective but as an inquiry into social life as an indeterminate space where subjective experience and structural processes merge. My courses on ‘Self and Social Interaction’, ‘The Sociology of the Emotions’ and ‘Inside Social Worlds’ have been learning hubs of animated discussions, provocative lectures, reflexive exercises and surprising revelations about sociology as an adventure of discovery. And now, on my retirement from undergraduate teaching, I realise the crucial role that the focus on everyday life has played, not only in course design and teaching, but in the grounding of a radical pedagogy connecting the lives of my students to the society around them, proffering them bold and critical tools to approach the social content of their problems. Ageing and old age are central topics in my sociology courses in order to address the absence of age-related teaching across academic sociology, despite age being a fundamental principle of social organisation and stratification. I have also found that ageism is rarely included in courses on race, class and gender inequalities, nor are critiques of age blaming or ‘apocalyptic’ portrayals of ageing populations part of demography texts and programmes (see Gee and Gutman, 2000). Moreover, family, labour, education and policy courses typically neglect inter-cohort and intergenerational relations. But the marginalisation of age in women’s and gender studies has been especially decried by feminist gerontologists who emphasise that a ‘gendered life course’ (Chappell et al, 2008) and intersecting relations between age, class, sexuality and gender lie at the core of the sociology of ageing (Cruikshank, 2003; Calasanti and Slevin,

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Introduction

2006; Freixas et al, 2012). Thus, my teaching about ageing is also about the critical literature connecting age and gender, especially in areas that touch on contemporary culture, such as media representations of ageing bodies (Chivers, 2011; Marshall, 2014), ageing and performance (Schwaiger, 2012), older women and beauty culture (Hurd Clarke, 2011), girlhood and life-course science (Roberts, 2015; Pickard, 2018), gay and lesbian ageing culture (Rosenfeld, 2003; Jones and Pugh, 2005), gender and old-age frailty (Grenier and Hanley, 2007), medicine and technology (Joyce and Mamo, 2006) and cross-cultural studies (Lamb, 2000), among others. At the same time, my gerontology courses include topics on the sociology of everyday life to stress that where, how and with whom we age is consequential for how age is treated and given meaning. Here I have assigned readings on birthdays (Bytheway, 2009), home-care visits (Aronson, 2003), hallway (Rule et al, 1994) and lobby (Gamliel, 2000) interactions in care residences, and post-stroke (Faircloth et al, 2005) and fall (Kingston, 2000) recovery identities, as illustrations of ordinary lived circumstances that contain and express wider cultural ideologies about ageing and ageism. The contributors to this volume, despite their different backgrounds, have followed similar scholarly journeys in their teaching, writing and research about the ‘inside’ of their own fields and what these bring to the study of ageing. Our common experiences also lead to a shared belief, reflected in this volume, in the potential of a radical ageing scholarship to contribute to a public awareness about the daily problems of growing older in a rapidly changing society.

Critical thinking about the everyday To write and teach about ageing in everyday life from the ‘inside’ is demanding for a number of familiar reasons. First, there is the need to explain how social life is a relationship between inner experience and outer realities, usually phrased in such terms as ‘private and public’ or ‘self and society’. Avoiding such dualisms is equally difficult, but I follow Gilles Deleuze in his idea that, rather than an inside and an outside, the inside might be considered a social folding (1993): a dynamic shaping and pleating of subjective worlds as they interact with the external imperatives for living in time, where the inside is the ‘inside of the outside’ (Deleuze, 1988, p 97). For example, when an important life-course transition occurs from the outside, it can add a new bend to our lives as we come to identify ourselves differently or reflect anew on our maturity, from the inside. A second challenge is the elusive nature of the everyday, which Henri Lefebvre defines as

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‘the most universal and the most unique condition, the most social and the most individuated, the most obvious and the best hidden’ (Lefebvre and Levich, 1987, p 9). Everyday life is not just ‘there’ as an obvious empirical and factual constant; rather, it is the perpetually emergent social sphere of human existence. As we act, age and interact with each other, we constantly adapt the conditions of our everyday lives in subtle but often unconscious ways, transforming social reality into what Georg Simmel called an inter-individual ‘event’ (Simmel, cited in Wolff, 1950, p 11). A third challenge is the imaginative scholarship needed to connect the interactional flows between the inside and outside to historical forces of inequality and difference, justice and power, and order and control. Since the 1960s, these challenges have been woven into the sociology of everyday life sub-field and its expansive research on social spaces, narratives, biographies, identities, possessions, emotions, bodies, forms of talk, routines, the senses, virtualities, fashion, sexualities, sub-cultures, food and drink, shopping and tastes, and time and temporalities. This last area is especially important to issues of ageing because the experience of living in time across the life-course, usually overlooked in mainstream health research, is vital to understanding the vicissitudes of growing older. These challenges are central to this book and find their origins in two prominent historical traditions of social thinking about everyday life, whose backgrounds are thus important to review. The first is the European tradition, informed by Marxist, philosophical, artistic, historical, anthropological and cultural studies and advanced by thinkers such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord, Maurice Blanchot and Michel de Certeau, who have written voluminous works on everyday life as problematic in the sense of it being both the social terrain of commodity capitalism and the potential resistance to it (see Gardiner, 2000). Common to these writers is their promotion of ethnographic approaches as methodological alternatives to traditional positivistic and empirical models. These theorists have also devised inventive non-specialist vocabularies to approximate or get at the commonsensical languages of popular practices of everyday life. For example, de Certeau applies the idea of la perruque (wig) in France to social situations where a worker ‘diverts time (not goods, since he uses only scraps) from the factory for work that is free, creative, and precisely not directed towards profit’ (1984, p 25). However, la perruque, for de Certeau, ‘is infiltrating itself everywhere and becoming more and more common’ (p 29) as part of an everyday technique of ‘making do’, one that blurs the lines between work and leisure as a

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Introduction

‘diversionary practice’ that might otherwise be considered as pilfering or time cheating. The second tradition is the development of American perspectives in symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, dramaturgy (Erving Goffman), social constructivism and existential sociology. Despite differences in their research orientations and conceptual designs, these perspectives share a background in phenomenological, social psychological and American pragmatist schools of thought and their association with the first American sociology department at the University of Chicago in 1892. Further, as Prus and Puddephatt summarise, while American pragmatists William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey and George Herbert Mead were leaders in establishing the practical, experiential and situational dimensions of human activity and selfhood, ‘it is with Charles Horton Cooley, Herbert Blumer, and the broader Chicago-style emphasis on ethnographic inquiry that American pragmatist theory most explicitly began to achieve its potential as a comprehensive realm of scholarship’ (2009, p 85). It was Blumer (1900-87) who translated the work of George Herbert Mead into symbolic interactionism (Blumer, 1969), accenting it with a focus on field observation of the social interaction between human actors as agential, meaning-making and reflexive selves. American ‘Chicago-style’ sociology, both at the University of Chicago and in its migrations to other places, combined practical research on everyday issues of urban housing, immigration, ethnic conflict, crime and deviance with conceptual models of inter-subjective and interactive social life. These models, going further back, were influenced by European thinkers Alfred Schutz and Georg Simmel. Alfred Schutz (1899-1959) was a Viennese scholar who escaped the Nazi regime in 1938 and came to the New School of Social Research in New York, where he taught beginning in 1943. It was Schutz who applied phenomenological ideas to practices of inter-subjective and reciprocal consciousness within various life worlds, themselves organised into provinces and regions of meaning (Schutz 1967, 1970). Experience and interpretation, for Schutz, were the twinned human traits by which we find ourselves as ‘not only centers of spontaneity, gearing into the world and creating changes within it, but also the mere passive recipients of events beyond our control which occur without our interference’ (Schutz, cited in Rousseau, 2002, p 150). For Schutz and his followers, conventional ideas such as ‘role’ and ‘status’ fail to capture the real experiences of social life as they are enacted in nuanced face-to-face situations, enlivened by touch, talk, gesture, contact and shared perceptions. Schutz’s ideas were famously recaptured

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by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, two of his students at the New School of Social Research, whose book, The social construction of reality: A treatise on the sociology of knowledge (1966), became a classic sociology text on social constructivism. As Psathas notes, by celebrating the ordinary, relative and practical constructions of everyday knowing, the book ‘makes the topics of the sociology of knowledge broader, more inclusive, and more widely distributed, while privileging no sets of knowledge above any others’ (Psathas, 2004, p 14). Schutzian thinking about these ideas, along with concepts of commonsensical practices, routine performances and everyday ‘typifications’, were also germane to Harold Garfinkel’s creation of ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1968). German philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel (1858-1918) was a second major European figure in establishing the everyday as a field of critical inquiry, with his ideas on the subjective consequences of modern life. Simmel lived in Berlin, a vibrant metropolis and cosmopolitan migration hub with a population of two million by the beginning of the 20th century. While anti-Semitic policies at the University of Berlin prevented Simmel from securing an appointment, the city itself was Simmel’s research field and accounts for his leadership in urban sociology, highlighted by his brilliant article on ‘The metropolis and mental life’ (1971 [1903]), along with his studies on Rome, Florence and Venice. Simmel’s work reached American sociologists through his publications in the American Journal of Sociology (at the University of Chicago). As Frisby claims, prior to World War I Simmel was the most published European sociologist in America (1992, p 156) and following a hiatus, his work was widely circulated in translation during the 1950s (see Levine, 1976). While some would argue that Simmel had a hyper-individualistic model of society, Simmel’s legacy remains a powerful component of everyday critical inquiry in three ways. First, Simmel struggled, as we all do, to understand the power of structural forms over subjective life, a lasting question up until his final book, The conflict of modern culture in 1918, published in the last year of his life and at the end of a war that left Germany and much of Europe in shambles. Second, in addition to his work on city life, Simmel broached new areas of study in fashion, the arts, the emotions, the senses, leisure and consumerism, many of which have become familiar content in cultural studies. Third, Simmel added a poetical flare to sociological inquiry, inspiring theoretical thinking about everyday life to include an imaginative underpinning (see Highmore, 2002, p 3), as the following statement attests:

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Introduction

The essence of aesthetic observation and interpretation lies in the fact that the typical is to be found in what is unique, the lawlike in what is fortuitous, the essence and significance of things in the superficial and transitory.... To the adequately trained eye, the total beauty, the total meaning of the world as a whole radiates from every single point. (Simmel, cited in Frisby 1992, p 18) I find this statement uplifting; it speaks to the art, rather than the science, of a critical curiosity about the transcendent nature of human sociality, a sentiment to which the authors of this book would also agree. And as Simmel avers, to see, in a sociological sense, involves the double vision of an ‘adequately trained eye’ that can scan from the superficial and typical layers of immediate existence to the essential and ‘total meaning of the world’. This kind of vision is also a key strand of ageing research into everyday life.

Ageing in everyday life Schutz, Simmel and the European and American everyday traditions and their ideas about interconnecting, inter-subjective and interacting constellations of selves and social contexts are obvious influences for this book and its particular foci on everyday materialities, embodiments and ethnographic discovery. We can read the lineage and spirit of these traditions in studies about older people whose lives may have remained invisible otherwise, such as widowers (van den Hoonaard, 2010), older recreational vehicle (RV) travellers (Counts and Counts, 2001), beauty shop clients (Furman, 1997), working grandmothers (Riggs, 2004) and nursing home care workers (Diamond, 1995), and in the making of older women’s identities (Matthews, 1979). Ethnographic work on spaces and practices of everyday ageing also bears the inspiration of seeing ‘the total meaning of the world’ from single points, such as Julia Twigg’s (2000) study of ‘bathing’ as a microcosm of care practices, Emmanuelle Tulle’s (2008) ethnography of older runners, Linn Sandberg’s (2011) rethinking of sexual intimacy in old age, Meika Loe’s (2011) study of ageing in place, Catherine Degnen’s (2012) account of ageing in a British mining town and Ricca Edmondson’s (2015) expeditions into wisdom, ethics and everyday life. These areas have been joined by language research on metaphor (Kenyon et al, 1991), literary stories (Hepworth, 2000), discourse (Nikander, 2002), narrative (Hubble and Tew, 2013), media (Ylänne, 2012; Harrington et al, 2014) and popular culture studies (Whelehan and Gwynne, 2014). The

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theoretical leadership of Jaber F. Gubrium and James A. Holstein has been especially important to understanding the constructivist bases of the life course (Gubrium and Holstein, 2000; Holstein and Gubrium, 2000) and the methodological centrality of narrative practices as social phenomena (Gubrium and Holstein, 2009). In brief, the traditions of everyday scholarship and their extension to ageing research have given us pause to consider not only what it means to grow older, but how people reconcile themselves to it in a myriad of creative ways. However, criticisms have also arisen that add to our inquiries about ageing; for instance, the European tradition, in its celebration of the politics of everyday life, has been criticised for vesting or even burdening ordinary activities and situations with expectations of radical forms of resistance. The American tradition has been chided for failing adequately to link micro- and macro-orders outside of the researchers’ interpretive, symbolic and discursive overlays, which critics argue leads to a neglect of the very ‘real’ material forces that configure social interaction. Gardiner adds that for the American microsociologies, ‘none of them really seek to abandon the pretense to objectivity, scholarly detachment and non-partisanship that has served to legitimate the social sciences for the last 150 years’ and ‘the everyday is generally perceived as a relatively homogeneous and undifferentiated set of attitudes, practices and cognitive structures’ (2000, p 5). Indeed, can everyday sociologies completely avoid the rational categories and conventional assumptions associated with the mainstream social research that they critique? More pointedly, both traditions have been taken to task for their lack of response to social issues of diversity, inequality and difference. Dorothy Smith’s work is frequently cited as a feminist corrective (1987, 1990) for its framing of everyday life as an opportunity to disclose institutional and intellectual forms of power, and for locating the textual practices by which social relations are objectified and gendered as forms of ruling. Andrew Smith also asks what happens to the realities and violence of racism and racialisation when ‘the theory of everyday life includes currents that associate the quotidian less with un-conformed or unruly experience and more with ingrained routines, passivity and critical inattention: the accomplice of, rather than the absconder from, modernity’s ordering epistemologies’ (2015, p 5). This critical question is a caution about age as well, as we conceive it as a project of everyday sociology. Examples of more integrative models of everyday life are Vanessa May’s ‘relationality’ and ‘belonging’ (2013) and Carol Smart’s ‘personal sociology’, whereby ‘personal life is a reflexive state, but it is not private and it is lived out in relation to one’s class position,

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Introduction

ethnicity, gender and so on’ (Smart, 2007, p 28). These and other texts about everyday life (for example, Scott, 2009) add provocative models of how age, ageing and old age might be examined in a wider and more inclusive sense, and again, to cite Deleuze, how the inside and outside are folded together. This sense of inclusion also brings to the fore of everyday research how large-scale changes in ageing populations, life-courses and generations are being experienced and lived out in local contexts. As Settersten and Trauten claim, we are witnessing a ‘new terrain of old age’ (2009) that is creating more flexible lifestyle choices for older people, but also more risk and vulnerability. This terrain includes the rise of a ‘third age’ as a time of independence, health and selfsupport (Laslett, 1987; Carr and Komp, 2011) and an ever-darkening ‘fourth age’ of old age as a time of decline and finality (Gilleard and Higgs, 2010), despite promises of new biomedical and ‘anti-ageing’ technologies for extending life (Turner, 2009; Kaufman, 2015). Chris Phillipson (2006, 2013) takes the new terrain to a global level, citing the precarious consequences of transnational control of financial pension capital and the restructuring of national welfare budgets. These consequences are revealed as part of a worldwide crisis of ageing, the degradation of sustainable environments, the dislocation of traditional places of residence and disruption of long-term jobs and settled lives. Paradoxically, as life expectancy may be expanding, the security of growing older may be eroding, especially where globalised lifestyle and ageing regimes intersect with those of international migration (see Karl and Torres, 2016). These social changes have their effects on the devaluation of ageing and old age that, in turn, shape identity-making practices as they are structured within and across life-course transitions and ‘linked lives’ (Dannefer, 2003; Grenier, 2012). This brief introduction is intended to show how the traditions of social thought about everyday life and the critiques made of it, the methodological advances of age-based ethnographies and the new terrain of ageing societies and their global futures together constitute an exciting and resourceful foundation for both scholarly and public understandings of ageing, ageism and growing older. It is on this foundation that the volume’s authors launch their own investigations and discoveries about the everyday materialities and embodiments that connect the inside and outside of ageing, and to whose chapters I now turn.

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The chapters of this book The authors of this book have backgrounds in social gerontology, geography, feminism, the humanities, social work, sociology, health and dementia studies, which give this diverse and interdisciplinary group critical access to the immediate worlds in which we live, the bodies we know and touch, and both the real and fantastical realms of existence with which we engage. Their writing combines the everyday emphases on ethnographic, discursive and interactional methodologies with contemporary approaches drawn from cultural studies of ageing, the sociology of the body, media and cinematic studies, science and technology studies, non-representational theory and post-structuralism. The book’s chapters, as discussed earlier, are divided into two thematic parts, ‘materialities’ and ‘embodiments,’ each headed by their own brief introductions. The chapters of Part 1, on materialities, examine selected mundane and tangible aspects of our ageing environments and living spaces, in particular, things and possessions, designs of care institutions, mobility and movement, cinema and exoticism, and online dating media. The chapters of Part 2, on embodiments, address everyday ageing experiences based on clothing, high-tech vehicles, dementia care practices, touch and sexuality, health technologies and lifestyle regimes. Together, these parts aim to create a strong sense of the materialising and embodying processes that concretise our ageing lives in the context of an ageist and increasingly risky global culture. Chapter Two, ‘Things and possessions’ by David J. Ekerdt, builds on his previous work and leads off with a lively argument that ‘belongings’ create a material ‘convoy’, a living flotilla of ‘stuff’ that grows and flows, filling our homes and our lives with emotion, meaning and memory. Ekerdt’s idea of the ‘material convoy’, here supported by qualitative interviews and applied to everyday life, should motivate readers to ask questions about their own accumulation of ‘stuff’. Why are some belongings cherished while others are discarded? Why do some possessions sustain household order and family continuity, while others become sources of disruption, conflict and even chaos? Given the prosperity and ageing of Western societies, families will increasingly face the difficult prospect of ‘downsizing’. Ekerdt’s work neatly elaborates this dilemma to illustrate how the material things of everyday life also bridge the micro–macro and private–public spheres of the ageing experience. In Chapter Three, ‘Reinventing the nursing home: metaphors that design care,’ Susan Braedley uses her international research on nursing homes (long-term care) to move debate beyond popular discussions of

10

Introduction

‘positive’ and ‘negative’ traits of nursing home environments to examine how metaphor and discourse articulate various designs of care around institutional material spaces and practices. Her chapter looks at newly built or renovated nursing homes as places to observe the conflicts that connect care policies about sustainability and efficiency to institutional standards that promote wellbeing, marketing campaigns that boost expectations of comfort, and building designs that both express and mask relations of power. Braedley reminds us that, while critical analysis continues to focus on living spaces, lighting, room arrangements, and eating and work routines, further understanding of such materialities can be broadened by paying heed to the embedding metaphors of ‘hospital’, ‘home’ and ‘hotel’ that frame social order and, borrowing from Dorothy Smith, ‘ruling relations’. The chapter concludes by considering how changing language about nursing homes can also effect change for their improvement as more communal, hospitable and dignifying places to live. In Chapter Four, ‘The ever-breaking wave of everyday life: animating ageing movement-space’, Gavin J. Andrews and Amanda M. Grenier map out a novel ‘non-representational’ theoretical approach to structure, space, activity and movement in the context of older people’s lives. Non-representational theory, as formulated by geographer Nigel Thrift (2008), provides a new basis for considering how everyday ageing, movement and space are inseparable because of the immediate material interactions that flow between them. In particular, the assemblage of ‘ageing movement-space’, as formulated in this chapter, is constituted by the emergent and sensorial qualities of rhythm, momentum, vitality, infectiousness and encounter. For the authors, these qualities contribute to a model of the experience of ageing as ‘becoming’ and in perpetual motion, rather than being static and fixed to prescribed roles and routines. By cutting across the dualisms of person/environment, self/ society, subject/object and theory/practice so typical of social inquiry, Andrews and Grenier produce an imaginative rejoinder to mainstream ideas about frailty, mobility, resilience, function and human capacity. Sally Chivers’ illuminating contribution, ‘What’s exotic about The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel? Cinema, everyday life and the materialisation of ageing’ (Chapter Five), concerns two films made in the UK in 2011 and 2015, featuring the humorous experiences of British retirees who, for financial and family reasons, choose to live in a retirement ‘hotel’ in Jaipur, India. Chivers explains that while the films portray as exotic the everyday (white) life of these retirees, including their need for new collective living situations, this exoticism betrays an underlying racism. The chapter is a model on how to view film as a material social

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Ageing in everyday life

world. In the case of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, ageism, racism, exoticism and imperialism are co-expressed in mundane contexts such as tea making, power failures and managing Jaipur’s intense heat and ‘crowded’ streets. Chivers also argues that the cinema, however fantastical a context, also materialises and brings to view the images, representations, narratives and possibilities of ageing that shape everyday life. Thus, Chivers concludes that the consumption and enjoyment of film, especially recent films on ageing (which Chivers calls ‘the silvering screen’), should be a more prominent part of ageing research. Part 1 ends with Chapter Six, ‘Between ageing and ageism: portrayals of online dating in later life in Canadian print media’, by Julia Rozanova, Mineko Wada and Laura Hurd Clarke. These authors demonstrate the value of analysing print media (newspapers and magazines) to understanding the meanings and experiences of online dating marketing practices for older people. The media messages, predictably, are full of ambivalence and contradiction in their thematic emphases on successful ageing, romantic recovery, emotional intimacy, personal risk and stigmatised identity. The chapter adds to the growing critical literature on how internet ‘grey’ commerce and the popular and pharmaceutical re-sexualisation of ageing are combined in senior marketing campaigns and their narratives of later life, but the authors also provide much-needed methodological attention to the details of their everyday practices. In doing so, they delve into the connections between the personal portrayals of online dating and the existential dilemmas that arise from the increasing number of older people (more women than men) who are alone, abandoned and vulnerable. The chapter’s concluding question – whether the media can play an advocacy role in offering more stories of individuals who refute and subvert the stereotypes about later life – is an important one and invites research into other kinds of media marketing to the ageing population. In Part 2, the chapters on embodiment contest dominant narratives of risk, frailty and disability by introducing new ways to think about embodied ageing. Such narratives have unjustly publicised age-related poverty, decline and suffering as results of individual failure, while creating a tension between young and old that fuels a global anti-ageing commercial empire. In Chapter Seven, ‘Closer to touch: sexuality, embodiment and masculinity in older men’s lives,’ Linn J. Sandberg looks at older male sexuality and its contradictions as both personal and social issues. Her interviews and ‘body diaries’ with older Swedish men are revelatory for what they reveal about the intimate power of touch as a liberating practice, especially against heteronormative and phallocentric ideals. Inspired by post-structuralist feminist theory,

12

Introduction

Sandberg sees embodied ageing in the moments of ‘skin to skin’ contact and pleasure, which she interprets as dissolving boundaries between self and other, and male and female morphologies. There is much to learn from this study about alternative narratives to traditional expectations of sexual performance and identity, as they have become foisted on older people for the sake of their health and wellbeing. The chapter leaves us with questions about the diverse possibilities of desire and pleasure, and perhaps the future of ageing masculinity itself. Chapter Eight, ‘Ageing bodies, driving and change: exploring older body–driver fit in the high-tech automobile’, focuses on fascinating research by Jessica A. Gish, Amanda M. Grenier and Brenda Vrkljan on the ethnography of older drivers and their reflections on the embodied spaces of high-tech cars. Taking a fresh phenomenological approach to revisit the problematic relationship between human and machine, the authors consider the ‘auto-biographies’, techniques and skills by which older drivers negotiate their ‘fit’ with and within such vehicles. That ‘fit’, within the closed and isolated space of the driver’s seat and its surrounding and bedazzling technology, brings to view a relational circuitry between body, self and identity. However, this culturally mediated, subjective space is not one that is shared by car manufacturers and ‘human factors research’ (a concept explained in the chapter). Thus, the chapter develops a richly conceived corrective about the significance of meaning making of vehicular ‘fit’ for the older body-driver that should prove highly useful to those working on issues of safe driving and road systems, high-tech vehicles and mobility in later life, such as car manufacturers, transportation designers, city planners and gerontological advocates for age-friendly cities. Chapter Nine, ‘Dancing with dementia: citizenship, embodiment and everyday life in the context of long-term care,’ is a provocative argument by Pia Kontos and Alisa Grigorovich about the potential benefits of arts-based programmes in dementia treatment. In stressing the importance of dance in particular, the authors critique mainstream approaches based on cognitive care models to advance a dynamic bodycentred theory of ‘embodied selfhood’ informed by phenomenological perspectives. Kontos is known for her work on ‘embodied selfhood’ as a ‘pre-reflective’ framework that incorporates, rather than isolates, the body’s memories, skills and intelligibility. Taking this innovative framework to the ethnographic case of a Jewish long-term care facility with people with dementia, the authors trace the overt but also subtle places and moments of dance as a relational practice and expression of selfhood. The emphasis on body knowledge and body language widens our appreciation that older people’s experiences of dementia should

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Ageing in everyday life

be as part of – rather excluded from – shared human existence. The chapter’s powerful call to expand notions of citizenship for people with dementia reorients our advocacy for their better and more inclusive care based on principles of rights, dignity and humanity. In Chapter Ten, ‘Why clothes matter: the role of dress in the everyday lives of older people’, Julia Twigg returns to the everyday sociology of Georg Simmel, one of the first social thinkers to write about fashion and clothing. While Simmel’s work inspired contemporary research on consumerism, style, dress and fashion, very little of it has been applied to the social worlds of older people. Twigg’s research is unique in this respect. As she stresses here and in earlier work (Twigg, 2013), clothing, dress and fashion remain ‘frivolous topics’ in ageing research, a situation she ameliorates in her chapter by reconsidering them as surfaces that express the embodiment of ageing. For Twigg, clothing, which is used to dress us both materially and symbolically, connects self, body and culture in ways that also mediate our status, identity and care. Yet clothing industries treat the adornment of older bodies, especially women’s bodies, with unflattering design, drab colours and denigrating style, as if such bodies were ‘past’ the time when fashionability and public visibility mattered. However, in her interviews with older women, which are shared in this chapter, Twigg finds evidence of both continuity and change in their clothing practices, along with critical reflections on the sexist and ageist biases of their culture. Indeed, for these women, certain clothing items have their own fascinating life histories and bespeak a deeper understanding of the biographical nature of embodied material culture. Chapter Eleven, ‘Our Fitbits, our (ageing) selves: wearables, selftracking and ageing embodiment’, by Barbara L. Marshall, is also a nod to the future. Fitbits are wearable devices that track a person’s steps, but are increasingly becoming one of several technologies that track and quantify other health-related phenomena such as sleep, mood and, as Marshall argues, age-related decline. As these technologies become more ubiquitous and join new digital developments around home surveillance, ambient monitoring, medical and insurance data collection, and robotic companion care, they also contribute to new definitions of ‘active’ and ‘successful’ ageing. Marshall’s compelling critique is supported by interviews with older Fitbit users, whose accounts of what trackable ‘numbers’ mean to their lives expose the contradictions between the moral pressures to keep ‘fit’ through disciplined exercise and health monitoring and the actual relevance of quantifying information to inform their own capacities. As these technologies become part of a larger consumer market, Marshall also

14

Introduction

asks us to consider the veracity of technology-conceived self-tracked data and what they really represent in terms of health standards. Above all, this chapter ponders if what we are seeing in the new technical discourses of ‘fit’ and ‘smart’ is the revised but familiar ambiguous image of the ageing body as supposedly improvable but also inevitably in decline. In Chapter Twelve, Kim Sawchuk concludes Part 2 and the book with her spirited Afterword, subtitled ‘Relational entanglements: ageing, materialities and embodiments’. From her own background in communication, media and technology studies, Sawchuk brings to the fore how the chapters in this book coalesce around themes of engagement, immediacy, entanglement and performance. Sawchuk further draws on thinkers such as Susan Barad, Donna Haraway and Judith Butler to interpret the book’s accomplishments in tackling the everyday materialities and embodiments of ageing as part of a larger trend in theorising relationality, not only as a dynamic field constellating bodies, things, selves and subjects, but also as one that animates our human, non-human and environmental belongings. Relationality, as it is manifested in the book’s chapters, is part of what Sawchuk calls ‘the ‘relational turn’ in cultural studies of ageing. This critical movement includes an ethical commitment to see the world of ordinary practices as an opportunity to envision new forms of inter- and intra-dependent care and community, especially as older people face unpredictable risks of precarity in the decades ahead. Sawchuk’s reflections chime with the spirit of the book’s chapters, whether read separately or together, that a focus on our relationships with everyday activities, narratives, spaces, representations and technologies can challenge the dominance of universalising, objectifying and alienating models of ageing and growing older. These include, as the book’s authors acknowledge in their own ways and echoing the critiques of everyday life from their beginnings, that the daily experiences of ageing bear the imprints of their wider historical, cultural, political and structural realities. Where the authors in this book, from their own corners of observation and perches of insight have shed light on the everyday frontiers of these realities, they have given us new paths along which to journey towards understanding ageing as socially meaningful, by enriching it with diversity, complexity, visibility and relationality. References Aronson, J. (2003) ‘“You need them to know your ways”: service users’ views about valued dimensions of home care’, Home Health Care Services Quarterly, vol 22, no 4, pp 85-98.

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Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T. (1966) The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge, New York, NY: Doubleday & Company. Blumer, H. (1969) Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Bytheway, B. (2009) ‘Writing about age, birthdays and the passage of time’, Ageing & Society, vol 29, no 6, pp 883-901. Calasanti, T.M. and Slevin, K.F. (eds) (2006) Age matters: Realigning feminist thinking, New York, NY: Routledge. Carr, D.C. and Komp, K. (eds) (2011) Gerontology in the era of the third age, New York, NY: Springer. Chappell, N., McDonald, L. and Stones, M. (2008) Aging in contemporary Canada (2nd edn), Toronto: Prentice-Hall. Chivers, S. (2011) The silvering screen: Old age and disability in cinema, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Counts, D.A. and Counts, D.R. (2001) Over the next hill: An ethnography of RVing seniors in North America (2nd edn), Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press. Cruikshank, M. (2003) Learning to be old: Gender, culture and aging, Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield. Dannefer, D. (2003) ‘Whose life course is it anyway? Diversity and “linked lives” in global perspective’, in R.A. Settersen, Jr (ed) Invitation to the lifecourse: Toward new understandings of later life, Amityville, NY: Baywood, pp 259-68. de Certeau, M. (1984) The practice of everyday Life, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Degnen, C. (2012) Ageing selves and everyday lives in the North of England, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Deleuze, G. (1988) Michel Foucault, Translated by Paul Bové, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, G. (1993) The fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, Translated by Tom Conley, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Diamond, T. (1995) Making gray fold: Narratives of nursing home care, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Edmondson, R. (2015) Ageing, insight and wisdom: Meaning and practice across the lifecourse, Bristol: Policy Press. Faircloth, C.A., Boylstein, C., Rittman, M. and Gubrium, J.F., (2005) ‘Constructing the stroke: sudden-onset narratives of stroke survivors’, Qualitative Research, vol 15, no 7, pp 928-41. Freixas, A., Luque, B. and Reina, A. (2012) ‘Critical feminist gerontology: in the back room of research’, Journal of Women & Aging, vol 24, pp 44-58.

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Frisby, D. (1992) Simmel and since: Essays on Georg Simmel’s social theory, London: Routledge. Furman, F.K. (1997) Facing the mirror: Older women and beauty shop culture, New York, NY and London: Routledge. Gamliel, T. (2000) ‘The lobby as an arena in the confrontation between acceptance and denial of old age’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 14, no 3, pp 251-71. Gardiner, M.E. (2000) Critiques of everyday life, London and New York, NY: Routledge. Garfinkel, H. (1968) ‘The origins of the term “ethnomethodology”’, in R. Turner (ed) Ethnomethodology, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, pp 15-18. Gee, E.M. and Guttman, G.M. (2000) The overselling of population aging: Apocalyptic demography, intergenerational challenges and social policy, Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press. Gilleard, C. and P. Higgs (2010) ‘Ageing without agency: theorizing the fourth age’, Aging & Mental Health, vol 14, no 2, pp 121-8. Grenier, A. (2012) Transitions and the lifecourse: Challenging the constructions of ‘growing old’, Bristol: Policy Press. Grenier, A. and Hanley, J. (2007) ‘Older women and “frailty”: aged, gendered and embodied resistance’, Current Sociology, vol 55, no 1, pp 211-28. Gubrium, J.F. and Holstein, J.A. (eds) (2000) Aging and everyday life, Oxford: Blackwell. Gubrium, J.F. and Holstein, J.A. (2009) Analyzing narrative reality, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Harrington, C.L., Bielby, D.D. and Bardo, A.R. (eds) (2014) Aging, media and culture, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Hepworth, M. (2000) Stories of ageing, Buckingham: Open University Press. Highmore, B. (ed) (2002) The everyday life reader, London: Routledge. Holstein, J.A. and Gubrium, J.F. (2000) Constructing the life course, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Hubble, N. and Tew, P. (2013) Ageing, narrative and identity: New qualitative social research, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hurd Clarke, L. (2011) Facing age: Women growing older in anti-aging culture, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Jacobsen, H. (ed) (2009) Encountering the everyday: An introduction to the sociologies of the unnoticed, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Jones, J. and Pugh, S. (2005) ‘Ageing gay men: lessons from the sociology of embodiment’, Men and Masculinities, vol 7, pp 248-60.

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Joyce, K. and Mamo, L. (2006) ‘Graying the cyborg: new directions in feminist analyses of aging, science and technology’, in T.M. Calasanti and K.F. Slevin (eds) Age matters: Realigning feminist thinking, New York, NY: Routledge, pp 99-121. Karl, U. and Torres, S. (eds) (2016) Ageing in contexts of migration, London and New York, NY: Routledge. Katz, S. (1999) ‘Charcot’s older women: bodies of knowledge at the interface of aging studies and women’s studies’, in K. Woodward (ed) Figuring age: Women, bodies, generations, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, pp 112-27. Katz, S. (2000) ‘Reflections on the gerontological handbook and the rhetoric of the text’, in T.R. Cole, R. Kastenbaum and R.E. Ray (eds) Handbook of the humanities and aging (2nd edn), New York, NY: Springer, pp 405-18. Katz, S. (2003) ‘Critical gerontological theory: intellectual fieldwork and the nomadic life of ideas’, in S. Biggs, A. Lowenstein and J. Hendricks (eds) The need for theory: Social gerontology for the 21st century, Amityville, NY: Baywood Press, pp 1-31. Katz, S. (2010) ‘Sociocultural perspectives on the aging body’, in D. Dannefer and C. Phillipson (eds) The international handbook of social gerontology, London: Sage Publications, pp 357-66. Katz, S. (2015) ‘The phenomenology of gravity: ageing, risk and the falling body’, in W. Martin, W. and J. Twigg (eds) Routledge handbook of cultural gerontology, London and New York, NY: Routledge, pp 165-72. Katz, S. and McHugh, K.E. (2010) ‘Age, meaning and place: cultural narratives and retirement communities’, in T.R. Cole, R.E. Ray and R. Kastenbaum (eds) A guide to humanistic studies in aging, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp 271-92. Katz, S. and Whitehouse, P.J. (2017) ‘Legacies, generations and aging futures: the ethics of intergenerativity’, in M. Schweda, L. Pfaller, K. Brauer, F. Adloff and S. Schicktanz (eds) Planning for later life: Bioethics and public health in aging societies, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp 240-53. Kaufman, S.R. (2015) Ordinary medicine: Extraordinary treatments, longer lives and where to draw the line, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kenyon, G.M., Birren, J.E. and Schroots, J.J.F (eds) (1991) Metaphors of aging in science and the humanities, New York, NY: Springer. Kingston, P. (2000) ‘Falls in later life: status passage and preferred identities as a new orientation,’ Health, vol 4, no 2, pp 216-33. Lamb, S. (2000) White saris and sweet mangoes: Aging, gender and body in North India, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

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Laslett, P. (1987) ‘The emergence of the third age’, Ageing & Society, vol 7, pp 133-60. Lefebvre, H. and Levich, C. (1987) ‘The everyday and everdayness’, Yale French Studies, vol 73, pp 7-11. Levin, D.N. (1976) ‘Simmel’s influence on American sociology’, American Journal of Sociology, vol 81, no 4, pp 813-45. Loe, M. (2011) Aging our way: Lessons from living 85 and beyond, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Marshall, B.L. (2014) ‘Sexualizing the third age’, in C.L. Harrington, D.D. Bielby and A.R. Bardo (eds) Aging, media and culture, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, pp 169-80. Marshall, B.L. and Katz, S. (2006) ‘From androgyny to androgens: re-sexing the aging body’, in T.M. Calasanti and K.F. Slevin (eds) Age matters: Realigning feminist thinking, New York, NY: Routledge, pp 75-97. Matthews, S. (1979) The social world of old women: Management of selfidentity, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. May, V. (2013) Connecting self to society: Belonging in a changing world, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Nikander, P. (2002) Age in action: Membership work and stage of life categories in talk, Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. Phillipson, C. (2006) ‘Ageing and globalisation’, in J.A. Vincent, C.R. Phillipson and M. Downs (eds) The futures of old age, London: Sage Publications, pp 201-7. Phillipson, C. (2013) ‘Ageing and class in a globalised world’, in M. Formosa, and P. Higgs (eds) Social class in later life: Power, identity and lifestyle, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 53-72. Pickard, S. (2018) Age, gender and sexuality through the life course: The girl in time, London: Routledge. Prus, R.C. and Puddephatt, A.J. (2009) ‘American pragmatism: examining everyday life “in the making”’, in H. Jacobsen (ed) Encountering the everyday: An introduction to the sociologies of the unnoticed, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 69-89. Psathas, G. (2004) ‘Alfred Schutz’s influence on American sociologists and sociology’, Human Studies, vol 27, no 1, pp 1-35. Riggs, K.E. (2004) Granny @ work: Aging and new technology on the job in America, New York, NY: Routledge. Roberts, C. (2015) Puberty in crisis: The sociology of early sexual development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosenfeld, D. (2003) The changing of the guard: Lesbian and gay elders, identity and social change, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

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Rousseau, N. (ed) (2002) ‘Alfred Schutz on society and intersubjectivity’, in N. Rousseau (ed) Self, symbols and society: Classic readings in social psychology, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pp 143-67. Rule, B.G., Milke, D.L. and Dobbs, A.R. (1994) ‘Design of institutions: cognitive functioning and social interactions of the aged resident,’ in V.W. Marshall and B. McPherson (eds) Aging: Canadian perspectives, Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, pp 70-82. Sandberg, L. (2011) Getting intimate: A feminist analysis of old age, masculinity and sexuality, Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press. Schutz, A. (1967) On phenomenology and social relations: Selected writings, H.R. Wagner (ed), Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Schutz, A. (1970) Reflections on the problem of relevance, R. Zaner (ed), New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Schwaiger, E. (2012) Ageing, gender, embodiment and dance: Finding a balance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Scott, S. (2009) Making sense of everyday life, Cambridge: Polity Press. Settersten Jr, R.A. and Trauten, M.E. (2009) ‘The new terrain of old age: hallmarks, freedoms and risks,’ in V.L. Bengtson, D. Gans, N.M. Putney and M. Silverstein (eds) Handbook of theories of aging (2nd edn), New York, NY: Springer, pp 455-69. Simmel, G. (1971 [1903]) ‘The metropolis and mental life’, in D. Levine (ed) Georg Simmel: On individuality and social forms, Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Smart, C. (2007) Personal life: New directions in sociological thinking, Cambridge: Polity Press. Smith, A. (2015) ‘Rethinking the “everyday” in “ethnicity and everyday life”’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol 38, no 7, pp 1137-51. Smith, D.E. (1987) The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology, Boston: Northeastern University Press. Smith, D.E. (1990) Texts, facts and femininity: Exploring the relations of ruling, New York, NY and London: Routledge. Thrift, N. (2008) Non-representational theory: Space, politics, affect, London: Routledge. Tulle, E. (2008) Ageing, the body and social change: Running in later life, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Turner, B.S. (2009) Can we live forever?: A sociological and moral inquiry, London: Anthem Press. Twigg, J. (2000) Bathing: The body and community care, London: Routledge. Twigg, J. (2013) Fashion and age: Dress, the body and later life, London: Bloomsbury.

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van den Hoonaard, D.K. (2010) By himself: The older man’s experience of widowhood, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Whelehan, I. and Gwynne, J. (2014) (eds) Ageing, popular culture and contemporary feminism: Harleys and hormones, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wolff, K. H. (ed) (1950) The sociology of Georg Simmel, Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Ylänne, V. (2012) (ed) Representing ageing: Images and identities, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Part 1 Materialities

23

Part 1: introduction Stephen Katz In a previous project on Canadian ‘snowbird’ culture, I interviewed retired Canadians at their winter retirement residences in Florida, where they spend up to six months of the year escaping Canadian winters (Katz, 2005). It was an enlightening experience, not only for learning about residents’ backgrounds and life plans, but also about how they organised and negotiated their movements between two countries, climates, cultures and homes. Our meetings in Florida usually began with a home tour, as the residents proudly pointed out which cherished objects, mementos, gifts and photographs they chose to bring with them from Canada and what special memories and personal stories each evoked. Walking with the residents through their gardens was also a chance for me to see how they personalised their outdoor spaces to express their lives in Florida as both rooted and temporary. Aside from the interviews, I found that the world of snowbirds was brought to life through its rhythms and motions, where ‘home’ could include several familiar places between ‘here’ and ‘there’, along with the nomadic excursions between them. While gerontology has always had a strong commitment to environmental ‘person-fit’ and ‘ageing-in-place’ research, such research prioritises health-related problems of housing modification and design, residential displacement and relocation, and community care resources. The mobility of snowbirds poses something different, because it raises new questions about the relationships between biography, place, flow and settlement and their materialities. Things such as vehicles, plants, kitchen items, medicines, clothing, pictures and books were important conveyers of such relationships, as were virtual connectivity and social media, international newspapers, foods, recreational centres, healthcare services and volunteer organisations. Hence, in hindsight this research project was an education in material culture, as a realm of use and consumption, and as one of lived and symbolic significance. As such, it inspires this part of the book on ageing and materialities. Material culture and the materialities of social worlds are familiar themes in European and American everyday sociologies; however, their application of material analyses to ageing and later life has been wanting. Thus, the idea of materialities in this part of the book serves as a conceptual starting point for understanding how specific

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experiences and identities of older people are grounded in their material contexts. The chapters that follow, on possessions, nursing homes, ageing movement-space, film and print media, are examples of how, where and why the materialities associated with the ageing process intensify and become meaningful and distinct. This part of the book also parallels research on material and relational existence emerging in other theoretical areas about ‘post-qualitative inquiry’ (St. Pierre, 2011), ‘non-representational ethnography’ (Vannini, 2015), ‘post-human’ feminism (Bradiotti, 2013), the ‘new materialism’ (Fox and Alldred, 2017; Fullagar, 2017) and the ‘affective turn’ in social theory (Gregg and Seaworthy, 2010; Sointu, 2016). However, little of it has been borrowed by research on ageing, with some exceptions that investigate the materialisation of memories (for example, Buse and Twigg, 2015) and non-representational approaches to health (Andrews, 2014; Chapter Four in this volume) and in British research networks on the materialities of care (http://materialitiesofcare.co.uk) and the Hair and Care project (for people with dementia) (https://thehairandcareproject. wordpress.com). Thus, under the banner of materialities, the chapters in this part of the book point to exciting future opportunities to encompass these new directions and further draw out our thinking about and methodological approaches to the material relationships that connect ageing individuals to their environments, spaces, things, technologies and rhythms of life. References Andrews, G.J. (2014) ‘Co-creating health’s lively, moving frontiers: brief observations on the facets and possibilities of non-representational theory’, Health & Place, vol 30, pp 165-70. Braidotti, R. (2013) The posthuman, Cambridge: Polity Press. Buse, C. and Twigg, J. (2015) ‘Materialising memories: exploring the stories of people with dementia through dress’, Ageing & Society, vol 36, pp 1115-35. Fox, N. and Alldred, P. (2017) Sociology and the new materialism, London: Sage Publications. Fullagar, S. (2017) ‘Post-qualitative inquiry and the new materialist turn: implications for sport, health and physical culture research’, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, vol 9, no 2, pp 247-57. Gregg, M. and Seaworthy, G.J. (eds) (2010) The affect theory reader, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Katz, S. (2005) ‘Spaces of age, snowbirds and the gerontology of mobility’, in S. Katz (ed) Cultural aging: Life course, lifestyle and senior worlds, Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, pp 202-31.

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Sointu, E. (2016) ‘Discourse, affect and affliction’, The Sociological Review, vol 64, pp 312-28. St. Pierre, E.A. (2011) ‘Post qualitative research: the critique and the coming after’, in N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (eds) Sage handbook of qualitative inquiry (4th edn), Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, pp 611-35. Vannini, P. (2015) ‘Non-representational ethnography: new ways of animating lifeworlds’, Cultural Geographies, vol 22, no 2, pp 317-27.

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TWO

Things and possessions David J. Ekerdt

Introduction The life course is commonly charted by intangibles, as a progression of roles, statuses, relationships, emotions, identities and levels of wellbeing. And these occur within even larger constructs that we call social institutions (such as work, family, fashion, education, economy). These intangibles nonetheless have real force and real consequences. Yet the life course also has a physical, material reality: it is enacted and embodied with things, it proceeds in the service of things, and the passage of time propels people towards the consumption of things. These are not only the objects and furnishings of everyday life that are held by oneself or others, but also public affordances, infrastructures and landscapes. To propose that the life course is enacted by things is to claim that this material is something more than mere contexts, instruments, adjuncts or accessories. Childhood is unthinkable without toys, just as adulthood is unthinkable without keys. People’s belongings manage age-appropriate presentations of themselves: in their bodies, in their social roles, in their homemaking, at leisure. For example, ‘parenthood’ is an abstraction until made concrete by acts that maintain a physical environment for children and continually furnish it with goods for daily needs. Material resources are deployed in order to be someone, whatever that station in life may call for. Material resources spin a story about the self and are the means by which to evaluate how well life is going. Wrote Sartre: ‘The totality of my possessions reflects the totality of my being. I am what I have’ (1956, p 591). Although eclipsed by a frequent emphasis on roles, relationships and especially health, research on later life has not overlooked material culture. For example, there has been considerable attention to the built environment (Golant, 2015), to the places where elders reside in rooms, buildings and neighbourhoods, even including outdoor places such as gardens (Milligan and Bingley, 2015). Assistive devices for health and

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self-care are an important focus of geriatrics. Elders’ interactions with consumer electronics (so-called ‘tech’) is an active area of research (Fisk et al, 2009). Selected categories of objects have come in for study, for example, in this volume, clothing and automobiles (see Chapters Eight and Ten). Public amenities and attractions may also have significance in later life, such as museum objects (Jacques, 2007). This chapter considers in a comprehensive way the innumerable objects that furnish daily life, theorising them as a material convoy accommodated across the life course. For older adults there are additional considerations about the convoy: its volume, manageability and a growing, shared concern about its disposition. The chapter moves on to review evidence about age and the changing meanings of possessions and finally proposes that the convoy can have a material agency apart from the subjectivity of its possessors. This argument is an attempt to adjust the view of possessions primarily as serving self and identity, their main drawback being lax management of their volume. Rather, the confederated contents of the household can be the origin of an insistent, problematic materiality that exceeds human intention. All by themselves, possessions have the capacity to surprise. Throughout, the chapter draws on interview studies with older adults in the United States about their possessions and experience with household divestment, as well as survey responses from the 2010 wave of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a biennial panel study of a representative sample of older Americans (http://hrsonline.isr. umich.edu).

A material convoy Across the great range of objects that actualise the life course, possessions have the most scope for individual initiative, but they also require considerable responsibility on their behalf. Possessions are the material things that reside with people and stay long enough to merit some care or placement. The role of possessions in later life can be taken up category by category, but there is a way to attend to possessions in their totality and across time, using the metaphor of the ‘convoy’. It affords a whole-life, whole-house handle on age and materiality. Kahn and Antonucci (1980) applied the convoy metaphor to describe a ‘convoy model of social relations’, a changeable structure of social ties that accompanies one from birth to death. ‘Individuals are conceptualized as part of a dynamic network or convoy that moves with them through time, space, and the life course’ (Antonucci et al, 2011, p 161). The convoy of social relations – family, friends,

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colleagues, acquaintances – can protect and gratify individuals but also put them at risk. Potentially, the social convoy can provision the life course with support or with stress, or both. With a nod to this previous work, my colleagues and I have proposed that life-course studies can take a ‘material turn’ (Smith and Ekerdt, 2011; Ekerdt and Baker, 2014; Ekerdt, 2015). Akin to the social convoy, the body of one’s possessions across time is a convoy of material support. Like the social convoy, the material convoy has members that are more important and less important (some even forgotten), members that endure and are transient, and members that also populate the convoys of others. The material convoy undergoes predictable agelinked changes (for example, expansion in early adulthood). People develop affective and affirmative relations with their things: they want to give them a good home, or they cannot stand to look at them. Like the social convoy, parts of the material convoy are maintained for their actual or potential supportiveness, but a larger convoy does not necessarily guarantee more benefit. Social networks and material convoys share one other feature: the person at their centre may regard the constituents with ambivalence (Fingerman and Hay, 2004). The stock and store of one’s belongings can be a resource, an achievement, a delight and a comfort, but they may also by turns be a burden. The material convoy, then, is a wide frame for considering the question of ageing and possessions: a persistent but dynamic body of belongings that accompanies people across their changing lives. Things may come and go, but there is always a convoy.

The convoy in later life The material convoy has at least three added characteristics in later life. First, after decades of consumption, it is an accumulation of things that have endured, that have been retained throughout the rhythms of acquisition and disposal that are normal in everyday life. Advancing age lays down a residue of belongings that become biographically meaningful by virtue of their duration. If a household has already moved once or twice in retirement, the remaining property is even more selected. Excess furniture and clothing may be sloughed off, but such items as photograph albums and mementos of one’s parents remain. The volume of possessions is not necessarily larger than in middle age (there is no feasible technique by which to measure this anyway), but the concentration of ‘sticky’ things rises in the convoy. The keeping of things comes about in opposed ways. There is intentional keeping that arises from an array of motives that can shift

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and recombine even in relation to the same object (Ekerdt et al, 2004). People keep things that are thought to be useful, have monetary value, give pleasure, symbolise oneself past and present, honour ancestors (‘family things’) or must be respected as gifts. People keep things because it is a virtue not to waste or trash belongings that could be used by others (Gregson, 2007), and they also keep them because they simply have the room. As adults mature, they can typically afford larger dwellings that are essentially larger containers for goods. “Have you ever known anyone to have an empty closet?”, asked one of our interviewees. “Drawers and cupboards are for filling up,” said another. There is also inadvertent keeping – accumulation through mundane neglect. It arises from the housekeeping practice of putting things away in ‘backstage’ areas of the home (Arnold et al, 2012; Hirschman et al, 2012). Homes have public and private spaces, visible and hidden spaces, and one kind of space actually makes the other possible. People ‘stage’ their homes to be presentable for themselves and others by tidying up and putting things away into the recesses. They also store things that are intended for transfer to others (eventually) or disposal (eventually). Habits of replacement consumption without disposal (for example, appliances) contribute to the crowding of cellars, garages and sheds. And in these places that occupy the margins or edges of living spaces, things can be forgotten. ‘Things are there but they are not visible. They can be retrieved at any moment, but also forgotten at will, without any regrets or remorse as long as they are not thrown away’ (Korosec-Serfaty, 1984, p 313). Of course, things can be retrieved from the limbo of storage, but until then they will go unscrutinised for divestment or re-use (Gregson, 2007). So, putting things away and out of sight would ordinarily be deemed a good habit for the home. But out of sight is out of mind, and so the convoy grows. Older adults are well aware of overfull convoys. The 2010 wave of the HRS asked this survey question: ‘Thinking of the belongings that you own or are keeping at your home, do you feel that you have more things than you need, fewer things than you need, or just the right amount?’. Note that people were asked to appraise possession volume in relation to their ‘need’, not some external standard. Just over 60% of persons in their 60s and 70s said that they had ‘more things than I need’, whereas about one third claimed that they had ‘just the right amount’ (calculations by the author). The more-than-needed response was somewhat more moderate, 53%, among those aged 80 and over. This was still a majority of respondents and some evidence of unease about the size of the material convoy.

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What are the correlates of feeling over-provisioned? Not gender – men and women answer almost identically in this respect – and not personality to any significant extent. It stands to reason that the bigger the household, the more the press of possessions, and that is borne out. Married people, with two occupants of the household and someone else to blame, are more likely to say that they have more than they need. So are homeowners (versus renters) and people in dwellings with more rooms. By asset quintiles, wealthier people are more likely to admit to having too many things – 75% saying so among the top quintile. The response about excess possessions, however, is sharply lower among persons who have moved in the past two years, probably because these relocations entailed the downsizing that is typical of moves in later life. A second feature of the material convoy in later life is that its manageability becomes more challenging. The ability to manage convoy contents depends on one’s capacity for the labour of both possession and divestment. Kept things are far more than abeyant matter resting politely by. They must be accommodated by being stored, arranged, contained, tidied, maintained, cleaned, secured, insured, provided for and worried about. Property maintenance and its costs were a considerable concern for older adults in our interview studies. Some belongings are emotionally ‘animated’ by attributing to them an inner life towards which one must attend. ‘Upkeep’ is a most fitting word for these efforts, and this work is definitely gendered. Every object that joins the convoy comes with a quantum of required labour, even if that is only to set it somewhere. Collectively, however, the care of the convoy, the agency in its keeping, is not trivial. Activity to divest items from the convoy is effortful at any stage of the life course. The principal strategies for doing this – in the rough order they are attempted – are gifts of things to family and friends, sales by some means, donations to organisations and trash disposal (Addington and Ekerdt, 2014; Ekerdt and Addington, 2015). The labour of divestment has several dimensions. The work is cognitive. One must conceive or choose a strategy for the outplacement: give, sell, trash, and so on. There may be procedural steps to plan or an appropriate timing to await. The work is physical. Objects will need to be located, retrieved from their places, hauled about, and readied for presentation (for example, cleaned for sale, bagged for the trash). The work is emotional. One needs to finds ways to bear parting with things that carry the memories of self and others. One may also have to bear disconfirmations of possession motives (this is worth money; my children will want that). The work is social. Various divestment strategies involve consulting others, recruiting them to help or paying

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them to undertake cognitive and physical tasks. In the end, it may all be too much bother; things remain or they enter storage outside the household. The work of possession and divestment will be harder given the press of other life-course situations that compete for time, such as continued employment and caregiving. This sort of housekeeping will not be easier when there are financial limitations and social isolation, and when in later life there is waning strength and stamina. Reflecting the effort devoted to its management, the material convoy might be an intentional and orderly assembly of possessions or something less disciplined. Do adults routinely divest in later life? At some point, deaccumulation could be expected because the conditions for middleage consumption typically lose force. Family and work obligations have wound down, social networks narrow, widowhood reduces household size, and health and functional decline limit the ability to manage further accommodation and care of possessions. Older people hypothetically should release quantities of the belongings that equipped the daily lives that they no longer have. However, a case can be made for predicting retention of things. The ongoing collection of belongings can secure continuity of the self in the face of ageing and vulnerability. Some people’s affluence will enable them to hire out possession and property maintenance. If there is no relocation, the dwelling can continue to contain the possessions of middle age. Finally, some people may wait too long and the labour of divestment is beyond their capacity to undertake (Luborsky et al, 2011). Survey responses from the HRS support the view that some proportion of older people habitually divest in later life, but larger numbers do not, suggesting a tendency to maintain collections of possessions across later life (Ekerdt and Baker, 2014). Asked about general efforts to clean out or reduce belongings in the previous year, claims to have done this ‘many times’ decline from 23% among persons in their 50s to 13% over age 80. After age 70, about one third of persons say that they have done nothing in the previous year to clean out, give away or donate things, and over 80% made no attempt at sales. A third characteristic of possessions in later life is that inertia towards the material convoy portends a shared predicament wherein the belongings become a worry for their holders but also for others. As life horizons lower, the disposition of the convoy will need to be undertaken sooner or later, by somebody. From the life-course principle of ‘linked lives’ (Elder et al, 2004), it follows that the material convoy of one household is, in part, inevitably the convoy of social

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counterparts, principally family members. Thus the personal belongings of autonomous individuals become an intergenerational and collective matter; like a doll’s house with one wall removed, the materiality of one’s things is now on view. For those with a stake in the safety and security of elders, possessions are one more way in which the privacy of an older person becomes open to public consideration. As evidence of this, an entire subgenre of clutter-advice manuals has appeared that specifically address family members about the necessity of taming the overfull households of elders (Smith and Ekerdt, 2011). The elders, for their part, are often motivated to downsize belongings as a ‘gift’ to their families to relieve them of the burden and responsibility for eventually have to do so on their own (Perry, 2014). Based on reports of family members and elders alike, it is fair to say that the next generation is generally less interested in the elders’ possessions and their careful disposition, in large part because there is less familiarity with the things. A principal role for adult children and other relatives is to function as an outlet for gifts and bestowals (Ekerdt et al, 2012). Whereas gift receptions are sometimes unwilling, there are often satisfactions in these transfers, both generations assured that the things will be valued and protected. When actively involved in a downsizing and relocation episode (decision making, sorting) the family role can be characterised along a continuum that locates agency for the numerous tasks of divestment (Ekerdt and Sergeant, 2006). At one end, elders have complete control of the disbandment, as in those cases we studied where family members had no sustained involvement. In the middle of the continuum are cases where family members supply assistance but cede autonomy to the elder in a pattern of collaborative decision making. This hands-off, helper stance lets parents decide. Said one daughter, “There is no way you can do that for someone else. You can’t tell your parents what to keep”. At the far end is family paternalism in the disbandment, executing the activities of relocation in order to secure the elder’s eventual wellbeing. Such assertions of control (challenging decisions, discouraging retention) are more likely to occur when elders are frail. Even if feelings do get hurt, children rationalise their actions as necessary to relocate elders to a more hospitable setting. The far extent of arrogation is throwing things out behind the elder’s back. The family role was a prominent theme in most of our interviews, but many other kinds of people appear as supportive in these stories, too: neighbours, friends, church members, tradesmen, cleaning women. It is the social convoy activated to confront the material convoy. Convoy disposition formally becomes a public matter in the case of hoarders,

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when officials from police, fire, public health, codes enforcement and animal control agencies are called in (Chapin et al, 2010).

Ageing and the meanings of things Advancing age layers the household with belongings acquired for successive roles, bodily care, instrumental use, self-development, and as gifts. Advancing age also furnishes the time durations within which things are cultivated or fall out of favour. Over time, therefore, does age also shift the value and meaning of things? Perhaps different things come to matter more. Perhaps symbolic things displace useful ones, and objects that embody the past displace things that promise future pleasure or action. If age changes the appreciation of material goods, this would be something of no little interest to companies that seek to market products to older consumers (Drolet et al, 2011). For this reason, a good number of studies about ageing and possessions have appeared in consumer marketing journals. Over the past 40 years, at least three dozen publications (including those from our studies) have reported primary research focused on older adults and their possessions. Most of these studies were undertaken to illuminate the self-object relations that pertain to things that have a privileged place in the home. Some studies have also addressed the strategies or emotions of divestment, either as it actually happened or hypothetically could happen. From all these studies, it is hard to say whether advancing age shifts the value and meaning of things, this owing to two limitations of research technique, both quite understandable. First, only very small samples of anyone’s material convoy typically come under scrutiny. Because the items in any modern household are nearly innumerable (Arnold et al, 2012), in order to make possession research tractable, investigators commonly ask people to identify and discuss their most cherished, special or important things. Among the three dozen studies, two thirds have used this cherished-object method (for example, Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, 1981; Morris, 1992; Price et al, 2000; Marx et al, 2004). This is a productive gambit that yields the stories behind selected things and also discloses aspects of elders’ values, identities and significant relationships. Having specifically asked about special things, investigators reap content about the special-ness of things or their special disposition. The symbolic features of selected possessions come to the fore while the everyday utility of other household contents (or their inutility) is eclipsed. Thus, techniques of possession research among older adults tend to

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accentuate the prizing and preciousness of things. The story of ageing and possessions inclines towards their benignity. Authors interpret emotional investment in cherished objects as the means by which older people manage the developmental challenges of their stage of life. Special possessions can maintain a sense of identity in the face of losses (such as widowhood, moves to care), a narrowing life world, and a rising awareness of finitude. They can sustain and comfort people by evoking the past, promoting reminiscence and providing assurance about important relationships. They have the potential, when passed on to others, to perpetuate one’s self, values and memory into the future. Altogether, research on the meaning of important possessions leaves an impression that older people have a heightened attachment to things, the objects being ‘a kind of archive of personal history’ (McCracken, 1987). With increasing age, people cling to the comforting continuity of these material memories or else try to press them on others. But again, these are conclusions about a small fraction of the material convoy. The second research limitation is one common in all developmental and life-course studies, which is that it takes a lot of resources and commitment to follow human lives over time. In the case of ageing and possessions, people would need revisiting over the years to check on their continued valuing of the same possessions or their engagement with completely other things. Because of this feasibility problem, all of the previous three dozen studies have been cross-sectional in design, one-time snapshots of people’s views. From these reports we can be pretty sure that people do indeed change their minds about possessions because they say they do. They say that they cast things out of the convoy, and they start to call ‘junk’ and ‘crap’ those things formerly deemed to be worth keeping. Yet, without successive interviews, surveys or observations of the same people, it is difficult to demonstrate, specify and verify a changing relationship to possessions. If not a longitudinal study, the next best approach would be a crosssectional study of multiple generations whose outlooks and behaviours could be compared, with differences between them being then inferred as effects of ageing. Yet there is the strong possibility that age-group differences in the style and valuing of possessions may reflect not advancing age but rather the cohort or generational membership of consumers. A cohort encounters the market for consumer goods at a certain historical moment, and the things that cohort members value and the way they relate to possessions may be unique. For example, in our interviews, we have heard a generational disconnect about household items associated with fine dining, such as china and silver

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sets, which the older generation prizes but the children do not want, thus complicating the transfer of these things within the family (Ekerdt et al, 2012). Disentangling age and cohort differences in possession attachment would be possible if the field had survey and interview techniques that could answer basic questions about age-related changes in possession attachment, about the valuing of goods, and about cohort differences in possession attachment and practices. Alas, there is at present no reliable technique for measuring multifaceted possession attachment (in multiple possessions at that) and so speculation about cohort differences in possession rationales has yet to be tested (Kleine and Baker, 2004).

Material agency of the convoy The belongings of the material convoy are gathered over time for all sorts of practical, expressive and symbolic purposes. The standard view is that all these things cohere around a person or household of persons, and these persons’ subjectivity endows the objects with meaning. Possessions are what they are thought to be by their owners or holders who vivify them and grant them their place in the material convoy. Possessions are thus constituted by human agency, a view famously enunciated by Belk (1988), who called possessions part of the ‘extended self ’. Indeed, the centrality of human consciousness to all the things that furnish life is difficult to doubt. At the same time, it is possible to maintain that things have a ‘material agency’ that shapes behaviour and action in ways unintended by human subjectivity (Joyce and Bennett, 2010). Matter as matter ‘generates effects ... makes things happen’ (Otter, 2010, p 45). The source of this view is actor-network theory, which holds that human and nonhuman agents are in relation and evolve in networks and assemblages, and that neither the human or the material can be reduced to the other (Bennett, 2010; Pickering, 2010). Material things thus can exert an independent agency. In the case of household contents, the notion of ‘infrastructure’ is applicable (Joyce and Bennet, 2010). Objects visibly populate walls, surfaces, floors; they are contained in cabinets, closets, drawers and other storage places. Collectively, they face us with weight, mass, shape, colour and volume. A latent infrastructure of objects may have been unintended, but it is there, presenting itself as something that exceeds the separate things that compose it. In a way, the agency of material forces has been recognised in environmental gerontology, which has long maintained that places

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can, by turns, effect comfort and but also threatens older people (Wahl et al, 2012; Golant, 2015). Physical settings can form a ‘hidden program’ that regulates behaviour in a place, such as a care facility (Diaz Moore, 2004). The infrastructure of possessions, too, can morph into something that its single elements are not. In our interviews, people sat in their homes and characterised current or former contents. In the telling, large portions of the entire lot could quickly congeal into the sheer materiality of being ‘stuff’. Belongings cease to be individual things and aggregate into an almost alien mass that is spoken of with surprise and dismay. “Why do we have so much stuff?” “I couldn’t believe all the things I had in there.” “Stuff is a lot of trouble.” There is a way that people vocalise the shift to materiality, saying the word ‘stuff’ by drawing out the first sound and using force on the second: sss-tuff! Uttered this way (‘just stuff’), it sounds categorically dismissive, an epithet for undifferentiated quantities of possessions (though less so than the coarser term ‘crap’). One woman we spoke with became more expressive as she went along about the things that she and her husband had once valued enough to acquire: “Oh, we had everything. All kinds of stuff in the basement: tools, leftovers from my drapery business, linens.... Knickknacks.... The washer and dryer, though, a lot of the yard stuff, lawnmower, snow blower, patio furniture. You know, all of that stuff. You know, I said I didn’t need any more stuff! I got rid of the ‘stuff’ [makes quote signs in air], knickknacks and stuff.” When it comes to relocation in later life, household contents can function as a participant in the question of moving or staying, exerting a spatial drag. The infrastructure of the household can generate an awareness of the (probably considerable) effort it would take to move it. Lying contained, it is no threat at all. But things held dear or useful can collectively emerge as something else, as a reality that would compel considerable labour. Go once removed from the subjectivity of the possessor, to family members, and the looming material agency of the convoy will seem even stronger (Ekerdt and Sergeant, 2006). To relocation professionals and de-clutter advisers, it is all a chore (Smith and Ekerdt, 2011). Participants in the HRS were asked the following question: ‘Think about the effort that it would take to move your belongings to another home. How reluctant to move does that make you feel? Very reluctant, or somewhat reluctant, or not reluctant at all?’. After age 60, the

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proportion who were ‘very reluctant’ comprised nearly half of the sample. Bundling together the percentages for ‘very’ and ‘somewhat reluctant’ to indicate any reluctance, three quarters of persons had reservations about moving their belongings. In further analyses, people who had already moved in the last two years were just as unlikely, on account of their things, to want to do it again. Further, people were more reluctant to move if they felt they had more things than they needed; if they were homeowners and thus, we infer, curating bigger convoys but also living in a larger dwelling with more space for material; and if they had functional limitations that would affect the effort of relocation. On the other hand, people were less reluctant about moving things if they had living children with whom they were in contact, and who presumably could help them. We know from other surveys that the vast majority of older Americans would like to remain in their current homes. The HRS findings would support a contention that the materiality of household contents is a factor in the common preference to age in place. Possessions are a crucial context for the business of daily life – they are there, standing by, awaiting our use, attention or care. But they can present as something else. The invocation of their material agency is an alternative to the view that belongings are primarily extensions of the self. They can flip over into being viewed as things in the way. Following actor-network theory, the infrastructure of possessions as obstacle emerges in concert with their possibility of relocation. Those books on the shelf, I chose them, they are mine. But goodness, they would be heavy. The material convoy equips and furnishes life – but it is also mere baggage.

Conclusion The whole of one’s possessions, borne across place and time as a material convoy, is the yield of a consumption career that by turns acquires, accommodates and divests things. More than incidental, these objects actualise the life course. Advancing age may deepen and even shift the meanings of things and their possession motives. Research to date has tended to emphasise the benignity and symbolic value of things in later life, and some possessions indeed have such qualities. At the same time, the disposition of the material convoy comes to seem increasingly problematic, its materiality more insistent and less centred on the individual. In later life, possessions can at once be a comfort and a burden and determinative of action. Thus ‘things’ and ‘possessions’ create a fluid, complex but often neglected dimension

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through which the ageing process is materialised in time and space and where subjects and objects create meaningful relationships deserving of attentive research. Acknowledgement The author gratefully acknowledges Nathaniel Freiburger for his assistance and advice. This research was supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging, AG19978 and AG30477. The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Aging or the National Institutes of Health. References Addington, A. and Ekerdt, D.J. (2014) ‘The reproduction of gender norms through downsizing in later life residential relocation’, Research on Aging, vol 36, no 1, pp 3-21. Antonucci, T. C., Birditt, K.S. and Ajrouch, K. (2011) ‘Convoys of social relations: past, present and future’, in K.L. Fingerman, C.A. Berg, J. Smith and T.C. Antonucci (eds) Handbook of life span development, New York, NY: Springer, pp 161-82. Arnold, J.E., Graesch, A.P., Ragazzini, E. and Ochs, E. (2012) Life at home in the twenty-first century: 32 families open their doors, Los Angeles, CA: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. Belk, R.W. (1988) ‘Possessions and the extended self ’, Journal of Consumer Research, vol 15, no 2, pp 139-68. Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Chapin, R.K., Sergeant, J.F., Landry, S.T., Koenig, T., Leiste, M. and Reynolds, K. (2010) ‘Hoarding cases involving older adults: the transition from a private matter to the public sector’, Journal of Gerontological Social Work, vol 53, no 8, pp 723-42. Csikzentmihalyi, M. and Rochberg-Halton, E. (1981) The meaning of things: Domestic symbols and the self, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diaz Moore, K. (2004) ‘Interpreting the “hidden program” of a place: an example from dementia day care’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 18, no 3, pp 297-320. Drolet, A., Schwarz, N. and Yoon, C. (2011) The aging consumer: Perspectives from psychology and economics, Hoboken, NJ: Taylor & Francis.

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Ekerdt, D.J. (2015) ‘Possessions as a material convoy’, in J. Twigg and W. Martin (eds) Routledge handbook of cultural gerontology, London and New York, NY: Routledge, pp 313-20. Ekerdt, D.J. and Addington, A. (2015) ‘Possession divestment by sales in later life’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 34, 21-28. Ekerdt, D.J. and Baker, L.A. (2014) ‘The material convoy after age 50’, The Journals of Gerontology, Series B, vol 69, no 3, pp 442-50. Ekerdt, D.J. and Sergeant, J.F. (2006) ‘Family things: attending the household disbandment of older adults’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 20, pp 193-205. Ekerdt, D.J., Luborsky, M. and Lysack, C. (2012) ‘Safe passage of goods and self during residential relocation in later life’, Ageing & Society, vol 32, no 5, pp 833-50. Ekerdt, D.J., Sergeant, J.F., Dingel, M. and Bowen, M.E. (2004) ‘Household disbandment in later life’, The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, vol 59, no 5, pp S265-73. Elder, G.H., Johnson, M.K. and Crosnoe, R. (2004) ‘The emergence and development of life course theory’, in J.T. Mortimer and M.J. Shanahan (eds) Handbook of the life course, New York, NY: Springer, pp 3-19. Fingerman, K.L. and Hay, E. (2004) ‘Intergenerational ambivalence in the context of the larger social network’, in K. Pillemer and K. Luscher (eds) Intergenerational ambivalences: New perspectives on parentchild relations in late life, New York, NY: Elsevier/JAI Press, pp 133-51. Fisk, A.D., Rogers, W.A., Charness, N., Czaja, S.J. and Sharit, J. (2009) Designing for older adults: Principles and creative human factors approaches, Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Golant, S.M. (2015) Aging in the right place, Baltimore, MD: Health Professions Press. Gregson, N. (2007) Living with things: Ridding, accommodation, dwelling, Wantage: Sean Kingston Publishing. Gregson, N., Metcalfe, A. and Crewe, L. (2007) ‘Identity, mobility and the throwaway society’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol 25, no 4, pp 682-700. Hirschman, E.C., Ruvio, A. and Belk, R.W. (2012) ‘Exploring space and place in marketing research: excavating the garage’, Marketing Theory, vol 12, no 4, pp 369-89. Jacques, C. (2007) ‘Easing the transition: using museum objects with elderly people’, in E. Pye (ed) The power of touch: Handling objects in museum and heritage contexts, Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, pp 139-52.

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Joyce, P. and Bennett, T. (2010) ‘Material powers: introduction’, in T. Bennett and P. Joyce (eds) Material powers: Cultural studies, history and the material turn, New York, NY: Routledge, pp 1-22. Kahn, R.L. and Antonucci, T.C. (1980) ‘Convoys over the life course: attachment, roles, and social support’, in P.B. Baltes and O.G. Brim (eds) Life-span development and behavior, New York, NY: Academic Press, pp 253-86. Kleine, S.S. and Baker, S.M. (2004) ‘An integrative review of material possession attachment’, Academy of Marketing Science Review, vol 8, no 4, pp 1-35. Korosec-Serfaty, P. (1984) ‘The home from attic to cellar’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol 4, no 4, pp 303-21. Luborsky, M.R., Lysack, C L. and Van Nuil, J. (2011) ‘Refashioning one’s place in time: stories of household downsizing in later life’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 25, no 3, pp 243-52. Marx, J.I., Solomon, J.C. and Miller, L.Q. (2004) ‘Gift wrapping ourselves: the final gift exchange’, The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, vol 59, no 5, pp S274-80. McCracken, G. (1987) ‘Culture and consumption among the elderly: three research objectives in an emerging field’, Ageing & Society, vol 7, no 2, pp 203-24. Milligan, C. and Bingley, A. (2015) ‘Gardens and gardening in later life’, in J. Twigg and W. Martin (eds) Routledge handbook of cultural gerontology, London and New York, NY: Routledge, pp 320-28. Morris, B.R. (1992) ‘Reducing inventory: divesture of personal possessions’, Journal of Women and Aging, vol 4, no 2, pp 79-92. Otter, C. (2010) ‘Locating matter: the place of materiality in urban history’, in T. Bennett and P. Joyce (eds) Material powers: Cultural studies, history and the material turn, New York, NY: Routledge, pp 38-59. Perry, T.E. (2014) ‘Moving as a gift: relocation in older adulthood’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 31, pp 1-9. Pickering, A. (2010) The mangle of practice: Time, agency and science, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Price, L.L., Arnould, E.J. and Folkman Curasi, C. (2000) ‘Older consumers’ disposition of special possessions’, Journal of Consumer Research, vol 27, pp 179-201. Sartre, J. P. (1956) Being and nothingness, Translated by H. Barnes, New York, NY: Washington Square Press. Smith, G.V. and Ekerdt, D.J. (2011) ‘Confronting the material convoy in later life’, Sociological Inquiry, vol 8, no 3, pp 377-91.

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Wahl, H.-W., Iwarsson, S. and Oswald, F. (2012) ‘Aging well and the environment: toward an integrative model and research agenda for the future’, The Gerontologist, vol 52, no 3, pp 306-16.

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THREE

Reinventing the nursing home: metaphors that design care Susan Braedley

Introduction Nursing homes are usually considered places of last resort – places imbued with our fears of ageing, dependence, frailty and dying (Vladeck, 2003). No doubt this reputation is also related to the long-term care sector’s historical connections to the poor house and insane asylum (Struthers, 1998; Ward-Griffin and Marshall, 2003). Reinforcing nightmare visions of the nursing home are news media reports of scandal, violence and mistreatment (Lloyd et al, 2014). The resulting nursing home social imaginary, reflected and disseminated in film, fiction, news reports and academic panels, is of decrepit, demented people who are neglected and abused by unreliable, uncaring staff, rejected by hapless, heartless families and over-medicated by indifferent, incapable medical experts. In response, the nursing home sector1 has been active in resisting and overcoming this negative image. Designers, regulators, researchers, funders, advocates and operators have been reimagining the nursing home, working to escape its poor reputation through design. They have adapted the architecture, furnishings, décor, spatial and social arrangements of familiar environments with positive associations, such as ‘home’, ‘hotel’, ‘village’ and ‘hospital,’ to produce new forms of nursing home care. In this chapter, I argue that using adaptations of dominant forms of social arrangements as the basis for nursing home redesign results in a reinstitution of inequities for older people and those who care for them, despite the best intentions of the designers. These adaptations limit what we imagine for adults in late life – and for our elderly selves – to what is familiar, rather than respond to what may be more equitable and comfortable. Throughout the chapter my goal is to make

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connections between these spaces of care, everyday life and critical research on ageing. This argument developed through conducting two research projects in 2011-14: a project that explored long-term care design regulations and their consequences in Nova Scotia and Ontario, Canada2 and an international project that identified promising practices in long-term residential care. The first project involved collecting and analysing design information and photographs from 71 long-term care homes, 21 key informant interviews and field notes from 14 site visits (Braedley and Martel, 2015). The second project used rapid site-switching ethnography (Baines and Cunningham, 2011) to study long-term care homes in Canada, Sweden, UK and the US,3 selected for their potential for promising practices. In this study, small interdisciplinary teams participated in the life of long-term care homes, conducting interviews and observing the life of each home every day and night for about a week. In this research, the difficulty of reimagining nursing homes without using metaphors of other social arrangements, such as ‘hospital’, ‘hotel’ and, most ubiquitously, ‘home’, became clear. The interviews and field notes are full of these metaphors, as are government design standards. The photographs4 of external and internal design features also reveal them. Used singly or in combination, metaphors are embedded in long-term care policy frames; built into physical settings, they underpin approaches to care and affect the kinds of evidence produced to support them. This chapter begins with my theorisation of these metaphors as ruling metaphors. To do so, I build on the ideas of feminist sociologist Dorothy Smith, whose institutional ethnographic methodology offers an articulated theorisation of how power relations operate (Smith, 1989; Smith, 2005). Smith’s theory both draws on and stretches the feminist political economy basis for these research projects (Armstrong and Connelly, 1989; Armstrong and Braedley, 2013). Next, an analysis of the research data illustrates how the metaphors of hospital, home and hotel shape not only buildings but the social relations of nursing home care. I also describe a nursing home that evades these ruling metaphors by drawing on an alternative social imaginary to conclude that a more expansive, equitable social imagination for care is possible, while also constrained by broader social inequalities.

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Ruling metaphors We arrive at an imposing new, boxy and modern building of about 10 stories, clad in red, silver and glass…. The entrance indicates nothing about the purpose of the place, nor does the lobby. It is strictly modern, rather bare in terms of furnishings and filled with windows. There is a bright red sofa, a flower arrangement in the centre of the room on a table, and an imposing glass, wood and steel staircase…. We talk to the male assistant nurse who stops working on the computer. He says that the residents are called ‘kund’, which my colleague translates as ‘customer’. This is what he calls them and it is what management calls them, according to him. He tells us “It is like a hotel.” (Field note, Sweden) [A resident], Sonja, asks Analise,5 the young extra [staff] at her table … “Am I coming here also tomorrow?” “Yes, you have a room here, you sleep here.” “Are there many who stay overnight here?” “Yes.” At another occasion, Sonja asks me the same question. I say yes, and she asks whether the place is fully booked. I say yes to that too, and then she comments “It’s good for business.” (Field note, Sweden) Field notes from this ethnography reveal how this nursing home’s architecture, furnishings and social relations evoke an experience of ‘hotel’ – relations recognised by Sonya, a resident with advanced dementia. Comments from residents like Sonja are telling. Although people living with dementia have limited memory, they retain many abilities to decode social relations. Their interpretations are constructed by picking up orienting clues that relate to environments they know and understand. In this setting, Sonya made sense of her nursing home life as a customer in a hotel, orienting herself through the materialities of place and social cues. But why make a nursing home to resemble a hotel, or any other form of social organisation? And why are some forms of social organisation used repeatedly and not others? I suggest that dominant social relations, or what Dorothy Smith (1999) calls ‘ruling relations’, produce what I call ruling metaphors – metaphors that become the stuff of popular culture, both supporting and hindering our imagination of what is possible through their circulation in everyday vocabularies. Smith’s concept of ruling relations draws on materialist and postmodern insights to emphasise the dynamic nature of social

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relations, coordinated through ‘text-mediated and text-based systems of “communication,” “knowledge,” “information,” “regulation,” “control,” and the like’ in ways that shape people’s ‘consciousness as subjects’ (Smith, 1999, pp 77-8). In the case of nursing homes, these include building codes, government regulations that specify design and care, and architectural and interior design conventions, as well as texts and technologies that monitor resident care. Each of these systems has been formulated using assumptions about social organisation. The resulting ruling relations shape people’s everyday existence and activities in ways that foreclose other possibilities and coordinate people’s lives through the reproduction of relations of gender, race, class and more, due to the assumptions that the systems carry with them. For Smith, contemporary ruling relations are not just organisational rules because they are profoundly rooted in the developments of global capitalism and produce social inequities that serve to reinforce existing power relations. These ruling relations limit the forms of subjectivity and agency that are available by shaping the consciousness of those involved and affecting their understanding of themselves in ways that reproduce the logic of the ruling relations, while at the same time rendering incomprehensible other possible ways of doing and knowing (Smith, 1999, p 78). Further, Smith (1999) draws on Baudrillard (1994) to theorise how these ruling relations form ‘hyper-realities’. Disneyland is Baudrillard’s classic case, in which simulation of a non-existent world becomes a reality, a ‘simulacrum’. Smith points out that Disneyland is not meant to be strange or separate from what people already know, but to be ‘walked around in’. It is a profitable hyper-reality to which people bring their dialogic connection to Disney’s already familiar cartoon and movie images (Smith, 1999, p 84), experiencing relationships not to real human beings, but to fantasies that mask the realities of labour and profit making that produce Disneyland. Our shared experiences of ruling relations naturalise certain forms of social organisation in ways that shape our imaginary possibilities. They become a widely shared vocabulary of metaphors that are applied to other forms of social organisation, rendering the strange familiar, or reshaping and reorganising social relations. For example, the spread of neoliberalism as a logic of government has been widely accepted partly because of the successful application of the metaphor of ‘markets’ to aspects of social life that are clearly not ‘markets’ (Braedley and Luxton, 2010). The market metaphor has transformed citizens into entrepreneurial consumers, reorganised governments to facilitate privatisation and mainstreamed evaluations of public policy

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that privilege value for the dollar over public good (Aberbach and Christensen, 2005; Whiteside, 2015). The success of neoliberalism is due in part to our familiarity with market relations, which produce a hyper-reality of market freedom and choice that obscures the realities of growing social inequalities and profit making. In this chapter, I call these kinds of metaphors ruling metaphors – those that originate in ruling relations, drawing on and evoking widely shared images, experiences and relationships. The power of these ruling metaphors is in their deep penetration of our consciousness and subjectivities, producing our assumptions, vocabularies and ways of knowing the world, including our judgements of moral worth. This is not to say that all use of metaphors reproduces ruling relations. Lakoff and Johnson argue that metaphorical transferences can also open new possibilities, bringing new worlds into being (1980, pp 128-32). However, I argue that creating something new or improved through the uncritical application of ruling metaphors merely reintroduces the ruling relations through a different frame. Further, these worlds may be ‘the generation of models of a real without origin or reality’ (Baudrillard, 1994, p 1), yet with the seductive power of a Disneyland, brimming over with a make-believe existence of somewhere or something else. For nursing homes, these metaphors offer design possibilities that offer a welcome escape from disparaged social imaginaries and associations with decline and death, but with inequitable consequences. Hospital as ruling metaphor It is evening in a nursing home in Ontario, Canada. A long hallway, brightly lit by fluorescent overhead lights and wall lamps, is lined by many doorways. Most doors are half open. Halfway down is a nursing station, with a high desk and computer. Large garbage and laundry containers sit along one wall. A nurse wearing scrubs pushes a huge plastic medication cart with locked drawers. A loud noise suddenly pierces the air and light flashes repeatedly over one of the room’s doorways. From the perspective of one resident of this home, this environment transforms her into a body and a task. Resident:

“I am under the thumb of the PCAs6 here…. They do what I need done and if I am not so easy or ask for certain things, it gets rough, or they take their time in coming or ignore me. And everything is done when they do it, no matter what I want or need or require or ask for.”

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Researcher: Resident:

“Can you give me an example, so it is clear in my notes?” [Getting irritated] “Well, do you want to hear about my bowel movements?…. It’s everything. Mealtimes, baths, going about.” (Field note, Ontario)

The physical environment and this resident’s perspective mirror the ruling metaphor of hospital, a dominant form of social organisation aimed to cure and maintain bodies. Hospital is among the most common ruling metaphors deployed in nursing home policy, design and practices. In many jurisdictions, its vocabulary is embedded in nursing homes’ interior design, furnishings and care, consistent with regulations that may pay homage to home-like conditions, but specify medically oriented ones (Braedley and Martel, 2015). Ontario’s 2007 Long-Term Care Act sets out as its fundamental principle ‘that a long-term care home is primarily the home of its residents and is to be operated so that it is a place where they may live with dignity and in security, safety and comfort and have their social, spiritual and cultural needs adequately met’ (p 30). These detailed standards aim to regulate private sector providers, and particularly for-profit providers (Braedley and Martel, 2015; Daly, 2015). While no minimum staffing standards for nurses or personal support workers are included in this legislation, the Act dictates most facets of care, including a compliance and enforcement system. The resulting highly regulated environment (Armstrong, 2013; Banerjee, 2013) produces daily life through required reports, resident medical assessments, and medically oriented programmes rather than through specifying a model for care or other means. I ask if I can join the PCA while she charts…. She shows me the tick forms that are collected at breakfast and lunch. She notes that they need to record all of the liquids in terms of milliliters…. The juice, milk, tea, coffee and the milk containers are all counted, and the solid food eaten is recorded in terms of percentages. The chart also evaluates the baths or independent bathing that is done, and the bowel movements the resident has had. The PCAs have to chart if bowel movements have happened independently or while with a PCA and how bathing was done, including individual grooming. The form also requires an assessment of skin, and notes any new skin problems (bruises, scrapes, rashes, etc). The forms all require tick boxes or 1 word

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to denote self-care or whether there has been assistance required. (Field note, Ontario) The metaphor of hospital is evident in these work processes and risk avoidance, disciplining residents to be ‘patient’ and workers to document. The social relations of hospital were also reflected in management talk, where quality of care was measured by the absence of problems and the presence of healthcare professionals. “We look after our patients. We have a nurse around the clock to oversee everything, the RPNs7 … [for] the routine care and meds and the PCAs to do the bedside care. There are lots of volunteers here and the recreation director, so they provide most of the activities. We have OT [occupational therapists] come in, too, for those who need it. We think we do a good job. Our rate of falls is way down and our skin care is excellent.” (Interview with Director of Care, Ontario) This is not to say that this or all Ontario nursing homes were horrible places – our research took us to places with good reputations and the penetration of the hospital metaphor varied. But in these nursing homes, known for their quality of care, the spectre of the hospital was everywhere. Resident units were large – usually 32 residents – and residents’ rooms held few personal possessions or artwork. The hospital metaphor seemed to affect hiring too. Ontario residence managers had backgrounds and education in nursing or hospital administration. The approach to care focused on providing quality sub-acute healthcare for those with somatic illnesses and/or dementia by qualified medical personnel, together with congregate housing that facilitated efficient care. Residents were offered limited opportunities to make meaning of their lives, participate in genuine social interaction or experience pleasure. But their bodies were cared for. The ruling metaphor of hospital produced residents as subordinated objects of medical expertise and workers as professionals within a tightly coordinated status hierarchy, including racialised and gendered divisions of labour (Braedley, 2013). Home as ruling metaphor It is midmorning in a Nova Scotia, Canada nursing home. In a bright open area with kitchen cabinets and a household stove and fridge, a

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few older people sit chatting around a big table, coffee cups at hand. Nearby, an older man stretches out in a big armchair, dozing in front of television news programme. A care aide washes dishes at the sink, dressed in street clothes. It is hard to tell who is a resident, a staff, a visitor or volunteer. ‘Home-like domesticity’ is probably the most resonant ruling metaphor used in long-term care design across contexts (Willcocks et al, 1987; Lundgren, 2000; Verbeek et al, 2009; Fay and Owen, 2012), embedded to signal a positive assessment: a homey nursing home is a good nursing home. This assessment is usually related to the physical design, furnishings and food – aspects that must reproduce sufficiently an ideal of a private family dwelling familiar to those who use this language. But it is an idealised version of home, without the untidiness, microwavable dinners, loneliness or violence that are part of many people’s actual experiences of home. Home-like as a metaphor means something else – an imagined security, belonging, cleanliness and cozy familiarity. Conceptually, it operates as the discursive opposite of ‘institutional’ and also evokes a sense of a family, of women who care for others and routines that are flexible and allow for pleasure. In Nova Scotia, a policy change in 2006 instituted a reorientation of long-term residential care to an explicitly home-like approach. Many new facilities were built, drawing on the architectural vernacular of suburban housing or traditional Nova Scotian homes. These facilities are divided into so-called ‘households’, each with a maximum of 11 residents, who have private rooms and bathrooms. Each household shares a living room, domestic-styled kitchens and laundry areas. Around 9 pm, a care aide, Jenny, has come out of resident Marion’s room. Another resident, John, is watching the hockey game on TV. He tells me he doesn’t usually head to bed until late. Jenny tells me she has helped Marion with her nightie and grabbed the garbage can from her room to be emptied. She speaks to us as she gets Marion some crackers and jello for a bedtime snack. She says about the jello, “It’s not blue, is it? She hates blue.” (Field note, Nova Scotia) In this nursing home, workers knew the residents and worked to accommodate their preferences in an environment that allowed them to do so. With ample food supplies and a full kitchen, meals and snacks were available at all hours. The staffing model consisted of mostly permanent staff who worked with the same groups of residents with job descriptions that offered much more flexibility than in the

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Ontario hospital-like model. Social relations followed, with nurses, care aides and residents reporting repeatedly that there was a ‘family feeling’ between residents and workers. Referring to one resident, a care aide explained: “She is a little confused. She calls me by her daughter’s name, and when [her daughter] comes to visit, it isn’t appreciated.” Interestingly, even the problems of everyday life mimicked common issues in domestic settings, including issues related to unlocked doors and residents with dementia who sometimes wandered away. Some staff reported feeling stuck or bored in their small households, and longed for rotation. Staff shortages were also more of a problem in this type of environment compared with the hospital-metaphor context, because the household design meant it was more difficult to share staff across the residence. This model produced more autonomy and respect for residents and staff, but also reinforced the ruling relations of domestic care, normalising and further embedding an inequitable gendered division of labour that suggests women’s familial caring is natural, expected and best. In producing a simulacrum of domesticity and home, nursing home care is thus positioned as a second-rate replacement for familial caring. Hotel as ruling metaphor In Texas, a nursing home is entered through a high-ceilinged lobby with a massive circular staircase carpeted in red. Everything here is enormous – the crystal chandelier, the urn filled with flowers and the well-upholstered furniture. Off the thickly carpeted hallway, each resident has their own spacious ‘apartment’. The hallways are appointed with tableaux of furniture and art. There are no signs or smells of laundry, garbage, medical equipment or cooking. A nurse dressed in a coloured golf shirt with neat gold name pin strolls by, rolling a medication cart designed to look like a mahogany tea trolley. In contrast to metaphors of ‘hospital’ and ‘home’, this nursing home deploys the ruling metaphor of ‘hotel’, much like the Swedish nursing home, described earlier, but with concessions to context. These nursing homes, despite different nationalities, contexts, policies and regulatory structures, offer a fantasy of late life as a luxury destination. In this Texas nursing home, many of the management staff were recruited from the hospitality sector. Field notes from the team ethnography

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show that residents spent most of their time in their ‘apartments’ and care staff were either with them or in an enclosed office space. Thus, when a resident fell in a hallway one morning, it took time for staff to notice and attend to her. Tellingly, a carpet stain caused by her fall got instant attention from cleaning staff. The ‘hotel’ metaphor extended to the food service in expansive dining areas in each resident area, where appetising buffet-type food was available at mealtimes, and snacks were often set out. Residents seemed to enjoy extended mealtimes and the scene echoed the buffet service of all-inclusive resorts or restaurants. As one resident living with early stage dementia noted, “The food is great…. It’s the best restaurant in New York”. A commercial hospitality metaphor was evident not only in the physical setting, but in the everyday talk of employees. “So, we all have very strong belief in hospitality and trying to make it more home-like than hospital. And yes, regulations are important and we want to make sure we’re complying with them but we believe if we have exceptional customer service and an environment of hospitality then everything will follow, you know, good care will result.” (Interview with Chief Executive Officer, Texas) The relations of equity, dignity and respect also seemed to be structured by the ruling relations of commerce evident in the hotel industry. Care aides were treated as unskilled service staff by managers and residents. Most had multiple jobs to make ends meet, as wages were very low. The mostly black, immigrant, female care aides were managed by primarily African-American female nurses, caring for the almost entirely white residents in keeping with the inequitable relations of gender, race and class common to Texas and to the hotel industry. The most important measures of quality were in keeping with the hotel metaphor, including family and residents’ satisfaction with the setting, the food and the service, as well as residents’ abilities to establish some personalisation in the daily routine. There was significantly less emphasis on measuring health outcomes than in settings deploying other metaphors. This hotel/resort metaphor is on the rise in many jurisdictions, spurred by policy directions that aim to refashion nursing homes as short-term accommodation for people who are ‘blocking beds’ in acute care hospitals, cultivate a consumer/service model for publicly funded services and stimulate market competition in the residential care sector.

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A departure: the ‘therapeutic’ environment It’s impossible to really capture the appearance of Rose Lodge inside…. It is a combination of psychedelic and garage sale. Some decoration, and it is everywhere, seems deliberate and other times haphazard or at one or another person’s whim: visitor, worker, perhaps resident? Butterfly stickers litter the walls of each level. Stuffed animals are perched on railings, which also hold feather boas and scarves. Decorations from different past eras of the residents’ lives are everywhere: photos of Billy Jean King, Mohammed Ali, Audrey Hepburn, Jackie O. My favourite decoration is a tea towel on the wall featuring the young royals with some of Will and Kate’s [Duke and Duchess of Cambridge] teeth blacked in…. While the decorations seem designed to meet residents in the pasts that they remember better than the present, the photos of residents, mostly on their room doors but also other places throughout the place, are of the present. They are the complete opposite of memory boxes. (Field note, UK) Not all nursing home change has been informed by ruling metaphors. In this nursing home in the UK, a ‘culture change’ initiative has embedded a metaphor of ‘therapy’ into the everyday life of dementia care. In this home, the plain, low-rise building had been renovated to brim over with ‘therapy’ in its activities, music and sound, its physical design and decoration, its garden and even its ‘therapeutic’ food. ‘Therapeutic environments’ are a growing trend in dementia care (Day et al, 2000). Emerging from developments in the social psychology of dementia (Kitwood, 1997), this ‘therapy’ metaphor is not a ruling metaphor, but rather defies ruling relations in favour of a focus on therapeutic relationships that produce a sense of dignity, selfhood and meaning for those with dementia and those who spend time with them. The physical design was therapeutic in that it facilitated ‘way finding’ and introduced visual and auditory stimulation, in keeping with dementia research findings (Marquardt and Schmieg, 2009). What had formerly been nurses’ stations were now well-used, cosy seating areas, nestled into hallways. In the bright eat-in kitchen, workers and residents mingled to prepare and enjoy food. Staff wore specifically coloured shirts, but otherwise blended in with the many family members and volunteers who spent time at the residence.

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The care model encouraged staff to be ‘bubbly butterflies’, briefly interacting with residents during their workdays and nights to improve residents’ mood and provide positive feelings. Pay was the typical low wage within the sector but staff retention was unusually excellent, perhaps due to high levels of job satisfaction that most workers reported when interviewed. Volunteers supplemented paid care. Among the many volunteers were a large contingent whose spouses or family members had been residents and subsequently died but who continued to be involved at the residence, often daily. Volunteers did gardening, ran activities, acted as receptionists, carried out maintenance or worked on fundraising. The volunteers described a sense of community and belonging with residents and staff. “Like middle of the afternoon yesterday we were doing trimming boxes with them. We do all the legwork and then they trim them up and put chocolates in for their daughter or son or wife or whatever…. In the afternoon if somebody is a bit down, ‘Do you want a gin and tonic?’. Or [the manager] will come round with the Bailey’s and tubs of crisps and popcorn and that sort of thing very often on an afternoon. And if they sit in the garden they get entertainment in the garden as well…. But yeah, staff, no worries about wheeling them out. They’ll bring them all down if necessary. We’ll just sit there in the afternoon and chat. It’s lovely. I don’t think you could improve it.” (Interview with volunteer) The food and programming maximised participation and choice without rigid scheduling. Residents with dementia could leave on their own if they wished, merely by asking for a door to be opened. Residents were treated with affection and respect but also with intimacy, such as when a staff member took bites from a resident’s slice of toast to encourage eating. The approach aimed to provide a balance of stimulation and rest, organised to produce positive feeling states in the residents. This approach was highly praised by families, residents and many of the staff. However, some staff paid a price to shape this environment. In interviews, some managers and staff described the philosophy as one in which individual personality traits and orientations were considered the basis for care, rather than skill or expertise, a view that seemed eerily similar to sexist assumptions about women’s innate capacities to care that underpin traditional domestic labour. Further, this understanding

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invalidated any concept of ‘skill’ that might support staff struggles for better working conditions. Indeed, throughout the organisation, ‘professionalism’ was perceived as an opposite to good care. One nurse, who had worked at the organisation throughout the period of culture change, told us that it has been a difficult adjustment to considering her work not as expertise, but as ‘care’. Further, we noted that staff unable or unwilling to maintain a smiling demeanor and extroverted sociability were considered unsuitable, even potential candidates for dismissal. In this nursing home, the metaphor of ‘therapeutic community’ is applied as a kind of anti-institutional and de-professionalising tool, infused with local culture. Rather than reproducing the relations of the home, hospital or hotel, the metaphor of a ‘therapeutic community’ appeared to produce a genuine sense of belonging for residents, volunteers and some staff while requiring staff to abandon notions of expertise and produce an extrovert, cheery demeanor and behaviour. This contradiction between the crafting of a democratic community and the ruling relations that shape wage labour demonstrate further the challenges of creating equitable conditions for all involved in latelife care.

Conclusion Ruling metaphors have come to dominate the everyday life of many nursing homes, bringing in the material realities and social relations of private households, hotels as commercial enterprises and hospitals as places of medical practice. The resulting environments are often disappointing when assessed for conditions of equity, dignity and respect for residents and for those who care for them, yet also have some benefits. They produce Baudrillardian environments, approaching but never realising fantasies that dependence, frailty and dying can be cured in a hospital, evaded by luxurious hotel living or escaped through the familiarity of something ‘like home’. An example of a nursing home designed as a therapeutic community provides a more equitable, respectful, inclusive alternative beyond ruling metaphors that promotes communal, collective living that includes families, residents, workers and volunteers. However, even here, the ruling relations of capitalism enter through the conditions of waged labour. In industrialised countries, few people have extended experiences of collective living that could offer a prefigurative metaphor for collective caring. Schein has argued that ‘the conditions of everyday life under neoliberalism mean that few people have sustained,

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positive experiences of collective decision making, socialized resource allocation, or solidaristic, noncompetitive environments in which to work, learn, or play’ (Schein, 2014, p 173). This circumstance may limit our imagination and capacity to provide caring to frail older persons, as well as to welcome this care when we need it. Co-housing and other models are evolving in some jurisdictions (Riseborough, 2013; Howe et al, 2013; Westwood and Daly, 2016), but often without public funds or policies that make this care accessible to more people. These initiatives offer ways of caring that could provide new futures for those in late life and for those who care for them. The inequitable underpinnings of capitalism deeply structure our experiences of care and caring (Luxton, 1980; Luxton and Corman, 2001), imbuing them with how we think about, plan for and organise care. Critically evading, inverting or subverting ruling metaphors to attain more comfortable and equitable care for older people means rejecting what is familiar – a difficult but undoubtedly crucial endeavour. Notes 1 2

3

4

5

6

7

Also called ‘the long-term residential care sector’ in some jurisdictions. This study was an institutional grant project, Dreams of Home: Policy Implications for Older Adults, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The study is an SSHRC-funded Major Collaborative Research Initiative, Reimagining Long-Term Residential Care: An International Study of Promising Practices (Principal Investigator, Pat Armstrong). In addition to the ethnographies analysed here, research ethnographies were carried out in Germany, Norway, Manitoba and British Columbia in Canada, in which the author did not participate and which are not included in this analysis. Photographs are not included here due to research ethics review concerns that the photos together with interview excerpts might identify research participants. The names of respondents and nursing homes have been changed throughout this chapter to ensure anonymity and confidentiality. PCAs are personal care aides, also called personal support workers or other titles. These workers provide most of the direct care in nursing homes, including bathing, meals, dressing and help with other activities of daily life. RPNs are registered practical nurses, a term used primarily in Ontario. In other jurisdictions they are called LPNs or licensed practical nurses. These nurses have a two-year nursing diploma and have passed a licensing examination. They do assessments, monitor health conditions, administer medications, complete documentation and oversee all aspects of care in nursing homes, under the direction of an RN or registered nurse who has a higher level of nursing qualification.

References Aberbach, J.D. and Christensen, T. (2005) ‘Citizens and consumers: an NPM dilemma’, Public Management Review, vol 7, pp 225-46.

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Armstrong, P. (2013) ‘Regulating care: lessons from Canada’, in G. Meagher and M. Szebehely (eds) Marketisation in Nordic eldercare: A research report on legislation, oversight, extent and consequences, Stockholm: Stockholm University Department of Social Work, pp 217-28. Armstrong, P. and Braedley, S. (2013) ‘Introduction’, in P. Armstrong and S. Braedley (eds) Troubling care: Critical perspectives on research and practices, Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, pp 9-16. Armstrong, P. and Connelly, P. (1989) ‘Feminist political economy: an introduction’, Studies in Political Economy, vol 30, pp 5-12. Baines, D. and Cunningham, I. (2011) ‘Using comparative perspective rapid ethnography in international case studies: strengths and challenges’, Qualitative Social Work, vol 2, no 1, pp 73-88. Banerjee, A. (2013) ‘The regulatory trap: reflections on the vicious cycle of regulation in Canadian residential care’, in G. Meagher and M. Szebehely (eds) Marketisation in Nordic eldercare: A research report on legislation, oversight, extent and consequences, Stockholm: Stockholm University Department of Social Work, pp 203-16. Baudrillard, J. (1994) Simulacra and simulation, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Braedley, S. (2013) ‘A gender politics of long-term care’, in P. Armstrong and S. Braedley (eds) Troubling care: Critical perspectives on research and practices, Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, pp 59-70. Braedley, S. and Luxton, M. (2010) ‘Competing philosophies: neoliberalism and the challenges of everyday life’, in S. Braedley and M. Luxton (eds) Neoliberalism and everyday life, Kingston, Ontario: McGill-Queen’s University Press, pp 3-21. Braedley, S. and Martel, G. (2015) ‘Dreaming of home: long term residential care and (in)equities by design’, Studies in Political Economy, vol 95, pp 59-81. Daly, T. (2015) ‘Dancing the two-step in Ontario’s long-term care sector: more deterrence-oriented regulation = ownership and management consolidation’, Studies in Political Economy, vol 95, pp 27-58. Day, K., Carreon, D. and Stump C. (2000) ‘The therapeutic design of environments for people with dementia: a review of the empirical research’, The Gerontologist, vol 40, pp 397-416. Fay, R. and Owen, C. (2012) ‘“Home” in the aged care institution: authentic or ersatz’, Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol 35, pp 33-43.

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Howe, A.L., Jones, A.E. and Tilse, C. (2013) ‘What’s in a name? Similarities and differences in international terms and meanings for older people’s housing with services’, Ageing & Society, vol 33, no 4, pp 547-78. Kitwood, T. (1997) ‘The experience of dementia’, Aging & Mental Health, vol 1, no 1, pp 13-22. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors we live by, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lloyd, L., Banerjee, A., Harrington, C., Jacobsen, F.F. and Szebehely, M. (2014) ‘It is a scandal! Comparing the causes and consequences of nursing home media scandals in five countries’, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol 34, no 1/2, pp 2-18. Lundgren, E. (2000) ‘Homelike housing for elderly people? Materialized ideology’, Housing, Theory and Society, vol 17, no 3, pp 109-20. Luxton, M. (1980) More than a labour of love: Three generations of women’s work in the home, Toronto: Women’s Press. Luxton, M. and Corman, J. (2001) Getting by in hard times: Gendered labour at home and on the job, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Marquardt, G. and Schmieg, P. (2009) ‘Dementia-friendly architecture: environments that facilitate wayfinding in nursing homes’, American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease & Other Dementias, vol 24, pp 333-40. Riseborough, M. (2013) Cohousing: A conversation starter for how we want to live our later lives, Discussion paper for the Elders Council of Newcastle and the Quality of Life Partnership, Newcastle, UK. Schein, R. (2014) ‘Hegemony not co-optation’, Studies in Political Economy, vol 94, pp 169-76. Smith, D.E. (1989) ‘Feminist reflections on political economy’, Studies in Political Economy, vol 30, pp 37-59. Smith, D.E. (1999) The ruling relations. Writing the social: Critique, theory, investigations, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp 73-95. Smith, D.E. (2005) Institutional ethnography: A sociology for people, Lanham, MD: Altamira Press. Struthers, J. (1998) ‘“A nice homelike atmosphere”: state alternatives to family care for the aged in post-World War II Ontario’, in L. Chambers and E.-A. Montigny (eds) Family matters: Papers in postconfederation Canadian family history, Toronto, Canadian Scholars Press, pp 335-54. Verbeek, H., van Rossum, E., Zwakhalen, S.M., Kempen. G.I. and Hamers, J.P. (2009) ‘Small, homelike care environments for older people with dementia: a literature review’, International Psychogeriatrics, vol 21, no 2, pp 252-64.

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Vladeck, B.C. (2003) ‘Unloving care revisited: the persistence of culture’, Journal of Social Work in Long-Term Care, vol 2, no 1/2, pp 1-9. Ward-Griffin, C. and Marshall, V.W. (2003) ‘Reconceptualizing the relationship between “public” and “private” eldercare’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 17, no 2, pp 189-208. Westwood, S. and Daly, M. (2016) Social care and older people in home and community contexts: A review of existing research and evidence, Oxford: Department of Social Policy and Intervention and Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. Whiteside, H. (2015) Purchase for profit: Public-private partnerships and Canada’s public health care system, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Willcocks, D., Peace, S., and Kellaher, L. (1987) Private lives in public places, London: Tavistock.

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FOUR

The ever-breaking wave of everyday life: animating ageing movement-space Gavin J. Andrews and Amanda M. Grenier

Introduction As part of the cultural turn in social gerontology, scholars have paid attention to older people’s everyday lives. Digging down to establish the underlying structures, mechanisms and meanings involved, they have focused, for example, on the roles of socio-cultural frames, technologies and institutional practices. Within this emerging tradition, scholars have also started to consider critically and conceptually such things as mobilities, embodiments and the negotiation of space, which has lent research in this area a far better appreciation of how everyday lives are felt and negotiated (see, for example, Katz, 2000; Twigg and Martin, 2015). While acknowledging this academic progress, this chapter suggests how scholars might take a step further. In particular, it looks to the discipline of human geography for inspiration. Building on earlier introductions and reconnaissance (see McHugh, 2009; Andrews et al, 2013; Andrews and Grenier, 2015; Skinner et al, 2015), it describes further how, as an approach, non-representational theory (NRT) might provide a more immediate engagement with, and animation of, the movements in older people’s everyday lives. The chapter starts with a review of how movement has traditionally been understood and researched across gerontology. It then describes NRT and its key idea of ‘movement-space’, and develops this concept further in the context of ageing. Indeed, it is argued that five core qualities – rhythm, momentum, vitality, infectiousness and encounter – constitute ‘ageing movement-space’, a conceptualisation that could contribute to an altogether livelier brand of social gerontology. For each of these qualities, connections are made to the most relevant existing ideas and debates across gerontology. In addition, a fictional vignette is provided under each quality to illustrate it in action. The

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chapter concludes with some thoughts about some of the creative methodological uses to which NRT can be put moving forward.

Traditional perspectives on movement in gerontology: from a determinant of health and wellbeing to a meaningful experience Gerontologists have, on one level, engaged empirically with the movement of older people as if it were a social determinant of their health and wellbeing, or at least as something with important ramifications for them as well as for social systems and policy. This realisation is common across six substantive fields of inquiry. The first is biomedicine and biomechanics, focused on basic bodily motions and competencies – the attributes necessary for successful movement such as strength, good gait and coordination (Gross et al, 1998; Scarborough et al, 1999). The second field is led by health professionals and focuses on movement as a therapeutic tool; for example, the potential of dance in dementia care is a popular topic (Palo-Bengtsson and Ekman, 2000; Duignan et al, 2008). Informed by environmental psychology, the third field is focused conceptually on ‘wayfinding’ – on capacities, practices and designs across a range of spatial contexts (Sheehan et al, 2006; Marquardt, 2011). Moving up in scale, the fourth field is an extensive public health interest in physical activity levels where walking has dominated the recent literature. Here the ‘potential’ of movement motivates studies more than anything else, with an emphasis on the social, intersectional and structural barriers to, and facilitators of, walking (Frank et al, 2010; Weiss et al, 2010; King et al, 2011). The fifth field is focused on ‘the challenge of movement’, whereby distance acts as a potential impediment to successful ageing. Research here is concerned with the spaces that lie between older people, health and social care providers, friends and family and how they constitute barriers to or change the nature of interactions (Joseph and Hallman, 1998; Hallman and Joseph, 1999; Nemet and Bailey, 2000). The sixth and final field of inquiry where movement is considered a determinant of health is focused on migration, in particular, the destinations, decisions and experiences of older people and their implications (Joseph and Cloutier, 1991; Moore and Pacey, 2004; Oliver, 2007). Elsewhere across gerontology, movement appears less of a health determinant, arising in a substantial volume of research inquiry as a more intimate and critical experience for older people, framed in terms of ‘mobilities research’. Mobilities research unpacks the motivations, meanings and implications of varied movement forms

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and pays particular attention to the following five areas: impairment, disability and the challenges older people face navigating urban and rural environments (Mattson 2010; Schwanen and Páez, 2010); older peoples’ tourism mobilities (Williams et al, 2000; Schwanen and Ziegler, 2011); older people’s leisure, lifestyle and fitness activities (McConatha and Volkwein-Caplan, 2012; Griffin and Phoenix, 2014); older people and transport (Metz, 2000; Ragland et al, 2004; Davey, 2007); and, more generally, movements across the life course, including residential relocations in later life (Bailey, 2009; Schwanen et al, 2012). A common understanding in the aforementioned literature is that older people’s experiences of movement are subjective, as well as socially constructed and shaped by public policies. What we do not get from the literature on mobilities research, however, is much sense of ageing movements – the very motions themselves. As we shall see in the following sections, proponents of NRT consider that their approach possesses the potential to fill this gap in the literature by conveying and elaborating the very dynamics and characteristics of movement in everyday contexts.

Towards movement-space in gerontology: the potential of non-representational theory As a number of publications articulate, NRT has arisen partly as a reaction to two representational mainstays of contemporary human geography and social science more generally (see Thrift, 2008; Cadman, 2009; Anderson and Harrison, 2010). These are worth briefly reviewing for their relevancy to ageing and movement. On the one hand, there is the tendency to take a predominantly retrospective perspective that freezes the world’s events to think about and articulate them as if they were static, discrete and complete. On the other hand, there is the tendency to heavily theorise and interpret events by endlessly peeling off layers of words and actions to find their underlying mechanisms, meanings and consequences. For NRT’s proponents, however, these mainstays have had the effect of embalming the subjects of social science research, leaving a considerable hole in their coverage of those aspects of life that are immediate and active – the detail of what is actually ‘taking place’ in space and time (Thrift, 2008). Instead, NRT provides its own set of fundamental realisations on what it means to be human. As McCormack (2008) notes humans do not always consciously reflect upon external representations – signs, symbols, etc. – when they make

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sense of the world; that thinking does not necessarily involve the internal manipulation of picture-like representations; that intelligence is a distributed and relational process, in which a range of actors (bodies, texts, devices, objects) are lively participants. (p 1824) As a corrective, NRT places the raw performance of the world at the centre of its inquiries, as an analogy providing the ‘running commentary’ on life’s unfolding. On one level, it communicates the many subtle, wordless, automatic and accidental everyday practices in life. On another level, it communicates how people register and act on such practices (see Thrift, 2008). Hence, rather than trivialising or simplifying these events, as an approach NRT opens up the complexity of the present, thinking about the different human and non-human forces that shape it. Particularly pertinent to this volume is the fact that NRT focuses on the everyday events in life and the everyday places where they occur. Everyday events are the routine things people do (such as making a drink, walking, shopping, cleaning, gardening, and so on) that constitute their daily lives and help them live successfully (Cadman, 2009). The everyday places where these things occur (for example, the living room, kitchen, bathroom, shopping mall, bus station) often remain outside of individuals’ full consciousness as they move in and through them, although they are far from innate or neutral backgrounds to life (Andrews, 2014). The key argument in NRT is that everyday events and places cannot be overlooked by academic scholarship because life happens all the time and everywhere, not just in the specialised areas prioritised in much research. For NRT, a wide range of happenings and forces makes up the active world, such as onflow, processuality, relational materiality, practice and performance, virtuality and multiplicity, sensations, impulses and the habitual (Andrews and Grenier, 2015). We focus here on movement however because it is a precondition to all of the others and, as Thrift suggests, all life is based on and in movement (Thrift, 2008). Further, we take up Peter Merriman’s conceptualisation of ‘movement-space’ (2012) as a way to understand movement in space (and time) as fundamental to human existence. Moreover, ‘movement-space’, when expanded to consider its qualities – rhythm, momentum, vitality, infectiousness and encounter – can deepen our understanding of ageing practices and experiences in motion. It is towards this understanding that the remainder of this chapter explores.

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Happenings, showings and flows in everyday life: the qualities of ageing movement-space Rhythm Clang, clang: workmen hammering. Vroom vroom: cars passing. Chatter, chatter: people expressing the day’s concerns, walking in all directions. These are just a few sounds and movements from the busy inner-city neighborhood in which Berta lived from her childhood until her mid-80s. Although to the outsider this place might seem chaotic, for her it was her lifeblood. The city possessed rhythms that carried her along in the moment. Other rhythms of longer durations also played their part. These included weekly, monthly or even yearly spacing of things: frantic Mondays, shopping Saturdays the quiet Sundays, the St Patrick’s day parade in March, the jazz festival in June, the passing of the city marathon in October. All these rhythms were closely connected to Berta’s sense of wellbeing and belonging, rhythms to which she herself contributed. Now resident in a nursing home, rhythms still exist for Berta, again in the form of immediate tempos – staff rushing to prepare things, the background music played on a loop in the residents’ lounge – and again through the spacing and regularity of events: rising, washing, afternoon tea and bed time. These are rhythms familiar to Berta, but, for her, they are more predictable and lack the excitement of those in her former neighborhood. Time seems to pass more slowly for Berta in the nursing home s-t-r-e-t-ch-i-n-g o-u-t. It is surprises that Berta now likes, events that break the rhythm of the day: the visit from her niece, an impromptu sing-along with a staff member who plays guitar, that kind of thing. Scientific models restrict rhythm to segmented, forward movements defined by predictable timing and spacing – repeated intervals of either alternating strong and weak periods or alternating progressions and stops. These intervals create a uniformed pattern that sets the pace of the rhythm. Echoing this scientific understanding, but not always as mathematically precise, are numerous human expressions of rhythm. Rhythm is most typically associated with the production and consumption of music, yet rhythms might also occur in the economy

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or more abstractly in the rolling out and spread of ideas and policies. Notably, in terms of immediate human participation, the timed collective spacing and movement of bodies and objects might also constitute physical rhythms across numerous areas of human existence. Thus, in environmental terms, one might experience and participate in the rhythms of homes, workplaces, consumer spaces, cities and regions, and temporally in the rhythms of moments, minutes, hours, days, weeks, years and life-course transitions. As shown in the vignette above, humans participate in, and experience, rhythm through being immersed in it both physically and mentally. Rhythm is sensed, registered and acted out both consciously and unconsciously as the body both tunes in and is part of it. The regularity of the rhythm provides comfort and incentive to move along at a certain pace with other bodies and objects; it feels ‘natural’ to do so (or the opposite being the case, when it feels awkward, difficult and unnatural to be ‘out of sync’ with the prevailing rhythm). As McCormack (2002) suggests, this process is an important part of the conduct and experience of life and, as such, has attracted the attention of philosophers and social theorists for the best part of a century – particularly with regard to how rhythms define and collide – such as Bergson (1911), Lefebvre (1992) and Deleuze and Guattari (1988). In terms of gerontology, there are a number of areas where rhythm is fundamental. In positivistic research, rhythm arises in the context of sleep, including in medical literature on circadian rhythms – the ‘body clock’ that tells our bodies when to eat, rise and sleep (Myers and Badia, 1996; van Someren, 2000). Meanwhile, qualitative research looks at the routinized, processional and ‘rhythmic’ nature of caring practices and settings (Wiles, 2003) and the daily spatial lives of older people with chronic health conditions. These latter inquiries pay particular attention to the embodied rhythms – often part of makeshift survival strategies – that arise as older people’s health statuses and social contexts change (Rowles, 2000; Antoninetti and Garrett, 2012). We argue, however, that more could be done to investigate the rhythms of ageing movement-space through NRT-informed inquiries. Such scholarship might, for example, provide insights into how older people move in relation to practices that are incorporated within the idea of ‘active ageing’ (Katz, 2000; Paulson and Willig, 2008). Indeed, active ageing has, in the past, been framed by constructs such as ‘function’ and ‘busyness’, but the question remains, what are the embodied rhythms that constitute the regularity and timing of active ageing? Finally, rhythm is a key feature of the life course itself (Settersten, 2003; Bengtson et al, 2012), but NRT approaches might help explain its often

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messy and unpredictable sequences and transitions, as happening and experienced in the moment. Momentum Now retired, John spends much of his leisure time at a model boat club. He used to build full-sized boats for a living, but now building the smaller variety is providing him with a new set of friends and something familiar to do without the physical strain, demanding customers, tight deadlines and vast sums of money involved in the ‘real thing’. His model building projects still require teamwork and a collective effort, however. On some occasions he and his friends really get going and work well together, each playing their part like a well-oiled machine. At these times task after task can be completed with apparent ease. “Let’s continue”, John said enthusiastically last week, moving from one end of the model to the other and back, ticking things off his worksheet faster than expected with a smile. “We’ll have this done by five.” On that day, many happy jibes were exchanged back and forth, as the team became intoxicated with their speed and progress. John’s experience at the model boat club contrasts to other times in his life when, due to his aching arms and hands, he can’t seem to get even simple jobs finished. At the boat club, he and his friends are so often on a roll. According to the laws of physics, momentum is motion force and vector quality that is a combination of an object’s mass and its velocity (p=mv). In terms of practical application, in engineering momentum is most often considered in terms of the energy required to create it (to get objects moving forwards) and to kill it (to stop objects). Momentum, however, also occurs in the social world, albeit in forms that are less mathematically precise. On one level, there are momentums in human systems, such as in the activities of public or private sectors or the economy as a whole (that is, ‘economic momentum’). On another level, there is ‘behavioural momentum’. This is the tendency for human behaviour to persist and build, and can be seen in how one activity potentially leads to another, often with implications. Finally, there is ‘felt momentum’, which transpires through, and is experienced as, the basic physicality and force of bodies and objects moving together in a particular direction. As the model boat club vignette illustrates, one

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can experience, for example, the agency and feeling of being swept up, of moving with and adding to the prevailing momentum (and thus the sheer joy of momentum itself). Alternatively, one can experience the agency and feeling of inertia and there being a lack of momentum, or of moving and working against the prevailing momentum (which can be uncomfortable and stressful). Where momentum appears in gerontology, it is often spoken about in terms of being a quality of the progression of ageing-related systems and structures, such as the rate and forcefulness at which policies for older people and/or markets for their services and/or the services themselves develop or contract (Andrews and Phillips, 2002; Hanlon et al, 2014). In the case of care, momentum is typically more circumstantial than behavioural and often about the momentums that build as older people move – or are moved – between care settings in accordance with their changing physical and cognitive capacities and health needs, studies focusing primarily on the transitions themselves and their consequences (Magilvy and Congdon, 2000; Reed et al, 2003; Lee et al, 2013). In research on frail older people, momentums in their daily lives are a concern. Their lives are characterised by immobility, as lacking momentum, or indeed as shrinking and possessing momentum in an unwanted and reverse direction. This research is, however, equally concerned to illustrate how older people negotiate and deal with such challenges, including the ‘momentum’ of their own declining physical and mental health, either on their own or with the assistance of designs and intervention (Kong et al, 1996; Rowles, 2000; Wiles et al, 2009). However, we need to know more about the behavioural and felt, lived momentums (or inertias) in older age, particularly in the context of existing debates around frailty and in the light of specific scientific, institutional and corporate practices (Grenier, 2005; Katz, 2011). The NRT approach to momentum gives us pause to think more about how bodies and objects come together and where social, system and service features can motivate or restrict their interactions in the ageing process. Vitality Meg has always been outgoing, and this shows no sign of changing in her older age. She likes clothes; not only quality fabrics that are soft to the touch, but bright colours that she feels radiate her own energy. Meg still enjoys walking short distances when she can get to experience nature in a sensory way and feel alive – the wind blowing through the

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trees, birds flying and singing, water rushing down a hillside. As she walks the landscape unfolds, constantly changing. At these times she is not only looking at the landscape but actively reaches for it and is part of it – her booted feet sticking to rocks, her arms reaching for walls and fences, her hands wiping sweat from her brow and her mouth and lungs taking in the fresh country air. Meg sometimes stops during a walk to practice her own informal mindfulness techniques, attempting to experience the full physicality of her immediate surroundings in all their glory, clear of cluttering thoughts and her mind’s usual commentary. Across the sciences vitality is often used as a term to denote fundamental diversity and strength (perhaps, for example, of a biological population). In NRT, however, and related modes of thinking, vitality is about the aliveness and buoyancy of the living and non-living worlds and their collective potential. With regard to the living, direction is gained specifically from vitalist philosophy, which recognises the exceptional qualities possessed by organic things – their essential spark and energy, and the fact that they constantly move, change and evolve (Greenhough, 2010). With regard to the non-living, direction is gained from new materialist thinking, particularly on the subject of ‘vibrant matter’ (Bennett, 2009). This moves beyond a physics definition of vibration (the expenditure of energy through oscillations around an equilibrium centre) to describe the capacity of things – from core materials to complexly constructed objects – to act as quasi-agents with their own tendencies, trajectories and forces. Both of these lines of thinking recognise that when encounters happen between the living and non-living, an energetic animation results, just as Meg, in the above vignette, experiences it. This is a collective materiality that gives life a range of qualities, including its richness, diversity and spirit, its endless capacity to develop on its own impulses, its self-generating continuance and purpose, yet also its instability, irrationality and unpredictability. As an intellectual endeavour, vitality provides a relief from deterministic academic thinking by demanding a revaluation of how we understand events and things, not as definable by their ‘properties’ but as always in flux and only ever composed of temporary relations. Hence, as Greenhough (2010) describes, as much as vitality is reflective of certain qualities life possesses, it is just as much a way of acknowledging the limits of our current understandings, begging that, as researchers, we attend to the make-up, character and push of the world.

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Longstanding work in gerontology engages with vitality as it relates, on one level, to longevity and the loss of function (Fries and Crapo, 1981; MacNeil and Teague, 1987). Fries and Crapo, for example, discussed the notion of a ‘compression of morbidity’, a hypothesis, now widely disputed, that a loss of function and impairment could be delayed if compressed into a shorter and later period of life. On another level, gerontologists see the idea of vitality as a source of energy or renewal that can be sought through relationships with nature, even though popular culture promotes the use of ‘ageless’ youth-inducing products or procedures (Cole, 1992; Blaikie, 1999; Gilleard and Higgs, 2000). Beyond these notions, we recommend a reading of vitality less associated with youthful energy and more about living fully and holistically, including with conditions of impairment. In this sense, the work of Lars Tornstam (2005) on gero-transcendence also suggests a ‘natural’ alteration of consciousness that occurs through vitality in relation to the physical world, and a new wisdom and spirituality arising in older age. Infectiousness It is visiting her grandchildren that gives Doreen her biggest thrill, particularly when they all are in one place together at Christmas time. Aged 3 to 12 years, there are nine of them in total. Together they run around, laugh, play, sometimes argue, but are always excited, “Granny, look granny” being the repeated mantra. Meanwhile the backdrop of festive lights, music, wine and food all adds to the energy of the event, making Doreen feel at least 10 years younger. Last year Doreen was in pain. It was just before she had her hip replacement operation and it was not a good year. All the usual play and socialisation was going on around her, but Doreen felt out of it, disengaged, as if she was looking at it all through a window. She also looked quite annoyed, which certainly altered the overall mood. Thankfully, her hip now fully fixed, Doreen can look forward to next Christmas and that familiar feeling with her grandchildren, that energy returning once again. The idea of infectiousness is rooted in biomedicine’s engagements with contagion – the communicability of disease via the movement of pathogens between bodies. Yet, at the same time, forms of psychosocial and psycho-physiological infection – bodily expressions and

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feelings that pass between them – can change life. We know, for example, from our everyday lives that laughter can be infectious, a person’s enthusiasm or a place’s energy can be infectious, dancing can be infectious and so on. Infectiousness of action and feeling, and how it occurs, is understood in NRT specifically through a Deleuzian reading of ‘affect’, as a transitioning of a body and the process whereby moving into close proximity with other bodies it is affected by them, then modifies and affects further bodies (Deleuze and Parnet, 2006). Affect, by providing an energetic uplift or dampening, has an impact on human capacity for engagement and involvement in life (thus further movement). As Deleuze argues, while positive affection (a joyful affect) acts as a nutrition that carries humans forward and increases their capacity to operate physically and mentally, negative affection (a sadness affect) acts like a toxin that weighs them down and reduces such capacity (Deleuze and Parnet, 2006). Affect is not fully known or reasoned as it occurs, but is experienced less than fully consciously and registered somatically as a ‘feeling state’. Importantly, due to its transmission, reproduction and expression in particular places, affect is also a collective experience felt between people in situ as the prevailing atmosphere. In terms of research, therefore, as Thrift (2004) suggests, we need to pay attention to the sensory attributes of places and how state and commercial interests purposefully create, reproduce and spread affects with the aim of providing certain textures to people’s lives. In gerontology, the idea of infectiousness has tended to be used in the more traditional epidemiological sense of the spread of disease. For example, bio-gerontologists have focused on how infection affects ageing, how older people contribute to the diffusion of disease, and how illnesses circulate in ageing settings such as long-term care facilities (Muder et al, 1991). We think however that the idea of infectiousness could be extended in gerontology to include the affective qualities and processes occurring within the numerous places where older people reside. Methodologically, for example, there is a growing body of gerontological research on storytelling as a form of older resistance, and in particular participatory action research through digital storytelling (Kenyon et al, 2001). Such methods are heralded as a research process with ‘infectious results’ that help build communities, create shared understandings, and provide educational or disruptive accounts to raise awareness and momentum for change. If we add the presence of physical affective processes to understandings of these types of events, an even greater sense of communality might be discovered, as Doreen feels in the opening vignette to this section.

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Encounter “Good morning, sir,” says a stranger to Mike on his morning walk, “What are you up to today?”. Moving to a retirement community was the best thing that could have happened to Mike, who was getting quite lonely struggling to cope alone in his old home. Now, in the retirement community, things often turn up and his day often takes an unexpected turn – perhaps an unplanned coffee, a lengthy chat or an invite to dinner. Mike doesn’t just encounter fellow residents, though. On his morning walks he has bumped into workmen, delivery men, and staff, and all manner of non-humans have surprised him, taking him from his internal thoughts – foxes, the odd goose, a lost wallet, and one time even an old kite that had blown in on a windy day. Each encounter changes the direction of his day even if just a little, providing at least a future conversation point. Encounters, or what Gilles Deleuze specifically conceptualises as ‘events’, involve meetings of all kinds of bodies and objects, no matter their type or scale (Deleuze, 1968). However, the idea of encounter is certainly not vague and is conceptualised in NRT as physical, prepersonal, intensive singularities that create important spatial, temporal and processual moments (Duff, 2014). In terms of their duration, encounters can vary in length, ranging from the almost instantaneous to longer timeframes, according to the nature of the things encountering each other. The forces involved might be considerable or minor, observable or unobservable – bodies and objects possessing different masses, speeds and rhythms determining the energy expelled. In some cases, encounters might be predicable, particularly if the bodies and objects involved have already been enrolled and motivated in known directions by existing structures (such as policies). In other cases, however, encounters might be seemingly random, the bodies and objects involved being motivated more by their own qualities, purposes or impulses, setting themselves on collision courses. Either way, the outcomes of encounters are important, because they involve the constant transformation and reinvention of bodies and objects in relations of becoming. Indeed, new realities are produced by encounters – new movements, directions configurations and potentially even new bodies and objects. Each encounter is significant because each is unique (for example in its physical and sensory character), while being part of a greater web of events (Duff, 2014). For Deleuze, the existence

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of constant and unique encounters (events) means that life is made through discontinuous becoming with no final state (Duff, 2014). Encounters occur whenever wherever there is matter and life, making the world and creating the future. These include interruptions, which as Dawney (2013) suggests, are momentary and physical, making us suddenly aware of our actions and surroundings. Thus, interruptions provide an opportunity for humans to take stock, to focus consciously on what went previously and what might be next, to interplay the affective with the subjective and to facilitate bodies and minds to move in new and unexpected ways (as Mike experiences in his day’s encounters in the vignette on the previous page). Although the language of encounter is not prominent in gerontology, research might be extended with these aforementioned ideas in mind. Studies, for example, on interruptions or turning points in the life course might bring into account their physical and less than fully consciously acted attributes. Likewise, research on experiences of settings such as homes might take into account more the precise body and object encounters that take place within them and their consequences. Encounters occurring between groups might also be considered in a more physical and immediate sense. Notably, in this regard, the idea of ‘intergenerational encounter’ is already familiar in gerontological scholarship (see Grenier, 2007), at times recognised as incidental or accidental, while at other times purposefully employed as a disciplinary technique in psycho-dynamic interventions to help to resolve anxieties and resistance. Hence one might consider the affects involved in such comings together.

Conclusion Gerontologists are not unaware of the concerns and approaches of NRT as signs of new materialist, post-humanist, emotional, sensory and performative turns are appearing in the discipline (see, for example, Katz, 2011). Building on these turns, NRT potentially helps us to better understand and articulate the agency and experience of human movement in later life, placing that movement within its own everyday contexts. One way of thinking about these contexts is that there are constant tailwinds behind and headwinds against the immediate directions of older people’s everyday lives, and NRT provides a research lens that appreciates the nature of these winds and older people’s experiences of going with and contributing to their flow or going against them and detracting from their sweep. Because much gerontological research has perpetuated a body/environment

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dualism, whereby the two are held apart (as if bodies just move in and across environments), NRT offers a means to bridge this divide by reconceptualising environments as unstable, dynamic, flowing assemblages constituted of moving bodies and objects (that is, older bodies being intricately part of the environment nexus). We argue that this understanding is an important part of a new relational and materialist understanding of ageing and late life. Deploying NRT in gerontology, and animating ageing movementspace through the concepts of rhythm, momentum, infectiousness, vitality and encounter, provides an opportunity to develop new methodological priorities and approaches involving revised relationships between academic researchers, study populations and settings (see Vannini, 2015). Some of these priorities and approaches are based on an overall objective to ‘witness’, rather than just analyse, the unfolding of events so that research findings have a fidelity and faithfulness to them (see Dirksmeier and Helbrecht, 2008). As Latham (2003) argues, with NRT, existing methods can be enhanced, supplemented or combined and made to ‘dance a bit’, involving, for example, sensory ethnography, go-along interviews, photography, video and other visual methods that provide different access points and registers (Vannini, 2015). Further, NRT is not only focused on practice, it is itself also a practice. Consistent with its proponents’ belief in the power of the active world – and their understanding of hope as located in the act of progress rather than only in end points – is NRT’s methodological dedication to actively ‘act into’ life to ‘change’, ‘boost’ and ‘build’ it for the better, and to assist the world in ‘speaking back’. The forms this theoretical practice can take in research might involve the reversal of participant observation to become observant participation, which is about getting more involved and invested in effort and experience, and actively intervening to change the course of events (Dewsbury, 2009). Or it might involve the use of arts-based approaches that insert new movements, affects and messages into the world, communicating in different, and often more direct and powerful, ways as far-reaching forms of knowledge translation (see, for example, Dupuis et al, 2016; Gray, 2017). Finally, NRT research involves a commitment to public scholarship, particularly where researchers align with, and participate in, activist performance and political action, something many gerontologists already promote as part of gerontology’s direct support of older people (Putney et al, 2005). Above all, embracing NRT requires a new personal research lens, a form of ‘wonderment’ or ‘enchantment’ with the world. On a conceptual level, this involves a more holistic understanding of

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existence, that humans are not set apart from the world, but instead are the world, part of its endless cycles of energy and movement, just one manifestation of and in it. On a practical level, this involves resisting the academic urge to immediately dig for meaning when looking at empirical subjects and occurrences and instead observe life’s basic physicality and flows (not unlike an academic form of mindfulness). Such wonderment/enchantment leads to the kinds of aforementioned experimental methodologies that realise researchers’ and subjects’ parts in greater everyday happenings and their opportunity to play with them. References Anderson, B. and Harrison, P. (2010) Taking place: Non-representational theories and geography, Farnham: Ashgate. Andrews, G.J. (2014) ‘Co-creating health’s lively, moving frontiers: brief observations on the facets and possibilities of non-representational theory’, Health & Place, vol 30, no 1, pp 165-70. Andrews, G.J. and Phillips, D.R. (2002) ‘Changing local geographies of private residential care for older people 1983-1999: lessons for social policy in England and Wales’, Social Science & Medicine, vol 55, no 1, pp 63-78. Antoninetti, M. and Garrett, M. (2012) ‘Body capital and the geography of aging’, Area, vol 44, no 3, pp 364-70. Bailey, A.J. (2009) ‘Population geography: lifecourse matters’, Progress in Human Geography, vol 33, no 3, pp 407-15. Bengtson, V.L., Elder Jr, G.H. and Putney, N.M. (2012) ‘The life course perspective on ageing: linked lives, timing, and history’, in J. Katz, S. Peace and S. Spur (eds) Adult lives: A life course perspective, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 9-17. Bennett, J. (2009) Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bergson, H. (1911 [1896]) Matter and memory, Translated by N.M. Paul and W.S. Palmer, London: Macmillan. Blaikie, A. (1999) Ageing and popular culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cadman, L. (2009) ‘Nonrepresentational theory/nonrepresentational geographies’, in R. Kitchin and N. Thrift (eds) International encyclopedia of human geography, London: Elsevier, pp 456-63. Cole, T.R. (1992) The journey of life: A cultural history of aging in America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davey, J.A. (2007) ‘Older people and transport: coping without a car’, Ageing & Society, vol 2, no 71, pp 49-65.

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Griffin, M. and Phoenix, C. (2014) ‘Learning to run from narrative foreclosure: one woman’s story of aging and physical activity’, Journal of Aging and Physical Activity, vol 22, no 3, pp 393-404. Gross, M.M., Stevenson, P.J., Charette, S.L., Pyka, G. and Marcus, R. (1998) ‘Effect of muscle strength and movement speed on the biomechanics of rising from a chair in healthy elderly and young women’, Gait & Posture, vol 8, no 3, pp 175-85. Hallman, B.C. and Joseph, A.E. (1999) ‘Getting there: mapping the gendered geography of caregiving to elderly relatives’, Canadian Journal on Aging, vol 18, no 4, pp 397-414. Hanlon, N., Skinner, M.W., Joseph, A.E., Ryser, L. and Halseth, G. (2014) ‘Place integration through efforts to support healthy aging in resource frontier communities: the role of voluntary sector leadership’, Health & Place, vol 29, no 2, pp 132-39. Joseph, A.E., and Cloutier, D.S. (1991) ‘Elderly migration and its implications for service provision in rural communities: an Ontario perspective’, Journal of Rural Studies, vol 7, no 4, pp 433-44. Joseph, A.E. and Hallman, B.C. (1998) ‘Over the hill and far away: distance as a barrier to the provision of assistance to elderly relatives’, Social Science & Medicine, vol 46, no 6, pp 631-9. Katz, S. (2000) ‘Busy bodies: activity, aging, and the management of everyday life’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 14, no 2, pp 135-52. Katz, S. (2011) ‘Hold on! Falling, embodiment, and the materiality of old age’, in M.J. Casper and P. Currah (eds) Corpus: An interdisciplinary reader on bodies and knowledge, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 187-205. Kenyon, G.M., Clark, P.G. and De Vries, B. (eds) (2001) Narrative gerontology: Theory, research, and practice, New York, NY: Springer. King, A.C., Sallis, J.F., Frank, L.D., Saelens, B.E., Cain, K., Conway, T.L. and Kerr, J. (2011) ‘Aging in neighborhoods differing in walkability and income: associations with physical activity and obesity in older adults’, Social Science & Medicine, vol 73, no 10, pp 1525-33. Kong, L., Yeoh, B. and Teo, P. (1996) ‘Singapore and the experience of place in old age’, Geographical Review, vol 86, no 4, pp 529-49. Latham, A. (2003) ‘Research, performance, and doing human geography: some reflections on the diary-photograph, diary-interview method’, Environment and Planning A, vol 35, no 11, pp 1993-2018. Lee, V.S.P., Simpson, J. and Froggatt, K. (2013) ‘A narrative exploration of older people’s transitions into residential care’, Aging & Mental Health, vol 17, no 1, pp 48-56.

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FIVE

What’s exotic about The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel? Cinema, everyday life and the materialisation of ageing Sally Chivers

“Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.” (Hitchcock, 1960) With its proclivity to indulge in escapist fantasies, fiction film may seem diametrically opposed to local realities of everyday life. As Alfred Hitchcock (1960) intimates when he describes drama as “life with the dull bits cut out”, many people make and watch movies to indulge in youth-obsessed images far from laundry, feeding, bathing, medicating, exercising, aching and deciding where and how to live, topics that dominate understandings of the everyday life of old age. Yet movies have the capacity to portray the commonplace aesthetically, rendering it both palpable and imaginative. Film can, as Heike Klippel (2014) puts it, ‘materialize … make visible and tangible, the “fiber” out of which [contemporary] forms of life are woven’. This is one reason why cinema belongs in a book about ageing and everyday life: when films focus on late life, they have trouble avoiding what too often are thought to be the ‘dull bits’ of life, so they have potential to make the dull extraordinary in constructive and destructive ways. The cinema also matters for this book about ageing and everyday life because film has weathered multiple technological transformations – from theatre to television to tape to disc to streaming – so that it is continually and increasingly incorporated into everyday practices of cultural consumption. In late 2015, Sandvine reported that Netflix alone accounts for over one third of internet traffic in North America, indicating that North Americans are highly engaged in watching television and film daily. Lakshmi Srinivas (2005) explains, speaking of Bombay cinema, that ‘media are powerfully involved in the global circulation of images and messages while at the same time being part of the fabric of everyday life’ (pp 323-4). Thus, cinematic representations

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of older adults circulate influential conceptions of ageing. And those images affect and participate in everyday life.

The silvering screen Since the turn of the last century, a new wave of movies that put older adults at their centre has appeared on large and small screens, something I have called ‘the silvering screen’ (Chivers, 2011). Such films feature older actors playing older characters who portray as everyday some aspects of ageing – such as having older, creakier joints – and portray as exceptional and horrifying other aspects of ageing – such as becoming disoriented due to dementia. Given the contemporaneous proliferation of film in everyday life, these patterns of representation in movies affect understandings of what everyday life is like for 21stcentury older adults. Some of these movies, such as The Bucket List (2007, US), imagine a late life full of remarkable overachievement for characters who might otherwise be expected to sit on the porch in their rocking chairs. Others, such as Amour (2012, France, Germany and Austria), imagine an old age so marked with decrepitude that it can horrify viewers into a recognition that their own lives are enjoyably mundane by comparison. Some, such as Iris (2001, UK and US), present older characters as figures meant to elicit viewers’ pity, alongside a comfortable sense of comparative good fortune. Still other films envision dilemmas faced by older adults, such as what to do with an empty nest (Because I Said So [2007, US]) or where to live when living at home is no longer an option (Michael McGowan’s Still Mine [2012, Canada]). And some, such as I’ll See You in My Dreams (2015, US), simplistically transpose stereotypical youth plots by silvering a few threads of the central characters’ hair and ending romances through heart attacks rather than heartache. Collectively, such films imagine physical and mental decline to be the worst fate in late life; they portray the best choice as to be active and loved and they offer very little in between. Despite focusing on these rather extreme poles, films at both ends rely on the everyday to propel fantasies about ageing. These fantasies are fuelled by fears and hopes about what everyday life could and should be like for relatively wealthy white seniors. Everyday practices of ageing emerge from and merge with these mesmerising fantasies. North American and European films are typical of the broader representational field (on television, in magazines, in internet advertising) in conveying the overwhelming whiteness of those older adults who find space in the popular record.

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The presumed whiteness of old age as conveyed in contemporary cinema reveals telling assumptions about everyday late life. Western cinema fantasises about a relatively prosperous white late life. When people of colour are portrayed, it is usually in helper roles, such as working as caregivers (as in Quartet [2012, UK] and The Savages [2007, US]). Even while addressing some vital aspects of ageing and everyday life, Western cinema usually effaces the highly racialised labour relations that underlie everyday life in the Global North, especially but not only when older adults require care. In short, it participates in a colonising politics of ageing that requires analysis because of the relationship between movies and everyday life. In this austerity-dominated era, the fixation on what to do with bodies that are excess to capitalist economies, such as old bodies in need of care, always lies under the surface of cultural representations. As Wendy Brown explains, ‘Contemporary neoliberal economization of political and social life is distinctive in its discursive production of everyone as human capital – for themselves, for a business, and for a national or postnational economic constellation’ (2016, p 3).

Making the exotic everyday in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films To get at that austerity-driven fixation, the racist contradictions of contemporary cinema about ageing, and the cultural politics of representing everyday late life, I turn to the example of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel cinema franchise (2011 and 2015, UK). These star-studded comedies – The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – feature a set of white British seniors not quite able to finance their mature years while living in the UK, who decide to outsource their retirement to India, thereby transforming from excess into consumers and even producers yet again. As Kateřina Kolářová (2015) explains in her article about Baan Kamlaangchay, a care home in Thailand for older adults from the Global North, such offshore sites for elder care participate in a fantasy that relies on the invisibility of other workers in the new locale: The fantasy plays upon and mirrors the anxiety that societies of the Global North share in the face of biological precarity. It is also part of the political economies of debility that underpin a transnational distribution of life and vitality, making possible and even profitable the increased precariousness of certain lives. (p 80)

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The Best Exotic films characterise the choice of the main British characters to move to the city of Jaipur as both economically sensible – even required for some – and personally extraordinary. The care home franchise depicted in the Best Exotic films offers a means for the older adults to contribute to the Jaipurian economy both as consumers and workers while alleviating the supposed burden they had represented to the families and healthcare systems of their homeland. Gerontological articles often quote the Best Exotic films as a takeoff point or colloquial entrance into a qualitative or quantitative study, whether about the comparative effects of the ‘second demographic transition’ (Ochiai, 2014, p 343), elders remaining in the workforce ‘in order to add value to their lives through connection to others’ (Baker, 2012, p 232), retirement outsourcing (Hayes, 2015, p 267), or the potential for self-transformation in late life (Baker, 2016, p 553). These citations indicate that scholars outside film and cultural studies consider the Best Exotic films to, in some fashion, represent real-world events. That the films are in fact rooted in deeply held beliefs that uphold social inequities makes especially urgent an analysis of the fantasies that the films convey in a realist style. In exoticising the late life of the central British characters, turning them into globetrotting adventure seekers and economic saviours, these films gloss over the everyday life of the residents of Jaipur, the city to which the Britons move. Kolářová (2015) explains this process as pertaining to two modes of embodiment whereby one subject [in these films, the white Britons] is the more ‘legitimate’ subject of care and investment of vitality, while the other [in these films, Jaipurians particularly those who are of a lower caste] is objectified as a source of labour and reproductive capacity biocapital. (p 85) In fact, the Best Exotic films paint the world-weary British tourists as saviours who heroically contribute to a transforming Indian economy. As Kolářová describes the process of ‘outsourcing’ old age: ‘The bodies that were previously exhausted in the capitalist commodification of labour can be simultaneously “outsourced” and economically recycled’ (p 85). In these films, that recycling happens at the expense of the locals. The Best Exotic films strive to make exotic the transplanted everyday (white) life of old age, including a growing global need for new collective living situations to support older populations. In the process, they offer a helpful perspective on contemporary ageing as embodied

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and highly material. They do not shy away from showing old age to be a time of physical change nor from portraying the day-to-day difficulties of adjusting to being old in a youth-centric world, nor do they overly emphasise either of those aspects of late life. In the Best Exotic films, older adults have love affairs with people relatively their own age, unlike many films that portray as though normal the male of the hetero-couple as significantly older than his female partner. The Best Exotic films show the apparent vicissitudes of an older creaky body to be part of everyday life and impetus, not only for humour but also for forming new relationships. But the exoticism of how their new everyday life is portrayed, and the way they regain value through consumption in their new location, relies on an insidious racism. In making one person’s everyday life explicitly into another person’s exotic, these films offer a perhaps unintentionally canny perspective on the disturbing, oft-ignored and under-analysed racial politics of contemporary ageing.

The first Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: ageing, home spaces and the mechanisms of everyday white life The first Best Exotic film opens with a series of scenes that each feature a different member of the star-laden cast of older British characters. The characters initially come across as diverse in that they have a range of personal motivations for leaving the relatively orderly UK. They occupy different positions as recent widow Evelyn Greenslade (played by actor Judi Dench), just-retired High Court judge Graham Dashwood (Tom Wilkinson), a couple – Douglas and Jean Ainslie (Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton) – learning that their retirement savings have been squandered in failed financial investment, a crotchety, vocally racist retired housemaid Muriel Donnelly (Maggie Smith), who is in need of a new hip faster than NHS wait times will allow for, and an aged Lothario, Norman Cousins (Ronald Pickup) and seductress, Madge Hardcastle (Celia Imrie), who are bored with being old and ignored in England. Despite these different motives, the characters all seek to use the former colonial city Jaipur as a space to rejuvenate their late lives as well as to spin out their meagre savings. They are at least partly motivated by monetary exigencies so that they leave England where most of them are struggling financially, and, on arriving in the comparatively messy and chaotic streets of Jaipur, they are instantly comparatively wealthy. In portraying this range of characters in their disparate British home spaces, the first Best Exotic film illustrates the complexity of trying to

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convey a sense of home even to people of a similar background and age.1 Viewers are introduced equally to Evelyn in her cosy furnished flat, the Ainslies, who with dismay plan to move into a bland British retirement community complete with safety rails and panic buttons, Madge, who flees the sterile white walls of her son’s home where she has been expected to settle into being a helpful granny to his growing family, Norman in a shabby bedsit, and Mrs Donnelly leaving her housing estate. By contrast, the setting of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the Elderly and Beautiful in Jaipur – to which they all move – through humorous and alarming depictions of disrepair and decay makes the various UK domestic scenes appear by contrast more uniform than they had seemed during the opening shots. The hotel’s incongruously young proprietor, Sonny Kapoor (Dev Patel, who was in his early 20s when the film was released), expresses assumptions that reinforce a homogenous perception of the new guests’ homeland. For example, he promises that he has prepared “a special welcome British roast” for dinner, evoking a cultural ritual of bland roast meat for Sunday’s main meal. However, the roast goat curry that he serves elicits a combination of horror and curiosity in the newly arrived Brits, foreshadowing how they will each manage the transition to a former colonial outpost for their retirement. Some of them revel in the contrast to their UK homes and others abhor it – either way, their responses magnify the difference between Jaipur and the parts of Britain they come from and diminish the differences among their British abodes and social stations. Evelyn Greenslade narrates the first Best Exotic film, as well as being a character within it, reading from a blog that doubles as a means of communication with her family and a filmic technique that emphasises the everyday lives of the newly arrived seniors. As part of this process, she highlights the aspects of British life that have been replaced in this new Indian setting. For example, in her report for day nine, she says, “No longer do I reach out in the morning for Radio 4 [a BBC talk radio station]. My news comes instead from the Jaipur Herald [a newspaper]”. She draws attention to the cacophony that overwhelms the new setting, referring to “the storm of car horns and vendors”, and exclaims of Jaipur: “Can there be anywhere in the world that is such an assault on the senses?”. Her comparison reaches the scatological when she describes “the flow of exotic dishes [Sonny] demands daily from the kitchen. Mooli moong dal. Baghara baingan. Banjari gosht. Paneer methi chaman.” At the same time, the guests are shown one by one entering their bathrooms, hastily closing the doors to do their urgent business. This magnification of their physical inability to digest

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the unfamiliar food exemplifies the clash between the exotic and the everyday throughout the two Best Exotic films. What is everyday for Jaipur residents – newspapers, street noise, spicy food – is exotic for the new residents of the Marigold Hotel. As Evelyn narrates, “Those who know the country of old just go about their business. But nothing can prepare the uninitiated for this riot of noise and color. For the heat and the motion, the perpetual teeming crowds”. Jaipur is at once introduced as commonplace and as so exotic as to be impossible to anticipate or plan for, as well as incomparable. The first Best Exotic film portrays, including explicit verbal descriptions, the hotel building as an old and decrepit source of humour but also surprisingly comforting to those who find ways to accept its idiosyncrasies. Its portrayal mirrors the ways in which the Best Exotic films convey the old age of the central characters as a combination of humorous and poignant. Both the building and the characters are situated as potential sites of rejuvenation, if approached with the appropriate attitude. As the visitors arrive at a drab and dilapidated, formerly grand building, Sonny scrambles comically to greet them from above. The hotel’s interior is not quite ready for guests, indicated by the dust cloths covering most furniture, but, as Sonny points out, the building is of the “utmost character”. It may look ragged but it still has potential, just like its soon-to-be inhabitants. The film’s ageism is muted by the exoticisation of the locale and the locals. Besides Mrs Donnelly’s hip, which needs replacing, and Mr Dashwood’s sudden death, the first Best Exotic film does not exaggerate the physical aspects of ageing. That said, the British residents are played by relatively old actors (ranging from early 60s to late 70s) and they are all living out a retirement dream or nightmare, depending on their perspectives on their new home. Sonny has an inimitable style of speech, which reveals both a deep study of the English language and culture as well as his distance from both. His apparent exoticism mitigates the offensiveness that otherwise characterises his fumbling commentaries, rife with ageist assumptions, on both the hotel and the residents. For example, he greets the guests saying, “You have all heard the chimes at midnight and long in tooth have you become. Who knows how many days you have left? But we are most honoured that you have chosen to spend that time with us”. To soften the effects Mrs Donnelly’s harsh yet truthful expressions might have on a potential investor in his soon-to-be chain of care home hotels, he says of her: “The wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead”, implying a dementia of which there is no sign whatsoever. Mrs Ainslie offers a British

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correlative to Sonny’s euphemisms with her penchant to speak frankly, in a similarly ageist fashion. For example, she exclaims: “Look at us. A group of self-deluding old fossils traipsing around as if we’re on some bloody gap year. Humiliating ourselves…. We should just face up to the truth. That we’re all old. We’re all past it. That’s the real truth. The raw, unvarnished fact of the matter. All we’re good for now is a beige bloody bungalow with a sodding panic button in the sodding corner.” Her stark expression illuminates by contrast the effect of Sonny’s penchant for slightly misunderstood figurative language. The Best Exotic films portray the British characters as not only saving the Marigold Hotel through their financial contributions, but also as offering the Jaipur business world a much-needed injection of Western know-how. The first film’s opening scene shows Evelyn isolated in her flat, speaking over the phone from the UK to a call-centre employee in India, seeking technical advice but also frustrated with the scripted lines read by the call-centre employee when she desperately wants a connection with another human being. Once in Jaipur, she applies for a job in a very similar call centre where she is initially deemed unqualified by the manager (Sid Makkar), who describes his employees as university graduates: “ambitious people, young people”. She corrects his English, inadvertently demonstrating her deep understanding of their desired customer base, so he hires her to work as a “cultural adviser”. In a parallel storyline, Mrs Donnelly, who was in service (worked as a maid) for years in the UK, teaches Anokhi (Seema Azmi), a Dalit woman hired to clean the Marigold Hotel, how to sweep more efficiently. Smith’s lack of knowledge of who matters in India means she does not realise that Anokhi is, as Graham Dashwood explains to her, “an Untouchable. An outcast, born below society. To a good Hindu, even her shadow is polluted”. This misunderstanding makes Mrs Donnelly surprisingly generous when she had not intended to be. Her knowledge of cleaning work as well as the ability to manage a household combined with her ignorance of the stratifications of Indian society turns her into an incongruous model of modernising social relations, as well as an idol to the Anokhi’s Dalit family. These combined qualities make her an ideal business partner for Sonny, which she becomes over the course of the first Best Exotic film. Even the most racist British guest is cast as saviour of the Jaipurians.

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On the surface, the British guests appear self-sufficient and even find themselves to be of use again. But their apparent independence relies on a range of local bodies, like Anokhi, who appear almost as scenery except when they are needed to drive the plot or aid the character’s mobility. The almost constant background work and activity is vital to the new everyday life of the British guests in Jaipur. Before Anokhi and Mrs Donnelly become incongruous friends, Anokhi averts her gaze as she serves her, and even after they become friends, Anokhi is often in the background, sweeping, serving food, cleaning pots and serving as a silent audience for Mrs Donnelly’s wry quips. Ajit (Bhuvnesh Shetty), a physiotherapist, is in Mrs Donnelly’s hotel room (to her horror) on her arrival and is a foil for her racist commentary as she laments his Indian-ness. This does not deter him from pushing her around in her wheelchair and affably translating Hindi language for her, and elaborating on Jaipurian space and local culture, always remaining in the background. Following this pattern, the Best Exotic films are suffused with a background story of ageing, everyday life and labour that is never explicitly told. An 80-something Jaipurian man, ironically called Young Wasim (Honey Chayya), is depicted in the background at the Marigold Hotel, often sitting silently or sleeping. When he is finally moved to utter some pivotal words, however, they reveal that he is crucial to the function of the Marigold Hotels, and not just through his cooking and odd jobs. When the film reaches the height of the narrative tension created by Sonny’s desire to choose his own wife, a call-centre employee Sunaina (Tina Desai), despite his mother’s (Lillette Dubey) disapproval, which is based on Sunaina being too “modern”, Young Wasim stands to give a moving speech in Hindi. Sunaina translates: “He is saying that he has been with this family as long as he can remember. Given them a lifetime of service. And that he remembers another fight, between two young people and their parents. And he remembers the moment where the young man stood up to his mother.” Sonny’s mother, Mrs Kapoor, takes over to explain the striking parallels between Sonny’s desire to marry Sunaina and her own past marriage to Sonny’s father. Young Wasim’s speech, a public reminder to Mrs Kapoor, softens her towards the match, and she gives her grudging blessing. Not only do the apparent independence, mobility and financial success of the Brits rely on the barely visible labour of brown bodies, the first Best Exotic plot also relies on ‘Young’ Wasim’s long silent

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service and acquired knowledge to move to its satisfying conclusion with a promise of nuptials to be taken up in the sequel. His decades of everyday work have sustained them, and his memory offers a valuable insight that, perhaps ironically, supports the modern perspective that Sonny ought to marry whom he likes despite the perceived social and class differences between him and his bride.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: the everyday exotic late life as American dream The sequel to the first Best Exotic film, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, albeit not nearly as successful at the box office, reinforces its racialised message, entrenching the idea that the central white British characters have found independence on the backs of those whom their ancestors colonised. A thread in the first Best Exotic film, wherein the telephone fails to improve communication, reinforced by the nonfunctioning phones in the Marigold Hotel and the hopelessness of call-centre workers, transforms in the sequel into scenes depicting the shortcomings of new forms of technology. Characters can now connect via video call, but are misled by what they see, and older characters are predictably portrayed as unable to figure out how to receive text messages on their smartphones. Sonny has instituted some very basic care practices at the Marigold Hotel, such as a daily roll call and monthly medical check-ups, although the physical aspects of ageing are still not central. The hotel is thriving, with its own minibus, and is bursting at the seams, which turns the narrative focus to an American-style expansion of the franchise as well as the planning and actuality of Sonny and Sunaina’s wedding. In his typical attempt to play with linguistic idiom before he understands the related practices, Sonny explains that the Marigold Hotel must be “franchised or footnoted”. As Sunaina’s brother’s friend Kushal (Shazad Latif), a man Sonny perceives to be his romantic and business rival, puts it, “Outsourcing old age. It’s a brilliant idea. It’s brilliant and it’s working. But to keep growing you’ve got to have somewhere to grow into.” At times, the legacies of colonialism pervade the Second Best Exotic film, albeit subtly, and enhance reflections on the racial relations depicted in the first film. When Mrs Donnelly accompanies Sonny to a Californian corporate head office to seek funds for the Marigold Hotel expansion, she scolds the Americans because they are unable to make a proper cup of tea. In some ways, this is the actress Dame Maggie Smith playing the type of role for which she became famous in the time between the two films, as the acerbic Dowager Countess of

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Grantham in the television series Downton Abbey. But in other ways, she is simply a British woman expecting to be served, and appalled by any customs foreign to her own, be they the bustle of India or the weakly steeped, lukewarm tea of the United States. In the process, this tea-making tutorial shows how the Indian characters in both films are, because of past colonial rule, more British at least than the Americans. The Americanisms of the second film underscore how deeply steeped in neoliberal economic ideals Sonny’s dream and the Britons’ outsourced retirement is. Srinivas (2005) explains that ‘At the level of everyday life globalization involves engaging with the “intrusion of distant events into everyday consciousness” … leading to imploded worlds, or “phenomenal worlds”, described as simultaneously locallysituated yet global’ (p 323). These are linked in the Best Exotic film worlds’ fixation on what to do with bodies that are excess to capitalism: in this case, ship them off to where they can be consumers again. But ‘America’ in the filmic imagination outstrips England for consumerist tendencies. The Second Best Exotic film flamboyantly shifts to the US by opening with a scene featuring Sonny and Mrs Donnelly driving along Route 66 in a convertible with a rock-and-roll soundtrack. When they arrive in San Diego, Chet the valet (Danny Mahoney) parks their car. The potential investor (David Strathairn) whom Sonny and Mrs Donnelly are in the US to impress offers a stereotyped American euphemistic perspective when he explains of his chain of care homes: “Evergreen is a different concept. We believe that the … well … that the leaves don’t need to fall. That these years, the mature years, are an opportunity for travel, for further education, for different work situations. Well, in a word, an opportunity for life. And for passing on the value of that life to others.” The film plot derives excitement partly from the idea that an American inspector will arrive incognito to evaluate the potential for the Marigold Hotel(s) to fit the Evergreen model, evoking the investment in accountability and surveillance popular within neoliberal systems. That the euphemisms of the California-flavoured American dream overlap uncannily with Sonny’s awkward embrace of the English language speaks to how he is presented as the dubious hope for Jaipur’s modernising economy. At the same time, the Second Best Exotic film reinforces the message of the ordinary becoming extraordinary and the normalisation of what had been exotic, as the British visitors overcome their fears over

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time. The second film adopts more elements of Bollywood cinema, especially song and dance, and shows the British characters to be less guests than new residents of Jaipur, some of them even wearing garments that are something between their traditional UK clothing and Jaipurian dress. When the electricity goes out at a key moment of Sonny and Sunaina’s nuptial dance, they acknowledge the event as, although unfortunately timed, also part of day-to-day life in Jaipur. There is always an edge accompanying the British residents’ acceptance, however. For example, when Madge gives her driver’s niece a music box with a dancing figurine that mesmerises the girl, she condescendingly says of the crowded neighbourhood in which several generations of a family share a dwelling, “What a lovely place to have lived”, as though relative poverty had not been a factor in their living conditions. The British guests who have remained in Jaipur have all found some form of employment, which purports to indicate a newfound independence. They seem to belong in Jaipur now to the extent that reviewer Stephen Holden (2015) explains, ‘you wouldn’t know, for instance, that most of the characters are financially stressed Britons, recruited to spend their sunset years in Jaipur, India, at a residential hotel that is much less splendid than advertised’. But the film reveals that the elder Brits’ work lives still rely on backgrounded brown bodies. Mr Ainslie, whose marriage has crumbled, works as a barely competent tour guide, but, due to a simplistically portrayed failing memory, he relies on information narrated into an earpiece by a young local boy (Jayesh V. Kardak) who reads a script from a computer. Mr Ainslie’s mind is described as “empty”, so he uses the boy as prosthetic device. Evelyn has improved on the poor bargaining skills depicted in Jaipur market scenes in the first Best Exotic film, and has moved from her job as cultural adviser at the call centre to become an employee of a growing fabric and textiles company. The company is expanding, so she assumes she will be fired, but the company instead promotes her, at the stated age of 79, to head of sourcing. Despite her promotion, she relies heavily on her employee’s help, especially his knowledge of the Hindi language and culture, to succeed in negotiations. He hands her a piece of paper and tells her to learn how to pronounce from memory the words he has written down. When she does so, she unwittingly manipulates local ideas of respecting elders so that the factory owner is shamed into agreeing to her terms, unbeknownst to her. The Second Best Exotic film, similar to the first, relies on Evelyn’s colleague Hari (Subhrajyoti Barat) to propel a romantic climax in the film. Although mostly silent, he speaks up to urge her to act on her

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romantic inclinations towards the now separated Mr Ainslie because, as he points out, time is short given her age.

Conclusion Not only do the Best Exotic films exoticise Jaipur, they do so in the guise of neoliberalism, similar to works such as the Oscar-lauded film Slumdog Millionaire (2008, UK).2 Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray has noted that few Westerners represent India in film and when they do it is as ‘an exotic space’ (quoted in Roy, 2016, p 155). On one level, the well-received Best Exotic light comedies replicate a familiar colonialism, similar to works such as Forster’s novel A passage to India (1924), which was adapted into a popular film in the 1980s. Set following neoliberal economic reforms in India, which saw a shift from industry and agriculture to service, the Best Exotic films portray the transplanted Brits as highly expert in the skills needed for just such a transformed economy. As Srinivas (2005) explains, [f]ilms emphasize lived experience, everyday life, the social relations attendant upon the transnational movement of goods and people and the significance of place – precisely the considerations that scholars have identified as crucial for an understanding of globalization that is contextual, embodied and situated in everyday experience. (p 324) The Best Exotic films emphasise the lived experience of the older white travellers while relying on and yet playing down the social relations that have made it possible for those people to seek out what is advertised within the film world as a home for the ‘elderly and beautiful’. As Russell King (2016) notes, ‘Behind its lighthearted and stereotype laden narrative, the [first Best Exotic] film told a deeper story: of the outsourcing of old-age care to a place where service labour is cheap and attentive (even if the plumbing is erratic)’ (p 239). The Best Exotic films participate in what Sohinee Roy (2016) calls ‘familiar European colonial tropes of the mystical east as the site of rejuvenation for the jaded Western man/woman’ (p 155), and those are made more complicated by the seeming unlikeliness of literal rejuvenation for this group of retirees. But the films also participate in what Roy calls ‘the west as the heroic savior of the eastern man or woman from its own barbarity’ (p 155). The films emphasise the many ways in which relocating to India revives the fortunes, spirits and prospects of the British pensioners.

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Contemporary film traffics in what Srinivas (2005) calls, building on Sudhir Kakar, ‘everyday fantasy’: ‘Films express fantasy, a world of imagination fueled by a desire that has its roots in the conflicts of everyday life’ (p 331). With its ability to convey narrative with moving images and sound, film has distinctive potential to represent the materiality of everyday existence for older people. Without fixating on them, it can evocatively convey clothing, hairstyles, physical frailty, complicated and even contradictory emotional states, and physical and social environments. The fantasy that the films perpetuate is highly reliant on the everyday, just as the British characters’ new everyday is highly reliant on a colonial fantasy. Like the potential of the hotel, the relative abilities of the central white characters depend largely on perspective. As Evelyn says in the second film, “Can we be blamed for feeling that we are too old to change? Too scared of disappointment to start it all again. We get up in the morning. We do our best. Nothing else matters”. The implication is that the British guests will succeed or fail on their own merits and efforts, obfuscating the great efforts of other characters who aid them. Is this life with the dull bits cut out, as Hitchcock drolly describes drama? Or is it life with some of the dull bits transformed into a familiar story of ageing and everyday life set in a locale that is extraordinary but only for some? Acknowledgments This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada as part of its Major Collaborative Research Initiative (Principal Investigator, Pat Armstrong) and Insight Grant (Principal Investigator, Sally Chivers). Thanks to Ryan Gorman and Stephen Katz for their excellent suggestions. Notes 1

2

See Adams and Chivers (2015) for an explanation of this long-time conundrum for care home designers. See Roy (2016) for further discussion of this pattern.

Films Amour (2012) Distributed by Les Films du Losange, France. Directed by Michael Haneke. Because I Said So (2007) Gold Circle Films, US. Distributed by Universal Pictures. Directed by Michael Lehmann. I’ll See You in My Dreams (2015) Jeff Rice Films, US. Distributed by Bleecker Street. Directed by Brett Haley.

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Iris (2001) BBC Films, UK. Distributed by Miramax. Directed by Richard Eyre. A Passage to India (1984) Thorn EMI, UK. Distributed by Columbia Pictures. Directed by David Lean. Quartet (2012) BBC Film, UK. Distributed by Momentum Pictures. Directed by Dustin Hoffman. Slumdog Millionaire (2008) Fox Searchlight, UK. Distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures. Directed by Danny Boyle. Still Mine (2012) Mulmur Feed Company Productions, Canada. Distributed by Mongrel Media. Directed by Michael McGowan. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) Participant Media, UK. Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Directed by John Madden. The Bucket List (2007) Castle Rock Entertainment, US. Distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures. Directed by Rob Reiner. The Savages (2007) This is That, US. Distributed by Fox Searchlight. Directed by Tamara Jenkins. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015) Participant Media, UK. Distributed by Fox Searchlight, Directed by John Madden. References Adams, A. and Chivers, S. (2015) ‘Architecture and aging: the depiction of home in Sarah Polley’s Away from Her’, Age, Culture, Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Journal, no 2, http://ageculturehumanities.org/WP/ architecture-and-aging-the-depiction-of-home-in-sarah-polleysaway-from-her. Baker, J.D. (2012) ‘The multigenerational perioperative nursing workforce: a celebration for labor day’, AORN Journal, vol 96, no 3, pp 231-34. Baker, J.D. (2016) ‘Aging and ageism in perioperative nursing’, AORN Journal, vol 103, no 6, pp 552-4. Brown, W. (2016) ‘Sacrificial citizenship: Neoliberalism, human capital, and austerity politics’, Constellations, vol 23, no 1, pp 3-14. Chivers, S. (2011) The silvering screen: Old age and disability in cinema, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Forster, E.M. (1924) A Passage to India, London: Edward Arnold. Hayes, M. (2015) ‘Moving south: the economic motives and structural context of North America’s emigrants in Cuenca, Ecuador’, Mobilities, vol 10, no 2, pp 267-84. Hitchcock, A. (1960) Interview with Robert Robinson, Picture Parade, BBC television. 5 July.

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Holden, S. (2015) ‘The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel ups the ante’, New York Times, 5 March, www.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/ movies/review-the-second-best-exotic-marigold-hotel-ups-the-ante. html?_r=0. King, R. (2016) ‘Afterword: many ageings, multiple migrations and ambiguous homes’, in K. Walsh and L. Nare (eds) Transnational migration and home in older age, New York, NY: Routledge, pp 239-51. Klippel, H. (2014) ‘The everyday in narrative film’, Photogenie, 15 July, https://cinea.be/the-everyday-narrative-film. Kolářová, K. (2015) ‘“Grandpa lives in paradise now”: biological precarity and the global economy of debility’, Feminist Review, vol 111, no 1, pp 75-87. Ochiai, E. (2014) ‘The meaning of the second demographic transition and the establishment of a mature society’, European societies, vol 16, no 3, pp 343-46. Roy, S. (2016) ‘Slumdog Millionaire: capitalism, a love story’, Journal of Popular Culture, vol 49, no 1, pp 155-73. Sandvine (2015) ‘Global internet phenomena: Africa, Middle East & North America’, December, www.sandvine.com/downloads/ general/global-internet-phenomena/2015/global-internetphenomena-africa-middle-east-and-north-america.pdf. Srinivas, L. (2005) ‘Communicating globalization in Bombay cinema: everyday life, imagination and the persistence of the local’, Comparative American Studies, vol 3, no 3, pp 319-44.

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Between ageing and ageism: portrayals of online dating in later life in Canadian print media Julia Rozanova, Mineko Wada and Laura Hurd Clarke

Introduction The internet has become a major vehicle for individuals of all ages who are looking for love and romance (Couch and Liamputtong, 2008; Alterovitz and Mendelsohn, 2009). Extant research has brought attention to sexuality in later life (Neugebauer-Visano, 1995; Gott, 2006; Hurd Clarke, 2006; Skultety, 2007). A recent BBC television series, Last Tango in Halifax, depicting former high school sweethearts reunited 50 years later through online dating, echoed studies of older adults’ internet use for romantic purposes (Carr, 2004; Dickson et al, 2005; Stephure et al, 2009). Research on online dating in later life and its media portrayals is nascent, but inherits controversies riddling earlier studies. As later life refers to an extensive open-ended period where boundaries between middle age and old age are permeable, the rhetoric of old age can affect those who are not old (yet) and influence them profoundly. Likewise, who is considered as old and with what implications becomes subject to debate and negotiation. Early research on media portrayals of later life found ageist markers of oldness like declining health, loss of physical attractiveness, dried-out romance and presumed social inappropriateness of sexual relationships (McHugh, 2003; Rozanova, 2006, 2010). Research on ageing bodies has found persistent preference for younger women as potential romantic partners among men of all ages, including those over 75 (Alterovitz and Mendelsohn, 2009). This puts social pressure on older women to engage in elaborate beauty work routines to maintain the youthfulness of their bodies and their sexual desirability (Hurd Clarke and Griffin, 2008; Hurd Clarke, 2011). Research into behavior and attitudes among younger people (Valkenburg and Jochen, 2007; Toma and Hancock, 2010; Cali et al,

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2013) suggests the continuing stigma of online dating. But complexities, controversies or norms related to online dating in later life are not yet fully explored. The need for such research is underscored by the fact that 41% of Canadians over the age of 65, and 72% of Canadians over the age of 85, are single – either widowed, divorced, separated or never married (Statistics Canada, 2007). These experiences and their media portrayals may have wider implications both for those over 65 and for individuals in mid-life, shaping their perceptions and expectations of ageing. Based on a study of portrayals of online dating in later life in Canadian newspapers and popular magazines, this chapter examines the cultural ambiguity of intra-generational ageism that permeates the sexual imagery of older men and women. Engaging Goffman’s (1963) concept of managing a spoiled identity as a continuous renegotiation of discrepancies between a person’s actual and virtual identity (that is, how they would like to be seen versus how they are seen), our chapter explores how online dating in later life is alternately portrayed as a vehicle for ‘successful’ ageing among those who defy older age and embrace indefinite youthfulness, and as a litmus test that reduces ageing experiences to portrayals of vulnerability and need. Studying media portrayals illuminates both the taboos and the norms around ageing by exposing both cultural outliers (thus deemed newsworthy) and patterns considered to be conventional, and thus teaches us about everyday consequences we ought to negotiate while growing older today.

Placing later life online dating in context: media portrayals of ageing Research exploring how older adults are portrayed in the various media (Hurd Clarke et al, 2014; Krainitzki, 2014) suggests a dominant theme of intergenerational ageism whereby the contrast between old and young creates stereotypes of older adults as frail, vulnerable, unattractive, dependent and disempowered. Studies have also noted an under-representation of older adults compared with younger adults and under-representation of older women compared with older men (McHugh, 2003; Laliberte Rudman, 2006; Thomas and Shute, 2006; Sedick and Roos, 2011). The media have also ascribed higher social status to youthful-looking, active and leisure-oriented older adults who age ‘successfully’ (Williams et al, 2010). In the early to mid-2000s, the media celebrated older individuals who looked and acted middle-aged or younger (thanks to their disposable incomes) (Laliberte Rudman, 2006; Calasanti, 2007). However, more recent media depictions of older persons, such as Judi Dench’s character of ‘M’ in the James

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Bond films, subvert traditional normative constructions of later life more intricately than simply referring to conspicuous consumption, challenging stereotypical depictions of disempowerment, for example, the intersections of being older and being female (Krainitzki, 2014). Thus, media portrayals of ageing become more polarised in intragenerational terms, comparing older adults with one another by how well they are ageing (Rozanova et al, 2016). Interestingly, research suggests that people tend to believe they are ageing better than their peers and notice changes in other people more than their own (Reichstadt et al, 2010). Thus, the media’s enduring labels may portray in an unfavourable way either ageing per se or only ageing that is not ‘successful’, and characterise as old either all in later life or only those, including middle-aged people, who contravene some standards.

Could (online) romance be a marker of ‘successful’ ageing? Whether romance and sexuality are part of ‘normal’ ageing has been a contested issue. In the past, sexuality was outside of conversation about later life, considered deviant from the norm, and viewed as unpalatable by clinicians, older adults themselves, and the public in general (Roach, 2004). The notion that elders might engage in new romantic and sexual relationships, especially past the death of their spouses, had seemed irrelevant at best and unnatural, absurd and disgusting at the worst to many people, including older adults themselves, their family members and service providers, and gerontologists (Bodner and Cohen-Fridel, 2010). This moral censure around older sexuality, dating and sexual relationships explains their absence in well-established gerontological paradigms such as successful ageing (Rowe and Kahn, 1987) or the socio-emotional selectivity theory (Carstensen et al, 1999). Per the latter theory, as individuals grow older, they narrow their social interactions to maximise receipt of rewarding emotional returns, zooming in on longstanding relationships with familiar people with whom they are already close. However, socio-emotional selectivity theory’s emphasis that older people look to familiar and emotionally satisfying relationships does not anticipate that elders also go out to cyberspace to find new romantic partners. Yet the view of what is expected and normal in later life has been changing. Burgeoning research focuses on re-partnering in later life, studying reasons for, barriers to, and ways in which older adults move in and out of long-term relationships (Koren, 2011; Brown et al, 2012). The stereotype of asexual older adults has also been questioned

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(Adams et al, 2005). Ethnographic research conducted in assisted living facilities for older adults has highlighted varying degrees of residents’ sexual engagement – from hand holding to masturbation to intercourse (Frankowski and Clark, 2009). Active sexuality has been proposed as an indicator that one is ageing successfully (Marshall, 2010). The use of online dating has been found to mitigate the dearth of available new partners and the lack of conventional ways to meet people among both the young-old and the old-old (William et al, 2011). Other research has shown that single, divorced and widowed older adults use the internet as a valuable, convenient resource for seeking romantic relationships (Alterovitz and Mendelsohn, 2009), to learn about changes in sexuality in response to ageing, to explore sexually entertaining materials (Adams et al, 2003), and to enjoy flirting and cyber-sex (Malta, 2007). This chapter argues that the normalisation of online dating among older adults appears to break with former social taboo because of it becoming the subject of newsworthy stories that circulate in public discourse. Thus, studying media portrayals of online dating in later life opens a window on to key norms around ageing and the sanctions for transgressing them, revealing cultural ambiguities about ageing in everyday life. For example, is online dating in later life seen as desirable or just tolerated as it becomes more common? Are older adults who engage in online dating sanctioned for breaking behavioural ‘oughts’ or celebrated as pioneers in ageing well? We address these questions and wider debates about ageism in the following analysis of media portrayals of online later-life dating.

Methods The chapter draws on findings from the study conducted in 2012-14 in which the first author was principal investigator and the other two authors were co-investigators. Data source Texts were searched and retrieved from newspapers and magazines that are popular in Canada published in 2009-11 through the Canadian Business & Current Affairs (CBCA) Complete database and the websites of the selected media. The CBCA Complete indexes over 500 periodicals and daily news sources, more than 95% of which are Canadian, including widely read national and provincial newspapers (such as The Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Star, Vancouver Sun) as well as magazines (for example, Canadian Living, Chatelaine). Articles

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pertaining to digital dating in later life were searched broadly by using subject headings (older people, ageing, dating services, sexuality) and keywords (older adults, older people, senior people, elderly, aged people, online dating, digital dating, cyber dating, e-dating, internet dating, virtual dating, mobile dating, companionship and courtship). For the website search, the top two most prevalent national newspapers (The Globe and Mail, and The National Post) and four of the most popular magazines among middle-aged and older Canadians (Chatelaine, Zoomer, More, and Reader’s Digest) were selected. The same keywords were used to search articles on the websites as were used on the CBCA Complete. There were extremely few articles that portrayed digital dating only in later life: typically, the articles discussed digital dating among middle-aged and older adults, for example among those over the age of 50. Noting that this may reflect the cultural understanding of ageing as a continuum, we adjusted our inclusion criterion to reflect this reality. As well as portraying later-life digital dating, the articles usually mentioned other kinds of dating or other kinds of relationships (such as marriages). Furthermore, as is typical of media portrayals of any topic, the articles included both ‘primary’ insights developed or collected by journalists themselves, and ‘secondary’ reports and quotes from ‘experts’ such as scholars who study later-life relationships, as proof of the article’s rigour (Miller et al, 2012). All ‘candidate’ articles retrieved using the keyword or subject heading search were screened to establish whether they met the inclusion criterion: that digital dating in mid- to later life was the article’s primary focus or it played a significant part within the article’s story. In total, 144 articles were found (29 articles from the CBCA Complete, 42 from The Globe and Mail website, 38 from the Zoomer website, 14 from More website, 14 from the Chatelaine website, four from the National Post website and three from Reader’s Digest website). Table 6.1 presents an overview of data sources. Data analysis We employed an inductive process of analysing the article texts using an approach described by Silverman (2000) whereby concepts that render the essence of the texts’ meanings are generated in a step-wise, inductive process of constant comparison. This approach or its variations has been previously used with success by scholars who have qualitatively analysed media portrayals of various social issues (Rock, 2005; Blakeborough, 2008). After retrieving the articles, we read them exhaustively, and compared the texts with one another to generate categories whereby

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Ageing in everyday life Table 6.1: Overview of data sources CBCA Complete

Websites

N

%

N

%

The Globe and Mail

7

5

42

29

National Post

0

0

4

3

Leader Post

3

2

0

0

Postmedia News

3

2

0

0

Toronto Star

2

1

0

0

Other (for example, The Vancouver Sun, Calgary Herald)

8

6

0

0

Chatelaine

0

0

14

10

More

0

0

14

10

Reader’s Digest

0

0

3

2

Zoomer

0

0

38

26

Other (for example, Canadian Business, Canadian Mennonite)

6

4

0

0

29

20

115

80

Newspapers

Magazines

Total

issues pertaining to online dating in later life were described as part of the broader storyline. As a new category emerged in reading an article, we re-read previous articles to cross-check for matches to the new category. For each article, we coded blocks of text pertaining to every category using the NVivo10 software program. Following initial generation of the categories and initial coding led by one author, all authors met every two to three weeks over six months to discuss and refine the categories and the coding, as the data analysis proceeded. Eventually, we inductively aggregated categories that were similar in meaning and referred to broader common issues that weaved through the texts of many articles into what we called narrative components. As the last step of the analysis, we aggregated narrative components into broader themes that we also iteratively reviewed and refined to most closely render the meanings contained in the data. Such technique for ensuring rigour and trustworthiness of textual data analysis has been frequently used in qualitative research (Silverman, 2000).

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Findings In this section, we present the two key findings from our analysis that most relate to what we consider the everyday experiences of older internet dating-site users, namely digital dating as a catalyst for successful ageing and digital dating as a litmus test to define people as being old. We illustrate the findings by excerpts from the analysed articles, and as journalists based their pieces on diverse sources ranging from Statistics Canada to quotes from older persons and gerontologists, our chosen excerpts capture this diversity. Digital dating as a catalyst for successful ageing One message the articles conveyed was that digital dating was a catalyst for the best possible ageing, based on the freedom of individuals in mid- and later life to own and construct their lives without fear of ridicule. This freedom, however, was relegated mostly to sexuality and the pursuit of an attractive body, reducing the purpose of online dating to sexual needs, as well as downplaying the role of dating in fulfilling other needs in old age, such as love, friendship and companionship. This message was depicted through two interrelated narrative components: responses to the ageing body and normalising dating and sex in later life. Responses to the ageing body This narrative component focused on the embodiment of ageing, suggesting that in order to date, you need to have a ‘good’ body, and reflecting on what ‘good’ means. It described how individuals responded to the ageing of their bodies, including changes in their sexual behaviour that adjusted to or compensated for visible signs of ageing, and the use of medical technologies for ageing management. Most significantly, the references emphasise that a well-functioning body supersedes a good-looking one: The boost in body functioning that older adults gained from about six months of exercise proved more satisfying than any change in appearance, especially among men, according to the research. …with advancing years, a shift in emphasis may occur, one that puts a premium on a well-functioning body over a ‘hot’ body, experts said. (Doheny, 2011)

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This quote exemplifies how privileging a well-functioning body over a ‘hot’ one in later life as the outcome of exercise (which research literature suggests positively influences successful ageing) is gendered. While exercise could potentially lead to better-functioning bodies for all ageing persons, it was implicit that for older women a change in appearance was more important than for men (as suggested by the quote below). The narrative was further explicitly gendered in the discussion about aesthetic attractiveness of the body (for older women) or sexual prowess and vitality (for older men). References to the medical advancements in cosmetic procedures suggested that attractiveness associated with looking younger was an important value for older women. For those who could afford it, looking younger than expected in older age was worth the cost: So, last year she spent $13,000 on a face lift and other cosmetic procedures that proved rejuvenating. ‘I’m absolutely thrilled,’ says Ms. Ray, a real-estate agent in Roanoke, Va. ‘I think a lot of friends in my age bracket would like to try this.’…. Ms. Ray is part of the changing national profile of the typical first-time plastic-surgery candidate – a demographic group that’s well past its first few sags and wrinkles. Elective cosmetic procedures among patients age 65 and older, both surgical and nonsurgical, rose 29% from 2005 to 2010, to more than 680,000, per the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. (Johnson, 2011) Gendering of the responses to the ageing body narrative component also concerned older men in references to maintaining sexual function by medical and pharmaceutical means: The factors driving the rise of STD’s [sic] [sexually transmitted diseases] in the older set include seniors living longer, healthier lives and a new class of medications, which include Viagra, making more sex possible. (Jameson, 2011) Using Viagra to medically manage the ageing body was presented on one hand as resulting in positive outcomes like extended sexual functioning, but on the other hand as driving the rise of sexually transmitted diseases and thus problematic.

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Normalising dating and sex in later life The second narrative component of digital dating as a catalyst for successful ageing was normalising dating and sex in later life. The articles discussed how sexual engagement benefits ageing health, portraying online dating as a vehicle and a catalyst for a longer, healthier and more fulfilled later life. Again, the use of professional-sounding research data bolsters the truth-claims of this component: Have regular sex – no matter how old you are: Sex keeps you young by keeping your rejuvenating hormones high. Scientists have looked at 100-year-old men and women who have maintained sexual intimacy and it turns out these centenarians living in Okinawa, Japan, and Bama, China, have higher levels of testosterone, DHEA [dehydroepiandrosterone] and estrogen than typical 70-year-olds in North America! (Turner, 2010) Even Health Canada has a brochure on sex late in life. While not aimed specifically at boomers, the list of reasons to have sex is enticing, especially if one is as concerned about staying young as this generation: having sex can apparently strengthen bones and muscles, boost the immune system, prevent wrinkles around the eyes, and is the exercise equivalent of walking up two flights of stairs. (Gulli, 2010) One way in which the articles made later-life sexuality more acceptable was by pointing out that online dating often results in marriage: Citing another survey of more than 11,000 married people, Dr. Fisher said: ‘One out of six marriages made in the past three years were between people who met online – more than twice the number who met in bars, clubs or other social events and many more times than through church or place of worship’. (Pinker, 2011) Digital dating and sex in later life was also normalised by pointing out that because of their experience older adults choose their partners more wisely: Seniors ‘have a better idea in their minds as to what has worked and not worked in relationships.... Seniors get a

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bit better in balancing the three of them: compatibility, chemistry, attractiveness’. (Hauch, 2011) This excerpt attributes superior skills to seniors with respect to choosing partners and assessing compatibility as a result of previous long-term relationship experience. Moreover, psychological maturity translated into better sex in later life: Dr. Kleinplatz’s findings, published in the current issue of the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, suggest what many people in long-term relationships believe that great sex flourishes in relationships that deepen with maturity. (Bielski, 2009) But portrayals of sex in later life were not limited only to marriage or long-term relationships. The normalising dating and sex in later life narrative component supported the idea that dating and sex among older adults included options other than marriage. Just like they did in their youth in the 1960s, older adults engaged in casual romantic and sexual relationships, and continued to face the health risks associated with them: Across the U.S., and especially in communities that attract a lot of seniors, the free-love generation is continuing to enjoy an active – if not always healthy – sex life. At a stage in life when many would expect sexually transmitted diseases to be waning, ageing baby boomers are once again busting stereotypes, setting records and breaking rules. (Jameson, 2011) While this excerpt explains ageing adults’ sexual behavior, it also showcases it as norm-breaking. By saying that older adults are busting stereotypes and that sexual deviance labels are harder to attach to ageing baby boomers now than in their youth, the following excerpt highlights constant social and moral scrutiny of dating and sex in later life: More than half of boomers surveyed (57 per cent) feel freer now that they are older and the vast majority (82 per cent) believe it’s important to have an active sex life at every age. (Canada NewsWire, 2010)

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Perhaps ageing baby boomers have literally grown out of societal judgement, and use digital dating to pursue uninhibited love and sex. The following excerpt makes the point that it is ‘good news for everyone who is getting older’, thereby indicating that dating and sex in later life are becoming the norm and markers of ageing successfully: From what Greaves has seen, most of the people on the site are not looking for pen pals. ‘There’s some pretty blatant flirtation ... we can see from many of the users that a lot are looking for love, and that includes physical love. That’s good news for everyone [emphasis added] who’s getting older.’ (Hauch, 2011) Normalisation of dating and sex in later life also occurred through the presentation of ageing itself as inherently beneficial for the quality of one’s sexual experiences. Improved sex as a person gets older was portrayed as a normal progression: When it comes to the sex lives of those 40 plus, the Cialis sex survey has some good news as well: out of the random sample of 1,000 respondents, 61 per cent stated that sex has become increasingly better with age (practice makes perfect!), and 40 per cent of those over 40 believed their sex lives were the best during their 40s or later in life. (Robinson, 2010) Statistics were used as evidence for the normalisation of dating and sex in mid- and later life. The articles suggested that if an attitude or a behaviour was common among most people in an age group, this attitude or behavior was becoming the norm: Nearly half of boomers reported shedding their sexual inhibitions since turning 50, and feeling sexually satisfied. In the U.S., 85 per cent of male boomers and 61 per cent of female boomers surveyed by a polling firm said that sexual satisfaction was ‘critical’ to their relationships and quality of life, per AARP, which advocates for the over-50 crowd. (Gulli, 2010)

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Digital dating as a litmus test to define people as being ‘old’ This interpretative theme was created to highlight how digital dating showcases the gap that separates the young from the old, through two narrative components apparent in the research. The first one, reasons for online dating in later life, emphasised engagement in online dating as later-life specific factors made other options unavailable. The second narrative component, risks of online dating in later life, emphasised that physical, financial and emotional costs of this activity were higher for older adults. Reasons for online dating in later life This narrative component suggested that the main reason for older adults’ engaging in online dating concerned major loss, such as the loss of a partner to death or divorce, the loss of family roles that had anchored one’s life until one’s older parents died or adult children left home, and/or the loss of social networks when friends died or relocated. Digital dating was framed as a way in which older adults could cope with these losses: After losing a loved one or completing a divorce, many baby boomers are considering getting back into the dating pool. In busy times filled with work responsibilities and family obligations, logging on to the computer to find a date can be much easier than finding a date in a social setting. Internet dating sites often provide a good number of candidates for busy people to consider. (Leader Post, 2011) In this way, digital dating was portrayed simultaneously as a new beginning and a reminder of an end: ‘My life led up to this [trying online dating]. I had been divorced for 13 years, my children were grown, and with the death of my mother – not to be unkind – I was finally free of criticism about things like dyeing my hair,’ she says. (Johnson, 2011) The portrayals of online dating as a means of starting anew emphasised the demographic disadvantages experienced by older women, who outnumbered men in older cohorts. The excerpt below illustrated both the struggles and the inter- and intra-generational competition

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for eligible partners that were experienced by older women when they initiated online dating: Others in her age group, though, are less laid-back about looking for love or companionship online. And for good reason: In the 55-69 age group, Canadian women outnumber men by more than 120,000. That’s reflected on dating sites. At zoomersingles.com, about 75 per cent of registered users are women, says Mclean Greaves, vicepresident of interactive content at ZoomerMedia, part of Moses Znaimer’s online community. (Hauch, 2011) This article describes the efforts of older women to increase the visibility of their profiles as they are competing for scarce potential romantic partners. The shrinking pool of eligible men through death makes older women try dating online. That the shortage of romantic opportunities is associated with ageing is explicit in articles highlighting more opportunities purportedly available for younger persons, as the following excerpt demonstrates: Think of teenagers, they have a wide social network, they go out and they have a lot of opportunities to meet people. But as you get older these social circles get smaller and the people at your work are the people you know. (Aske, 2011) These articles suggest that ageing produces constraints for initiating new romantic relationships, which makes older adults turn to digital dating despite residual stigma attached to it: ‘Once seen as the last resort for a bunch of lonely geeks, online-dating services have gradually shed much of the stigma formerly associated with them’ (The Economist, 2011). Further to implying that some of the stigma prevails, such articles presented justification for why older adults engaged in an activity that exposed them to judgement: digital dating offered technical advantages and economies of scale to deal with the limitations and constraints that older individuals faced in a shrinking romantic market: One in three of unmarried boomers are using dating sites to meet people with similar interests or to connect with people they wouldn’t otherwise meet in their daily lives. In fact, Boomers over 50 are the fastest growing demographic on Match.com, with a recent total of four million of them on the site. (Bumstead, 2011)

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But, according to the following excerpt, the digital dating market demands hard rhetorical work from older adults to present themselves in a way that is competitive, which can be dehumanising and demeaning: The sites treat human beings as if they are goods that can be fully defined according to a set of standard attributes, in much the same way that, say, a digital camera can be described by the number of megapixels that it has and other characteristics. (The Economist, 2011) Risks of online dating in later life The second narrative component encapsulates how the risks associated with digital dating are particularly high for older adults. One risk was premature emotional intimacy resulting in compromised sexual health: Online daters hit feelings of intimacy faster because they don’t have the social risks and awkwardness associated with building face-to-face relationships. This could lower the perception of sexual risk when a couple does come faceto-face. (Ryan, 2011a) These articles emphasise that the establishment of emotional intimacy online happens much quicker in comparison to offline dating, and leads to precipitated physical intimacy. In part, this was attributed to older daters being portrayed as gullible in perceiving inflated online dating profiles as authentic. Purportedly, they had a likewise limited understanding of risky sex behaviours, which could jeopardise their personal health and safety: The rapport and trust among dating partners who meet online may curtail negotiations about sexual safety when they meet in person, and increase the spread of STIs [sexually transmitted infections], Masaro says. Per the Public Health Agency of Canada, since 1999 there has been a startling rise in STIs among sexually active older adults. (Ryan, 2011b) Especially in cases where previous losses left a void in their life, older adults were portrayed as rushing into emotional intimacy, but at risk falling victim to fraud by professional crooks and extortionists,

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who purposefully take advantage of their loneliness and exploit their trustfulness: An 80-year-old man found himself scammed out of $80,000 through online dating by a supposed British nurse who wanted to come to Canada. The only action the octogenarian got from his dating site was numerous requests for money, which the elderly man would send in increments of about $1,500. Online dating has opened up new frontiers to scammers, and RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] are warning residents to be suspicious. Police say the man may have to sell his home. (Postmedia News, 2010)

Discussion While public agencies such as the American Association of Retired Persons explicitly define later life as 50+ years, the media in our research made no attempt to define their terms. This is important and perhaps deliberate, with the media outlining a vast time frame within which success of ageing and its cultural norms must be negotiated, starting as early as 40s or 50s. Previous work on media portrayals of ageing has revealed a polarised ageism between successful and unsuccessful agers (Blakeborough, 2008; Rozanova, 2010; Miller et al, 2012). Our analysis extends this insight by highlighting the dual and mediating role that online dating plays in media stories. On the one hand, as more older individuals engage in the practice and academic articles provide confirmation of its popularity, online dating is depicted as a desired and successful, if not common, means of ageing (Couch and Liamputtong, 2008; Stephure et al, 2009; Alterovitz and Mendelson, 2013). The stories normalise and encourage sexual engagement in later life by associating the benefits with longevity and amelioration of age-related illness. They centre on protagonists resembling in terms of their personal qualities Judy Dench’s extraordinary cinematic character of M (Krainitzki, 2014) who are celebrated for transgressing formerly established norms. The articles showcase online dating as a catalyst for new beginnings, redefining life and experiencing sexual pleasures with a new partner. Maintaining one’s attractiveness and sexual function through medical and non-medical procedures, and creating a youthful image in online dating profile, is an integral part of this process. Older adults’ maturity, ability to judge other people’s character and awareness of their own needs allow them to use social

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media to expand their architecture of romantic choices and possibilities for new companionship, intimacy and love (Illouz, 2012). Online dating expands opportunities for successful ageing, as having a romantic partner and maintaining a sexual relationship in later life signifies staying youthful (William et al, 2011; Swift and Tate, 2013). On the other hand, echoing extant research into the stigma of online dating (Cali et al, 2013), media portrayals suggest that online dating is the means by which lonely and gullible older adults manage their ‘spoiled identities’ (Goffman, 1963). For Goffman and the sociologists who followed him (for example, Burns, 1992), a ‘spoiled identity’ is a process where a person is ‘discredited’ due to a ‘discrepancy between an individual’s actual social identity and his [sic] virtual one’ (1963, p 41). There is a failure in personal information management whereby the techniques, performances or repertoires of virtual self-presentation cannot conceal the discredited realities of ageing existence. Where online dating is pursued in later life for sad reasons like a partner’s death or divorce, or results in sexually transmitted diseases or empty bank accounts, these dilemmas are relegated to the dramaturgical ‘back stage’ as ‘front-stage’ management is imposed by the advocating of anti-ageing standards such as air-brushing photographs, undergoing cosmetic surgery or taking Viagra. Thus, online dating was portrayed in our research as a litmus test that revealed unpleasantness and failures of ageing, a theme linked to well-established stereotypes about later life as a period of loss and decline and older adults as naïve and incompetent (Blakeborough, 2008; Thomas and Shute, 2006; Sedick and Roos, 2011). These images have already been linked in economic and sociopolitical domains by critical gerontologists (Holstein and Minkler, 2003; Martinson and Minkler, 2006), but our findings highlight them in the domain of the media and culture. Such victim blaming reflects neoliberal economic and socio-political rationality, as has been noted in the extant research concerning media portrayals of later life (McHugh, 2003; Rudman and Molke, 2009; Rozanova et al, 2016). Online dating for older adults is thus a microcosm that compresses both negative and positive ageist cultures within narrative strands about later life sexuality. Such narratives become lived, however, because ageing successfully online requires great effort by older users since the costs of failure can be significant. Imagine the online dater who does fail, and whose status as somebody experiencing age-related losses or declines becomes visible and reinforced. In sum, online dating in our media stories catalysed successful ageing by extending older adults’ romantic lives but simultaneously showcased age-related losses that had left them in want of a partner. The braiding

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of these two themes and their narrative components reflects the fact that ageing norms are contested, their boundaries are porous and online dating is alternately used depending on the context to make opposing claims about somebody’s ageing (that is, no longer able to pass as younger) or somebody’s ageing successfully (that is, ageing better than others). Earlier research found that the media marginalised older adults in general (Barak, 1998; Cohen, 2002), but some combination of qualities, behaviours and context may allow select groups of older adults to avoid derision and even be cast in laudatory ways (Krainitzki, 2014). Our findings go a step further to suggest that rather than alternating between all and select groups of seniors, negative and positive stereotypes in media portrayals alternate between the ‘front stage’ of older adults’ online dating experiences and the ‘back stage’ of their age-related losses from which online dating purportedly stems. Thus, the vulnerability of older adults’ identity as sexual beings is that their intimate lives are under review and societal scrutiny both in the front and back stages, in Goffman’s dramaturgical terms (Goffman, 1963). The coherence of online dating as a social world is also organised through the metaphors of professional vocabularies, such that the reputational boundaries between admirable and pathetic reflect wider notions of successful and unsuccessful ageing, articulated in the articles’ use of words like ‘active’, ‘healthier lives’, ‘well-functioning body’, ‘rejuvenating’ and ‘staying young’ on one hand, and ‘losing’, ‘risk’, ‘last resort’, ‘stigma’, or ‘scam’ on the other. Even the meaning of the word ‘older’ in the articles was deliberately vague, referring both to middle-aged and old-old individuals, an ambiguity typical of media portrayals of controversial issues in the ageing field (Williams et al, 2010; Sedick and Roos, 2011). Finally, we need to ask why the media portray online dating in later life in the ways they do. On the surface, extant literature suggests that the media strive to elicit some surprise in the reader to make a story newsworthy, while simultaneously appealing to the mass audience by resonating with the reader’s preconceived notions (Rudman and Molke, 2009; Glenn et al, 2013). More deeply, portrayals of online dating grapple with some fundamental existential dilemmas of ageing whereby the negotiation of growing older is buffeted by unrealistic ideals of successful ageing and the cruel spoiling of identities due to being old, single, alone and abandoned. One of these dilemmas is about sexuality and whether or not the media can play an advocacy role in offering up stories of individuals whose behaviour and attitudes

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refute and subvert the stereotypes about later life, even if such stories are contained within narratives of romance and ‘active’ sexual desire. It is hoped that this strand of the research will be explored in other media sources or through topics such as online dating across the life course, later-life sexuality and more established relationships like marriages. Future research might also investigate whether the volume, intensity and narrative components of media coverage of online later life dating may increase over time. And while we believe that what we discovered in Canadian media is an important exercise in the mediatisation of later life, it would be exciting to learn about how our findings resonate with media depictions elsewhere and where the themes and narrative components we uncovered might suggest other cultural ambiguities and negotiable identities around ageing and ageism. Acknowledgement This study was supported by the grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: ‘Digital dating: online romance and sexuality in later life’, principal investigator Julia Rozanova and co-investigator Laura Hurd Clarke. Research grant 410-20111397, 2011-2013. References Adams, M.S., Oye, J. and Parker, T.S. (2003) ‘Sexuality of older adults and the Internet: from sex education to cybersex’, Sexual and Relationship Therapy, vol 18, pp 405-15. Adams, N., Stubbs, D. and Woods, V. (2005) ‘Psychological barriers to Internet usage among older adults in the UK’, Medical Informatics and the Internet in Medicine, vol 30, no 1, pp 3-17. Alterovitz, S.S. and Mendelsohn, G.A. (2009) ‘Partner preferences across the life span: online dating by older adults’, Psychology and Aging, vol 24, no 2, pp 513-17. Alterovitz, S.S. and Mendelsohn, G.A. (2013) ‘Relationship goals of middle-aged, young-old, and old-old Internet daters: an analysis of online personal ads’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 27, no 2, pp 159-65. Aske, S. (2011) ‘Web of love: more middle-aged people than ever are looking for love on the Internet’, Postmedia News, 30 May, http://www.pressreader.com/canada/cape-bretonpost/20110602/282067683536038 Barak, B. (1998) Inner-ages of middle-aged prime-lifers’, The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, vol 46, no 3, pp 189-228.

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Bielski, Z. (2009) ‘The secret to good sex: aging’, The Globe and Mail, 3 July, p L2. Blakeborough, D. (2008) ‘“Old people are useless”: representations of aging on the Simpsons’, Canadian Journal on Aging, vol 27, no 1, pp 57-67. Bodner, E. and Cohen-Fridel, S. (2010) ‘Relations between attachment styles, ageism and quality of life in late life’, International Psychogeriatrics, vol 22, no 8, pp 1353-61. Brown, S., Bulanda, J. and Lee, G. (2012) ‘Transitions into and out of cohabitation in later life’, Journal of Marriage and Family, vol 74, no 4, pp 774-93. Bumstead, C. (2011) ‘Boomers dominating social media realm’. Zoomer, February, www.zoomermag.com. Burns, T. (1992) Erving Goffman, London: Routledge. Calasanti, T. (2007) ‘Bodacious berry, potency wood and the aging monster: gender and age relations in anti-aging ads’, Social Forces, vol 86, no 1, pp 335-55. Cali, B., Coleman, J. and Campbell, C. (2013) ‘Stranger danger? Women’s self-protection intent and the continuing stigma of online dating’, Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, vol 16, no 12, pp 853-7. Canada NewsWire (2010) ‘Canadian boomers are getting frisky and risky’, 18 October, https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/ canadian-boomers-are-getting-frisky---and-risky-545705622.html Carr, D. (2004) ‘The desire to date and remarry among older widows and widowers’, Journal of Marriage and Family, vol 66, no 4, pp 105168. Carstensen, L.L., Isaacowitz, D.M. and Charles, S.T. (1999) ‘Taking time seriously: a theory of socioemotional selectivity’, American Psychologist, vol 54, pp 165-81. Cohen, H. (2002) ‘Developing media literacy skills to challenge television’s portrayal of older women’, Journal of Educational Gerontology, vol 28, no 7, pp 599-620. Couch, D., and Liamputtong, P. (2008) ‘Online dating and mating: the use of the internet to meet sexual partners’, Qualitative Health Research, vol 18, no 2, pp 268-79. Dickson, F., Hughes, P. and Walker, K. (2005) ‘An exploratory investigation into dating among later life women’, Western Journal of Communication, vol 69, no 1, pp 67-82. Doheny, K. (2011) ‘With age, focus on body shifts from appearance to function’, US News, August, http://health.usnews.com.

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Frankowski, A.C. and Clark, L.J. (2009) ‘Sexuality and intimacy in assisted living: residents’ perspectives and experiences’, Sexuality Research and Social Policy, vol 6, pp 25-37. Glenn, N., McGannon, K. and Spence, J. (2013) ‘Exploring media representations of weight-loss surgery’, Qualitative Health Research, vol 23, no 5, 631-44. Goffman, E. (1963) Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Gott, M. (2006) ‘Sexual health and the new ageing’, Age and Ageing, vol 35, no 2, pp 106-7. Gulli, C. (2010) ‘Health – forever young – boomer health, part 1 of 3’, Maclean’s, vol 123, no 35, p 64. Hauch, V. (2011) ‘Seniors seek seniors in cyberspace: online dating tips, Valerie Hauch. Online dating services take off as baby boomers get older’, Toronto Star, 15 April, p L1. Holstein, M. and Minkler, M. (2003) ‘Self, society, and the “new gerontology”’, The Gerontologist, vol 43, no 6, pp 787-96. Hurd Clarke, L. (2011) Facing age: Women growing older in anti-aging culture, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Hurd Clarke, L. and Griffin, M. (2008) ‘Visible and invisible ageing: beauty work as a response to ageism’, Ageing & Society, vol 28, no 5, pp 653-74. Hurd Clarke, L., Bennett, E.V. and Liu, C. (2014) ‘Aging and masculinity: portrayals in men’s magazines’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 31, no 1, pp 26-33. Illouz, E. (2012) Why love hurts, Cambridge: Polity Press. Jameson, M. (2011) ‘Danger zone: seniors’ sex lives are up and so are STD cases’, The Windsor Star, 19 May, p C3. Johnson, R. (2011) ‘Staying fit: a nip and a tuck. The 65-plus crowd is signing up for cosmetic surgery, but may not recognize the risks’, Wall Street Journal (online), 31 October, http://ezproxy.library.ubc. ca/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/900974801?acc ountid=14656. Koren, C. (2011) ‘Continuity and discontinuity: the case of second couplehood in old age’, The Gerontologist, vol 51, no 5, pp 687-98. Krainitzki, E. (2014) ‘Judi Dench’s age-appropriateness and the role of M: challenging normative temporality’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 29, pp 32-40. Laliberte Rudman, D. (2006) ‘Positive aging and its implications for occupational possibilities in later life’, Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, vol 73, no 3, pp 188-92.

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Leader Post (2011) ‘Older adults turning to online dating’, Leader Post, 26 January, p B7. Malta, S. (2007) ‘Love actually! Older adults and their romantic Internet relationships’ Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society, vol 5, pp 84-102. Marshall, B.L. (2010) ‘Science, medicine and virility surveillance: “sexy seniors” in the pharmaceutical imagination’, Sociology of Health and Illness, vol 32, no 2, pp 211-24. Martinson, M. and Minkler, M. (2006) ‘Civic engagement and older adults: a critical perspective’, The Gerontologist, vol 46, no 3, pp 318-24. McHugh, K. (2003) ‘Three faces of ageism: society, image and place’, Ageing & Society, vol 23, no 2, pp 165-85. Miller, E.A., Tyler, D.A., Rozanova, J. and Mor, V. (2012) ‘National newspaper portrayal of U.S. nursing homes: periodic treatment of topic and tone’, Milbank Quarterly, vol 90, no 4, pp 725-61. Neugebauer-Visano, R. (1995) Seniors and sexuality: Experiencing intimacy in later life, Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. Pinker, S. (2011) ‘Love is the drug, but work is no longer the place to score’, The Globe and Mail, 14 February, p B7. Postmedia News (2010) ‘Dating scam bilks 80-year-old out of $80,000’, Postmedia News, 8 July, http://ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login?url=http: //search.proquest.com/docview/607029093?accountid=14656. Reichstadt, J., Sengupta, G., Depp, C., Palinkas, L. and Jeste. D. (2010) ‘Older adults’ perspectives on successful aging: qualitative interviews’, American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 18, no 7, pp 567-75. Roach, S. (2004) ‘Sexual behavior of nursing home residents: staff perceptions and responses’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, vol 48, no 4, pp 371-79. Robinson, T. (2010) ‘And the sex survey reveals’, Zoomer, October, www.zoomermag.com. Rock, M. (2005) ‘Diabetes portrayals in North American print media: a qualitative and quantitative analysis’, American Journal of Public Health, vol 95, no 10, pp 1832-8. Rowe, J. and Kahn, R. (1987) ‘Human aging: usual and successful’, Science, vol 237, no 4811, pp 143-9. Rozanova, J. (2006) ‘Newspaper portrayals of health and illness among Canadian seniors: Who ages healthily and at what cost?’, International Journal of Aging and Later Life, vol 1, no 2, pp 111-39. Rozanova, J. (2010) ‘Discourse of successful aging in The Globe and Mail: insights from critical gerontology’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 24, pp 213-22.

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Rozanova, J., Miller, E.A., and Wetle, T. (2016) ‘Depictions of nursing home residents in US newspapers: successful ageing vs frailty’, Ageing & Society An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol 36, no 1, pp 17-41. Rudman, D. and Molke, D. (2009) ‘Forever productive: the discursive shaping of later life workers in contemporary Canadian newspapers’, Work, vol 32, no 4, pp 377-89. Ryan, D. (2011a) ‘Online chemistry can lead to off-line sexual diseases: expert’, Postmedia News, 26 June, http://ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/874236519?accou ntid=14656. Ryan, D. (2011b) ‘Online dating linked to rise in STDs’, Leader Post, 27 June, p A6. Sedick, S. and Roos, V. (2011) ‘Older people’s portrayal in the print media: implications for intergenerational relations’, Journal of Psychology in Africa, vol 21, no 4, pp 549-54. Silverman, D. (2000) ‘Analyzing talk and text’, in N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds) Handbook of qualitative research, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp 821-34. Skultety, K. (2007) ‘Addressing issues of sexuality with older couples’, Generations, vol 31, no 3, 31-7. Statistics Canada (2007) ‘A portrait of seniors in Canada’, 27 February, http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/olc-cel/olc.action?objId=89-519X&objType=2&lang=en&limit=0. Stephure, R., Boon, S., MacKinnon, S. and Deveau, V. (2009) ‘Internet initiated relationships: associations between age and involvement in online dating’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol 14, no 3, pp 658-81. Swift, A. and Tate, R. (2013) ‘Themes from older men’s lay definitions of successful aging as indicators of primary and secondary control beliefs over time: the Manitoba follow-up study’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 27, no 4, pp 410-18. The Economist (2011) ‘Love at first byte: online dating’, The Economist, vol 398, no 8714, pp 51-4. Thomas, K. and Shute, R. (2006) ‘The old and mentally ill in Australia: doubly stigmatised’, Australian Psychologist, vol 41, no 3, pp 186-92. Toma, C. and Hancock, J. (2010) ‘Looks and lies: The role of physical attractiveness in online dating self-presentation and deception’, Communication Research, vol 37, no 10, pp 335-51. Turner, N. (2010) ‘10 easy ways to improve your health today: simple, fast, effective things you can do to be healthier right now’, Chatelaine, November, www.chatelaine.com.

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Valenburg, P. and Jochen, P. (2007) ‘Online communication and adolescent well-being: Testing the stimulation versus the displacement hypothesis, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, vol 12, no 4, pp 1169-82. William, D., Locker, L., Briley, K., Ryan, R. and Scott, A. (2011) ‘What do older adults seek in their potential romantic partners? Evidence from online personal ads’, International Journal of Aging and Human Development, vol 72, no 1, pp 67-82. Williams, A., Wadleigh, P. and Ylänne, V. (2010) ‘Images of older people in UK magazine advertising: toward a typology’, International Journal of Aging and Human Development, vol 71, no 2, pp 83-114.

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Part 2 Embodiments

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Part 2: introduction Stephen Katz One of my long-term interests, and one that inspires this part of the book, is the ageing body. In my earlier Foucauldian studies (Katz, 1996), I examined the historical disciplines, texts and rationalities that transformed the aged body into a separable senile form of life, encompassing new scientific truths about ageing. In more recent work, I have reviewed research on ageing and falling, and what I term the ‘phenomenology of gravity’ (Katz, 2015), to suggest that understanding bodily ageing invites a phenomenological and material explanation of the relationships that connect environment, experience and subjectivity. With this research I also became more aware of the academic tendency to neglect older and vulnerable ‘fourth age’ bodies, along with general ageist assumptions in the literature that loss of physical control symbolises a passage into status decline. My work and that of others (for example, Öberg, 1996; Faircloth, 2003; Gilleard and Higgs, 2013) has grown in reaction to problems of the absent ageing body and embodiment in gerontology and related fields, where the body’s role in later life continues to be depicted as a rather passive and homogeneous effect of health, risk and longevity ‘factors’. As Gilleard and Higgs remark about ageing research, ‘While population ageing, ageing as “risk” or “vulnerability” and ageing as status change are important academic preoccupations, it is the ageing of bodies that remains the ineradicable concern of persons, confronting, in their own ageing body, the essential intransience of their lives’ (2013, p 21). At the same time, the ageing body is largely sidelined within the influential sub-field of the sociology of body itself (see, for example, Crossley, 2006; Petersen, 2007; Shilling, 2012), whose proponents’ critiques of consumer society and social regulation rarely include the commercialisation of ‘active ageing’ lifestyles or anti-ageing products, which have grown increasingly ubiquitous. One response to the problem of the absent ageing body has been the work of sociologists and critical gerontologists such as Mike Featherstone and Mike Hepworth (1998), Julia Twigg (2006), Wainwright and Turner (2006) and Emmanuelle Tulle (2008), who look to the embodiment of the life course in everyday cultures such as sport, dance and care. A second response has come from feminist gerontology, whose scholars encourage a dialogue between body sociologists, gerontologists and

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gender studies researchers, in order to link anti-sexism with antiageism, and sexual inequality with age inequality (Woodward, 1999; Holland, 2004; Calasanti and Slevin, 2006). Feminist research on age also links the youth-based sexual politics of appearance with our culture’s disparaging of older women. Despite the ‘re-sexualisation’ of ageing (Marshall and Katz, 2006, 2012), the imperative to grow older without the visible signs of ageing affects women most prominently. These sociological, critical gerontological and feminist critiques align closely with this part of the book and its orientation to bodily life as a site where dominant cultural narratives and forms of expertise about ageing gather into various ‘embodiments’. Thus, embodiments, the theme of Part 2, is a way to signal the inseparability of the physical realities of ageing from their lived material contexts in which changes in age and time are culturally mediated. The conceptually innovative and ethnographic investigations in the following chapters, complementing those on materialities in Part 1, take as axiomatic that, just as the embodiment of ageing has a subjective dimension, the subjectivity of ageing has a physical dimension. This dimension is materialised in the activities, environments and social systems in which we grow older and find meaning, including those spaces and moments often trivialised or disregarded in mainstream research. In their studies of sexuality and touch, driving and cars, dance and dementia, clothing and dress, and Fitbits and self-tracking, the authors in this part of the book also expand the everyday contexts of ageing in ways that transcend the positive– negative binaries that typically frame the perceptions of the ageing body. In their place, they offer insightful glimpses of the contradictory cultural and moral orders wherein people experience embodiments of ageing as a fractured process of resisting, accepting, denying and recreating ageing. References Calasanti, T.M. and Slevin, K.F. (eds) (2006) Age matters: Realigning feminist thinking, New York, NY: Routledge. Crossley, N. (2006) Reflexions in the flesh: The body in late modern society, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Faircloth, C.A. (ed) (2003) Aging bodies: Images and everyday experience, Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Featherstone, M. and Hepworth, M. (1998) ‘Ageing, the lifecourse and the sociology of embodiment’, in G. Scambler and P. Higgs (eds) Modernity, medicine and health, London: Routledge, pp 147-75. Gilleard, C. and Higgs, P. (2013) Ageing, corporality and embodiment, London: Anthem Press.

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Holland, S. (2004) Alternative femininities: Body, age and identity, Oxford and New York, NY: Berg. Katz, S. (1996) Disciplining old age: The formation of gerontological knowledge, Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia. Katz, S. (2015) ‘Ageing, risk and the falling body’, in J. Twigg and W. Martin (eds) Routledge handbook of cultural gerontology, London and New York, NY: Routledge, pp 165-72. Marshall, B. L. and Katz, S. (2006) ‘From androgyny to androgens: Re-sexing the aging body’, in T. Calasanti and K. F. Slevin (eds) Age matters: Realigning feminist thinking, New York, NY: Routledge, pp 75-97. Marshall, B.L. and Katz, S. (2012) ‘The embodied life course: postageism or the renaturalization of gender?’, Societies, vol 2, no 4, pp 222-34. Öberg, P. (1996) ‘The absent body – a social gerontological paradox,’ Ageing & Society, vol 16, no 6, pp 701-19. Petersen, A. (2007) The body in question: A socio-cultural approach, London: Routledge. Shilling, C. (2012) The body and social theory (3rd edn), London: Sage Publications. Tulle, E. (2008) Ageing, the body and social change, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Twigg, J. (2006) The body in health and social care, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wainwright, S. and Turner, B.S. (2006) ‘“Just crumbling to bits”? An exploration of the body, ageing, injury and career in classical ballet dancers,’ Sociology, vol 40, no 2, pp 237-55. Woodward, K. (ed) (1999) Figuring age: Women, bodies, generations, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

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SEVEN

Closer to touch: sexuality, embodiment and masculinity in older men’s lives Linn J. Sandberg

We sleep in separate bedrooms for many years, not to disturb each other during sleep. Before going to bed I sat on Iris’ bedside and caressed/scratched her back for a while before she got tired and went to sleep.… Slept well and had no pain anywhere in my body. Iris massaged my back and shoulders. Crawled into her bed and we enjoyed the warmth of each other’s bodies for half an hour. These are the words of an 84-year-old Swedish man, Owe, from a ‘body diary’ he was asked to write about experiences of embodiment in everyday life as an older man. The narrative of how he and his wife sleep in separate beds could be understood as a narrative of asexual old age, how the significance of sexuality diminishes in later life. But when Owe describes his everyday life with his wife, both in the diary and in a later interview, sexuality and desire are there as significant themes – although not in the shape of intercourse. Instead, it is touch, as in the opening quote, that is emphasised. Lying naked together in bed, caressing each other or just giving a ‘pat on the bum’ are examples of touch that Owe mentions and that are experienced as important aspects of sexuality in his current phase of life. Owe’s experiences are not unique; among the diaries collected and the interviews conducted as part of my research on masculinity, sexuality, embodiment and ageing, many different narratives of touch appeared. This chapter closely examines three Swedish men’s narratives as they emerged in diary writings and interviews undertaken for this research. Starting with the 72-year-old Fritz, I discuss how the ageing male body as a ‘sexual body of touch’ destabilises and sometimes emerges as an alternative to a sexual phallic male body. Thereafter I explore the narrative of 78-year-old Lennart on how illness, ageing, touch and

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dependence are interwoven. Finally, I turn to Edvard’s narrative on how touch, laughter and carefree spontaneity are connected in later life sexuality, and proposed as an alternative to a serious and teleological reproductive sexuality of youth and mid-life. These narratives and body diaries, as this chapter demonstrates, are particularly useful methodological resources with which to explore ageing embodiment in everyday life. Everyday touch, a touch that exists on the borderlands of the sexual and the non-sexual, is the overall focus of this chapter. To begin with, I present the background to this project, and discuss how older men, sexuality and embodiment became my research interests and how the ideas of feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray (1980) helped inform my theory of touch. Overall, I wish to contribute to the conversation about older men between studies of gender, men and masculinities, and feminist and cultural gerontologies, where the focus on older men has been notably lacking. Feminist gerontology has been predominantly occupied with the lives and experiences of older women, while studies of men and masculinities have centred almost exclusively on boys, younger men and men in midlife. Although there has been some notable research on ageing masculinity and old men (see, for example, Calasanti, 2004; Spector-Mersel, 2006; Hearn and Sandberg, 2009; Sandberg, 2011; Thompson and Barnes Langendoerfer, 2016; Bartholomeaus and Tarrant, 2016), much work remains to be done on theorising older men’s embodiment as gendered.

Viagra-inflated sex athletes or impotent old men? Background to the study In a way, it all started in the early mornings as I saw the sun rise over the little forest outside the window of the hospital where I worked during my undergraduate studies. During the day I took university classes in sociology and gender studies, while at weekends and in the evenings I undertook care work. From this genuinely embodied experience of caring for older, ill and frail people emerged a theoretical interest in ageing and embodiment. In particular, the topics of men and masculinities spurred my interest, especially how pervasive discourses about masculinity often seemed at odds with what it means to become old, ill and/or disabled. The increasing softness of the body, the lack of control of one’s bladder that often leads to leaky bodies, and the growing need for care are examples of the embodied consequences of ageing associated with femininity in a binary gender order (Schwaiger, 2006). Within this order, sexuality can become an arena in which

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several contradictions on masculinity and ageing play out. Hence my question became, if masculinity and ageing in some respects are contradictory, how then do men experience and relate to embodied ageing? Historically old age has been presented, in scientific as well as popular discourse, as a time of decreasing sexuality and where declining potency is a natural part of male ageing, as seen in the term ‘old age impotence’ (Johnson, 2008; Andersson, 2009). More recently however, discourses on ageing and sexuality have started to shift and sexuality is increasingly understood as a significant part of healthy and positive ageing. In this shift, men’s continued erectile function has been the centre of attention, incited largely by sexuo-pharmaceutical companies (Marshall and Katz, 2002). Discourses have consequently been changing from ‘the asexual oldie’ to ‘the sexy senior’, whose active later life is also assumed to involve sexual activity (Gott, 2005; Sandberg, 2015). However, critical researchers, including myself, have pointed out that the emerging discourses of sexuality, as a part of a general positive ageing ideal, are problematic (Marshall, 2006; Vares, 2009). First, sexuality in such discourses is by and large equated with penile-vaginal intercourse and the predominant focus is on men’s capabilities, which obscures older women. Second, these new discourses of risk create pressures on older people to be sexually active as ‘successful agers’. Third, as discussed in previous work, these discourses reinforce the ageing male body as a ‘phallic body’ that should always be ready to perform through intercourse (Sandberg, 2011, 2013a, 2013b). With these three critical issues as cultural background, I wished to learn more about men’s own understandings of sexuality and embodiment as they were ageing. Surmising that they were more complex than the reductive discourses of asexual oldies or Viagra-inflated sex athletes, I chose to listen men’s own voices through the ethnographic methods of interviewing and body diaries. The participants for my study were recruited through advertising in a minor newspaper, Kvällsstunden, in Sweden, with a largely older readership. I also put up posters in seniors’ community centres and health centres and presented my research in a seniors’ social club. The advertising generated the most participants and 22 men contributed to the study. The participants were born between 1922 and 1942 and were between the ages of 67 and 87 when participating. All identified as heterosexual and a majority, 13 men, lived with a partner or spouse. Of the men discussed in this chapter, one was married and the other two were single; of the latter, one had never married and the other was divorced. All participants were white, of Swedish background

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and either working-class or middle-class based on their previous occupations. Some men participated both by writing a diary and being interviewed, while others were only interviewed or only wrote diaries. The interviews were semi-structured interviews and opened with the question: “If you were to describe your body what would you say?”. This question was followed by different themes, including sexuality, related to the body. The body diaries were an attempt to produce a more explorative qualitative and ethnographic method to facilitate a different kind of narrative, not simply one prompted by me as an interviewer. Their inspiration derives from the long tradition of writing as a method of inquiry in feminist methodology, such as memory work (Haug, 1987), feminist academic creative writing (Richardson, 1997) and écriture feminine (feminist writing) (Cixous, 1991). The instructions given to the diary writers were rather open so that the men could choose their own themes and styles of writing as much as possible. Some themes were suggested, such as health, sexuality, exercise, care and sleep, but the writers were encouraged to choose any themes relevant to their bodies in everyday life. Asked to write every day for at least a week, the men created diverse reflections with variations in length of text and periods of time, a diversity I came to see as valuable because it expressed narratives of intimacy and touch that resonated interestingly with the interviews. In this chapter, my analysis of men’s narratives on ageing embodiment and touch looks to the work of Luce Irigaray, and in particular to her approach to touch as emerging in her poetic essay, ‘When our lips speak together’ (1980). Here Irigaray discusses touch through the trope of the lips, which may both represent speech and associate with women’s embodiment and sexuality. Her use of the lips could be understood as a challenge to the phallus and to a Lacanian universe in which the woman and female sexuality are only characterised as ‘lack’. Irigaray, similar to other feminist theorists such as Simone de Beauvoir, discusses how women in Western thought are positioned as the ‘other’ in relation to the male subject. In contrast to social constructivist gender theorists, however, Irigaray proposes that sexual difference must be theorised and that the materiality of the sexed body is an irreducible specificity that should not be overlooked. While Irigaray does not theorise male sexual embodiment or ageing embodiment, her approach to touch creates an interesting dialogue about male ageing embodiment and proposes ways of thinking of male sexual embodiment beyond the phallic versions that are resuscitated in Viagra discourse, for example. The Irigarayan touch of the lips evokes not only female sexual embodiment, but a sexual embodiment in a wider sense, a promise of a mutuality and

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symmetry outside of phallocentrism. Moreover, Irigaray’s focus on sexual difference can be translated into a wider difference about the materiality and specificity of the ageing body.

Fritz’s story: becoming bodies of touch When men in my study discussed sexuality and how it mattered to their ageing, several noted that over their life courses attitudes changed, priorities became different and, as the 75-year-old Eskil put it, “You learn a thing or two” over the years. But such changes also involved changing embodiment; for example, knees and backs got stiffer and started hurting, and one man developed breast cancer after a treatment for prostate cancer. Changes in erectile function was something about which several participants, at least at first, expressed concern and disappointment. In particular, they worried about what a female partner would think of their impotence – would she still be sexually satisfied, even if intercourse was no longer possible? However, while mass media discourses postulate loss of erectile function as a catastrophe or disaster for men, several of the participants also pointed to the increasing significance of touch and the pleasure and enjoyment this brought about. I view the men’s choice to emphasise intimacy and touch as a way of self-presentation as a respectable sexual subject, distant from the stereotype of the ‘dirty old man’. But these emphases also spring from an experience of changing embodiment. When erections decline, touch opens onto a wider horizon of sexuality. For example, diarist Fritz is a participant who articulated the meaning of and longing for touch. His participation was based solely on his written body diary and not an interview. In contrast to most other participants, Fritz is not married and the loneliness he experiences saturates his diary writing. With short fragmented sentences, he narrates his life out in the Swedish countryside. His encounters with people are few and he lives his life in solitude, with the company of the radio and reading his newspapers. The darkness of the Swedish winter is strikingly present and the narrative reveals loneliness as an aspect of life (and perhaps more so in later life) that is often effaced and downplayed by other participants in this study. Mixed with the everyday life descriptions are fragmented pieces about sexual fantasies, but a recurring narrative is that of Fritz’s desire to wash a woman’s back. Here the issue of touch surfaces most clearly as an ambiguous matter since the washing of a woman’s back can be seen as an activity on the borderline between the sexual and the non-sexual, as in the quote:

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I would need, lonely as I am, with sincere tenderness, to wash a woman’s back softly. Mentally horny now, but not physically. Fritz’s statement reflects a disjunction between physical and mental arousal, illustrating that feeling desire and becoming aroused can occur without the actual physical arousal of an erection. Fritz also writes that he feels ‘small nowadays with this willy, that comes with old age’ and that thinking back, as the older person always does, if I had only engaged more in a woman’s natural [female body and sexuality, author’s note]. Now it’s too late, with this little willy. The experiences of his body, of his penis as small and non-erect, also seem to shape his fantasies about touch, along with a certain melancholy and longing for the body of his youth. The ‘woman’s natural’ here denotes women’s sexual organs and bodily sexuality, and Fritz expresses clearly how his experiences of becoming old and how the transformation of his penis into a ‘little willy’ exclude him from engaging in the sexual activities of earlier life. Fritz’s narrative can be seen as an example of how the materiality of the ageing body influences and shapes how one’s sexual and gendered embodiment as experienced and lived in time. Having a small and flaccid penis, desiring to wash a woman’s back, a longing for touch out of loneliness, all seem intimately interwoven as an experience of soft ageing embodiment in a tactile body. Turning again to Luce Irigaray’s framing of touch through the metaphor of the lips (1980), of note is the non-separable but mutual touch of the lips. For Irigaray, this kind of lip touching is an escape from a sexual ontology in which difference always involves hierarchy and bridges and overcomes the separateness of bodies. Irigaray writes: ‘There is no above/below, back/front, right side/wrong side, top/ bottom in isolation, separate, out of touch. Our “all” intermingles’ (Irigaray, 1980, p 75). Irigaray’s focus on touch resonates interestingly with the narrative of Fritz and other men in my study who also challenge the image of the male phallic body as hard and impermeable, and different from dominant representations of female morphology as soft, permeable and unbounded. As the bodies of my male participants age, and erections falter, touch appears as a wider possibility for sexual expression and pleasure. In turn, touch enables a way of imagining male

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morphologies differently, as non-phallic, reciprocal, soft, vulnerable, shifting and permeable, a kind of body whose contemplation adds to feminist theorising on different male morphologies (Gallop, 1983; Thomas, 2002). In the narratives of Fritz and others, touch is not unequivocally subversive. Fritz’s longing is to touch others rather than being touched himself, while the experiences of his ‘little willy’ are filled with sadness and regret. Such reflections were also heard among other men as erections were written about as significant for sexual selfhood, yet touch and intimacy were also emphasised as deeply meaningful and pleasurable. Nore, one of the interviewees, speaks of how the erectile changes he experienced as a result of his prostate cancer treatment were “rubbish” to begin with, but then he describes how he enjoys “the whole of the body” in a different way. Nore’s story introduces the element of illness in relation to touch and sexuality, which is the focus of Lennart’s narrative in the wake of his wife’s cancer and to which this chapter now turns.

Lennart’s story: illness, touch and the vulnerable embodiment Lennart was 78 years old at the time of his interview and he had worked as a journalist and writer. He expands on the theme of touch in his body diary, but also discusses touch in his precursory interview where he says that sexuality to him is to a great extent about a “lot of bodily intimacy and warmth”. Lennart is interested in literature, and he makes repeated references to literary works to describe and exemplify his experiences and attitudes. When discussing sexuality, he talks about a novel about King David, who becomes old, feels chilly and wants to sleep in bed together with the queen. But the queen rejects King David, and tells him that he can sleep with a young girl instead. Lennart interprets this as follows: But he does not feel that he can get that intimacy with another woman, even if she is younger. I find this scene fascinating – I believe for him [David], sex isn’t just sex, because there’s a lot of connection of bodies, hugs, and warmth. In particular Lennart seems to connect this longing for intimacy and bodily contact with growing older. This is not only visible in this story

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about King David but also in how he describes his everyday life with his wife, Lena. Both Lena and I are of an age where one thinks about what will happen next, who will pass away first and how will it feel not to have somebody to crawl over to during the night. Sometimes Lena says ‘Hold me’ and I hold her and sometimes, for example when you can’t go to sleep, I say ‘Hold me’. That’s part of sexuality that rarely results in intercourse but which I feel is part of the bodily contact. Lennart’s thoughts about the future and prospective dying, when touch and intimacy with his partner may no longer be possible, intermingle and become part of his experience of sexuality in later life. Soon after the interview, he and his wife became aware that she has malignant tumors, and this period of acute crisis is narrated in his diary. Touch and the intimacy of bodily contact are evoked again when Lennart writes about coming home from a long day at the hospital after learning of her diagnosis. We get home totally exhausted. ‘Come,’ Lena says. ‘Let’s hold each other.’ We undress, naked, and get into bed, come together skin to skin, but tense like two fists clenched hard. The usual relaxation doesn’t come. ‘Skin to skin’, the touching of naked bodies, here becomes a means of consolation, a sort of language of tactility during Lena’s acute phase of illness that could be considered as part of a wider intimate sexuality apart from typical sexual activity and expectations. As such, Lennart and Lena’s closeness illustrates something of Irigaray’s notion of touch, where ‘arousal’, ‘erection’ and ‘satisfaction’ are suspended and where touch is not confined to a sexual realm or captured by popular sexual and phallocentric discourse. Instead touch exists within a continuum beyond binaries of sexual and non-sexual, normality and dysfunction. Lennart’s narrative about coming together ‘skin to skin’ with his wife is not characterised by arousal or climax. Nor is this touch primarily about genital touch, but of something that happens ‘all over’ the body in pursuit for consolation and communication with one’s partner. What is interesting, and indeed touching, in Lennart’s narrative is his description of how the desire to be close is also a reflection of a desire not be separated from the other. In his body diary, the focus

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on Lena’s body and illness is so absolute that it almost overtakes his body and effaces it. Feel an aching in my belly. Always had a belly made of steel. Has the tension given me an ulcer? Crawl up against Lena’s lower back and the aching goes away. I whisper ‘I need you’. In touch, the boundary, the separation, between self and other is dissolved. It is via the skin, as the bodies largest organ, that transgressive touch appears, as Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey put it: ‘Skin opens our bodies to other bodies: through touch, the separation of self and other is undermined in the very intimacy or proximity of the encounter’ (Ahmed and Stacey, 2001, p 6). Lennart’s portrayal of his wife’s illness, his narrative of touch, is also interesting for what it says about masculinity. The bodies that are evoked in Lennart’s narrative contrast to the phallic body, characterised by hardness, autonomy and self-sufficiency. Touch, therefore, becomes a powerful everyday interactive resource in the acute illness crisis for Lennart and Lena, not only as consolation, but also as a means to open up corporeal vulnerability in the ageing process. Here touch is affective and clearly denotes both physical and emotional states. As Twigg (2000) argues, ‘touch has profound emotional significance ... it takes us back to our earliest experiences’ (p 47). In a wider sense, the touching micro-moments between Lennart and Lena in all their affective complexity point to further possible experiences of male embodiment that challenge a phallic sexual morphology. Their narratives on non-genital touch also expand meanings of sexuality that go beyond the cycles of erection, arousal and climax. Both Fritz and Lennart express feelings of grief, sorrow and longing in reflecting on their ageing embodiment and the importance of touch, their narratives differing to the extent that Fritz’s focuses on the themes of loneliness and missing touch in later life, while Lennart’s is more about touch in relation to a partner. However, both narratives expose some hidden, neglected and often darker sides of later life that contest discourses of successful ageing sexuality and their images of active, rational subjects who enjoy ethical, pleasurable, responsible and ‘healthy’ sexual lives (Calasanti and King, 2005; Grenier, 2011; Gilleard and Higgs, 2013). In these influential discourses these kinds of images around sexuality are vital components of accomplishing a successful self, which is dependent on the erasure or masking of illness, death, pain and loneliness.

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This chapter now turns to Edvard’s narrative on sexuality and touch, the third and final case of an older man that illustrates touch as unbounded and more playful, beyond what Irigaray would refer to as the serious teleology of reproduction. Just as the lips in Irigaray can be understood as ambiguous and open to interpretations, touch, as significant to later life sexuality, may open up to a less ‘programmatic’ sexuality (Irigaray 1980, p 75) and consequently combine life’s sorrows and despairs into an unbounded jouissance, or joyousness.

Edvard’s story: laughter, freedom and touch Similar to other participants, 69-year-old Edvard describes later life as a time when one finds new meanings of sexuality, while at younger ages “intercourse is the goal of sexual activities”. But over the years Edvard has started to prioritise intimacy more, “to have a close friend that one may even share one’s naked body with”. Somewhat different from his interview, Edvard’s body diary is not primarily concerned with sexuality, intimacy and touch, but rather it is written as a humorous dialogue between himself (his mind) and his body. Edvard is single and did not have a sexual relationship with someone at the time of the interview. His experiences of touch thus emerge primarily from social dancing, which he enjoys and engages in regularly. During the interview, he asks me if he can read me a recent poem he has written about love and infatuation throughout the life course, from the fiery urges of adolescence to settling down with house and kids, divorce, and finally old age. To be old and in love, to get a glance of her red lips, as we dance to feel our noses and our cheeks so very close. To get the chance, to be free to enjoy our intimacy. In this poem, Edvard neatly captures his perspectives on love, sexuality and the heterosexual life course. At the end, he points to the significance of touch in dancing and the sight of a pair of red lips, which he describes in terms of feeling “free to enjoy”. Touch is open and free in Edvard’s poem and provides a liberating way to disconnect sexuality in later life with reproduction. As Edvard says: “When you’re 18 or 19, it’s different. Then there are all these urges and instincts, really. Nature’s created things that way, made us nest, reproduce....”

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Edvard describes being older in terms of being finished, “the future has passed.” While being finished could be an expression of a decline narrative, this is not necessarily the case because sexuality and sexual desire are not automatically perceived to decline with age. Rather, “the future has passed” is a positive expression where life is no longer consists of restricted expectations of having children and starting a family. While Edvard argues that the attraction he experiences as older is not particularly different from that in earlier life, the difference is that life is experienced less seriously than at younger stages. “It isn’t that different really, with people of different sexes and interests meeting and holding each other.... But it’s more carefree now in comparison to when you were younger. Well I don’t know your age, but you’re not that young. At that age things were embarrassing, you blushed really easy and those things. But now you’ve been around an entire life and maybe had several relationships, so we’re sort of laughing and joking about things, right? It’s more carefree because we are in the future, the future is passed ... and, well, it’s easy.” What saturates this quote is the experience of sexuality in terms of ease and being carefree. Edvard returns to how sexuality today is something he can laugh and joke about with his older peers, in ways that were not possible earlier in life. Indeed, laughter is part of a pleasurable sexuality in later life, in contrast to discourses of negative decline. Edvard’s notion of sexual pleasure as being beyond the reproductive realm and becoming more ‘fun’ evokes the Irigarayan perspective on touch as non-teleological sexuality, where sex is not linked to outcome and (re)production but to ‘directionless mobilization of excitations’ (Grosz, 1995, p 200). Christine Holmlund (1991) also writes, in relation to ‘When our lips speak together’ (Irigaray, 1980), that ‘No longer is genital sex in the service of reproduction the only option for women. Finally, attention is paid to the multiplicity of female erogenous zones, with time for talk and laughter too’ (p 298). According to Holmlund, touch in the Irigarayan realm is thus a possibility of sexuality that is not tied to reproduction and where there is time for unbounded pleasures for women. These points are implicated in Edvard’s narrative, and if applied to men not only highlight the power of touch as a sexual expression beyond reproduction but also how touch is part of an assemblage of multiple erogenous zones. This was certainly true of the older men who experienced the touching of the body ‘all over’ as a

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consequence of embodied ageing, as discussed earlier. But Edvard adds the unique reflection about the joy and laughter that this unbounded touching may entail.

Conclusion This chapter has explored several dimensions of my research whereby men’s sexuality, older ages, and experiential reflexivity create narratives around touch that contest dominant discourses on decline and phallocentric masculinity. The results of my study coincide with the conclusions of Emily Wentzell, (2012, 2013), who has studied older men’s sexuality in Mexico, a context quite different from the Swedish one. Yet, both Wentzell’s work and my own point to how older men experience changes in erectile function as a normal part of ageing and reject the use of pharmaceuticals to regain potency. Moreover, previous research on later life sexuality for older women has pointed to their experiencing sexuality differently when they no longer feared unwanted pregnancies (Hinchcliff and Gott, 2008). Hurd Clarke’s (2006) study of older heterosexual women also suggests that caring for children, particularly small children, influences their sexuality, but in the years after the children have grown and move out, their possibilities for sexual activity and desire also change. Thus, reproduction not only stands for the actual conception, but a reproductive heterosexual life course characterised by child rearing. My research explores how older men, as with older women, may experience a similar freedom from the reproductive life course in their later life. This conclusion, again, is underpinned by Irigaray’s alternative ideas on pleasure and non-reproductive sex and what these ideas may hold for addressing the neglect of older people’s real experiences of sexuality. For Irigaray, sexuality that is not procreative is treated as a void; the incapacity to biologically reproduce among lesbians – and, in my argument, older heterosexuals – is framed as a loss or deficiency. Irigaray’s approach to touch enables an alternative understanding where lesbian female sexuality is generative, without an end or an outcome. Similarly, my work suggests that the non-reproductive sexuality among older men (and women), characterised by intimacy and touch, could be understood as a possibility of proliferating desires in more directionless ways (see also Fileborn et al, 2017). The loss of a reproductive life, as Edvard discusses, becomes a potential for further pleasure from touch. Finally, in relation to the sociology of everyday life and embodied ageing, touch is an omnipresent aspect that shapes and influences all the interfaces between self, mind, body, gender and age. And while

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the importance of touch for ageing populations is often exalted in technologies of robotic companionship and care, such as the Japanese elderly care seal Paro (and its successors), in real life the humanity of touch is usually overpowered by more conventional and oppressing sexual discourses. My research, summarised in this chapter, points to the power of touch as a sense making and sense giving of sexuality in later life in those intimate and everyday moments often overlooked in mainstream research on ageing. The men’s narratives are richly elaborated stories about tactile touching, soft and sometimes dependent on ageing bodies that may have lost their erectile capacities, hardness and autonomy, not only physically, but most importantly, ideologically as well, and thus challenge the phallic body as a dominant male sexual morphology. Rather than understanding this loss as sexual lack or dysfunction, whereby impotence is imagined as a personal catastrophe for men and a fate ‘worse than death’ (Sandberg, 2011), the narratives of emerging bodies of touch constitute an alternative representation of older men’s bodies as neither phallic nor impotent. Instead the tactile body becomes a body capable of producing pleasure and excitations in multifarious ways, where the production of desire is not limited to genital sexuality. Older men’s narratives of touch are thus a challenge not only to phallocentrism but also to pervasive discourses of ageing embodiment as inevitable decline and decay. For these reasons, rethinking ‘touch’ makes an important contribution to how we imagine ageing into the future as a critical process. Acknowledgments A version of this chapter has previously been published in Swedish in 2012 as a journal article titled ‘Bortom ståndet, närmare beröringen: möten mellan Irigaray och den åldrande manskroppen’ [Beyond the erection, close to touch: encounters between Irigaray and the ageing male body], Tidskrift för genusvetenskap [Swedish Journal of Gender Studies], vol 3, pp 61-85. The author wishes to thank Stephen Katz for his valuable comments and suggestions in the translation and editing of the article for this volume. References Ahmed, S. and Stacey, J. (2001) ‘Introduction: demographies’, in S. Ahmed and J. Stacey (eds) Thinking through the skin, London: Routledge, pp 1-17.

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Andersson, Å. (2009) ‘Från fula gubbar och liderliga gummor till virila casanovor och glada änkor?: om 1900-talets förändrade synsätt på äldres sexualitet’ [From dirty old men and lecherous women to sexually vigorous ladies and gentlemen: On sexuality and aging in the 20th Century], Tidskrift för genusvetenskap [Swedish Journal of Gender Studies], vol 4, pp 49-69. Bartholomeaus, C. and Tarrant, A. (2016) ‘Masculinities at the margins of age: what a consideration of young age and old age offers masculinities theorizing’, Men and Masculinities, vol 19, no 4, pp 351-69. Calasanti, T. (2004) ‘Feminist gerontology and old men’, Journals of Gerontology, vol 59B, no 6, pp 305-14. Calasanti, T. and King, N. (2005) ‘Firming the floppy penis: class and gender relations in the lives of old men’, Men and Masculinities, vol 8, no 1, pp 3-23. Cixous, H. (1991) ‘Coming to writing’ and other essays, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fileborn, B., Hinchcliff S., Lyons, A. Heywood, W., Minichello, V., Brown, G., Malta, S., Barrett, C., and Crameri, P. (2017) ‘The importance of sex and the meaning of sex and sexual pleasure for men aged 60 and older who engage in heterosexual relationships: findings from a qualitative interview study’, Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol 46, no 7, pp 2097-110. Gallop, J. (1983) ‘Quand nos levres s’écrivant: Irigaray’s body politic’, Romantic Review, vol 71, no 1, pp 73-83. Gilleard, C. and Higgs, P. (2013) Ageing, corporeality and embodiment, London: Anthem Press. Gott, M. (2005) Sexuality, sexual health and ageing, Maidenhead: Open University Press. Grenier, A. (2011) Transitions and the lifecourse: Challenging the constructions of ‘growing old’, Bristol: Policy Press. Grosz, E. (1995) Space, time, and perversion: Essays on the politics of bodies, New York, NY: Routledge. Haug, F. (1987) Female sexualisation, London: Verso. Hearn, J. and Sandberg L. (2009) ‘Older men, ageing and power: masculinities theory and alternative spatialised theoretical perspectives’, Sextant: revue du Groupe interdisciplinaire d’etudes sur les femmes et le genre, vol 27, pp 147-63. Hinchcliff, S. and Gott, M. (2008) ‘Challenging social myths and stereotypes of women and aging: heterosexual women talk about sex’, Journal of Women & Aging, vol 20, no 1/2, pp 65-81.

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Holmlund, C. (1991) ‘The lesbian, the mother, the heterosexual lover: Irigaray’s recodings of difference’, Feminist Studies, vol 17, no 2, pp 283-308. Hurd Clarke, L. (2006) ‘Older women and sexuality: experiences in marital relationships across the life course’, Canadian Journal on Aging, vol 25, no 2, pp 129-40. Irigaray, L. (1980) ‘When our lips speak together’, Signs, vol 6, no 1, pp 69-79. Johnson, E. (2008) ‘Chemistries of love: impotence, erectile dysfunction and Viagra in “Läkartidningen”’, Norma, vol 3, no 1, pp 31-47. Marshall, B. (2006) ‘The new virility: Viagra, male aging and sexual function’, Sexualities, vol 9, no 3, pp 345-62. Marshall, B. and Katz, S. (2002) ‘Forever functional: sexual fitness and the ageing male body’, Body & Society, vol 8, no 4, pp 43-70. Richardson, L. (1997) Fields of play: Constructing an academic life, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Schwaiger, L. (2006) ‘“To be forever young?”: towards reframing corporeal subjectivity in maturity’, International Journal of Ageing and Later Life, vol 1, no 1, pp 11-41. Sandberg, L. (2011)’ Getting intimate: a feminist analysis of old age, masculinity and sexuality’, Doctoral thesis, Linköping University. Sandberg, L. (2013a) ‘Affirmative old age: the ageing body and feminist theories on difference’, International Journal of Ageing and Later Life, vol 8, no 1, pp 11-40. Sandberg, L. (2013b) ‘“Just feeling a naked body close to you”: men, sexuality and intimacy in later life’, Sexualities, vol 16, no 3/4, pp 261-82. Sandberg, L. (2015) ‘Sex and sexualities’, in J. Twigg and W. Martin (eds) Routledge handbook of cultural gerontology, London and New York, NY: Routledge, pp 218- 25. Spector-Mersel, G. (2006) ‘Never-aging stories: western hegemonic masculinity scripts’, Journal of Gender Studies, vol 15, no 1, pp 67-82. Thomas C. (2002) ‘Reenfleshing the bright boys; or how male bodies matter to feminist theory’, in J. Kegan-Gardiner (ed) Masculinity studies and feminist theory, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, pp 60-89. Thompson, E.H. and Barnes Langendoerfer, K. (2016) ‘Older men’s blueprint for “being a man”’, Men and Masculinities, vol 19, no 2, pp 119-47. Twigg, J. (2000) Bathing: The body and community care, London: Routledge.

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Vares T. (2009) ‘“Reading the sexy oldie”: gender, age(ing) and embodiment’, Sexualities, vol 12, no 4, pp 503-23. Wentzell, E. (2012) ‘Decreasing erectile function and age-appropriate masculinities in Mexico’, in A. Kampf, B. Marshall and A. Petersen (eds) Aging men, masculinities and modern medicine, London: Routledge, pp 123-37. Wentzell, E. (2013) Maturing masculinities: Aging, chronic illness and Viagra in Mexico, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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EIGHT

Ageing bodies, driving and change: exploring older body–driver fit in the high-tech automobile Jessica A. Gish, Amanda M. Grenier and Brenda Vrkljan Today’s world of automobiles, in its wondrous integration of mechanical and digital technologies, including the prospect of self-driving cars, is far removed from anything traditional manufacturers or drivers could have imagined. The embedding of advanced vehicle technology into the automobile has resulted in vehicles that are more akin to ‘hightech devices on wheels’. The term advanced vehicle technologies (AVTs) refers to sophisticated computer and electronically mediated systems that assist drivers with driving-related tasks, provide warnings to prevent a crash, and, at times, assume control over driving. As outlined in Canada’s road safety strategy 2025, AVTs, which include back-up cameras and adaptive cruise control, are considered to have the potential to improve driver safety (Canadian Council of Motor Vehicle Administrators, 2016). Unsurprisingly, in a context whereby communities are increasingly populated by older drivers, gerontologists, transportation experts and human factors specialists have all heralded AVTs as particularly relevant for older people – viewing AVTs as offering the means to compensate for age- and health-related changes that can affect driving (see, for example, Dickerson et al, 2007). Scholars have thus begun to assess whether AVTs can redress critical driving skills among older drivers. A recent literature review provided evidence to support the claim that AVTs can assist older drivers in ways that improve their behind-the-wheel performance (Eby et al, 2016). While safety and driving performance are key public concerns, driving also features strongly in everyday lives, in feeling and achieving independence, and in social mobility, as well as simply in the experience of movement in and around communities. Driving involves a somatic intimacy between the older body, person, machine, the means to meet daily needs (for example, fetching groceries and so on) and larger links with society and/or social contacts (for example, socialising). And yet, less attention is devoted to older drivers as ‘agents’ and/or to understanding

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the experiences of driving. Employing qualitative interviews, we focus on the experience and changing relationship between the older driver and the technological vehicle. We explore the ‘fit’ between an older driver body and a high-tech automobile from an embodied and phenomenological point of view. The first part of this chapter explains the theoretical basis of the study as we explore how phenomenological and sociological perspectives on the body contrast with the dominant human factors approach that guides scientific investigation on ‘user’ experience and driver characteristics in relation to advancements in human–machine interfaces. The main argument outlines key considerations of the human factors perspective and illustrates shortcomings of the approach. The second part of the chapter draws on a critical, embodied and phenomenological approach to explore older drivers’ descriptions of everyday driving and illuminates the lived experience of real ageing and driving bodies. These illustrations, collected from in-depth interviews with older drivers who own high-tech automobiles, highlight corporeality, including sensations, emotions, habits (or ‘flexible dispositions’), bodily movements, and a social body (see Crossley, 2001, p 2013). We show that a theoretical and conceptual orientation on corporeality and the ageing body provides the means to reveal how a technological vehicle can change inner driving experience at sensory and affective levels, and inspire particular bodily and cognitive responses as part of the process of adaptability. In the third part of the chapter, we conclude with a discussion of how attention to the ageing body can enrich existing interpretations rooted in the dominant human factors approach, add to the current sociological discussions on everyday life, and outline recommendations that could enable human factors specialists to better recognise human embodiment and the ageing body in studies of older driver–car interaction. Throughout our theoretical and qualitative work, we defined a hightech automobile as containing more than one AVT in any combination, given the wide range of features now available to the average consumer.1 Our interviews revealed complex accounts of driving with AVTs. Older drivers discussed how they welcomed this technology and appreciated how AVTs made driving more pleasurable, yet they also shared firsthand experiences of how these technologies can be a hindrance to their driving safety. AVTs were described as making older drivers feel both more and less safe, more and less comfortable, and in – and out of – control of driving. Based on these descriptions, we argue that these diverging experiences reflect bodies that are simultaneously ‘in’ and ‘out of sync’ with a high-tech automobile. When out of sync, older

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driver bodies demonstrate enduring driving habits, practical skills, and sensory experiences linked to lengthy autobiographies tied to a ‘lowtech’ automobile. However, they become in sync through processes of tinkering with the technology, through engaging the pre-reflective and sensory capacity of the body, and through cognitive reflection. This occurs vis-à-vis the body’s ability to acquire new sets of technologically mediated driving habits and embodied competencies, or what Marcel Mauss (1979) has called ‘body techniques’.

Broadening the human–machine fit: the ageing body in studies of driver–car interaction The human factors approach: examining the human–machine interface Scientific investigation on driver behaviour and human-machine systems, such as AVTs, is currently guided by the principles and assumptions of human factors engineering. The human factors approach draws on theory and methods from the human sciences (for example, biomechanics, kinesiology, anthropometry), psychology, and design and engineering to examine the older driver’s use of advanced driver assistance systems. The goal of research in this field is to advance knowledge about how people interact with tasks, technology and the environment (Karwowski, 2012) in order ‘to optimize human wellbeing and overall system performance’ (International Ergonomics Association, 2017). Here, designers aim to achieve a ‘fit’ or congruency between human capabilities, physical demands, and the mental workload required by a task, the environment, and aspects of device design. This process draws on the principles of person-centred design (Norman and Draper, 1986) from the perspective of the user in order to identify human strengths and limitations of usability (that is, ease of use) that are specific to the human–machine interface. Human factors specialists who conduct research on in-vehicle technologies focus on ‘the driver and his task … because the match between the car drivers’ capabilities and the demands of the actual driving task determines the outcomes … [of] more or less safe driving behavior’ (Oppenheim and Shinar, 2012, p 268). It is through task analysis, that design problems – or the sources of mismatch – are turned into design solutions aimed at aligning driver abilities to the demands of the situation. For instance, design features are prototyped and tested to enable the driver to receive ‘the “right” information and functionality at the right time and in the right way’ (Lenior et al, 2006, p 479) to improve driving safety.

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In human factors research, age is considered relevant to in-vehicle design practices. Within this context, age is viewed as a ‘critical variable’, meaning any age-related change, or normal ageing processes, can alter perception, cognition and motor control (Boot et al, 2012, p 1444). For designers, the concern is how such changes might produce a mismatch between person and machine in ways that affect driver behaviour and task performance. While attention to physiological changes in the investigation of human–machine fit is important, we present a case for the inclusion of the ageing body – as both a physical and socio-cultural entity – that is, another ‘essential factor’ to be considered in studies of driver–vehicle interaction. Although human factors research is trans-disciplinary in its approach to understanding the human–machine interface, it lacks the insights from phenomenology and sociology that can lead to a richer understanding of the ‘fit’ between ageing bodies, changing automobiles, and everyday context. Recent work in the phenomenology of driving has expanded understandings of driving by locating the ‘driving body’ at the centre of driving practice and experience (Dant, 2004; Sheller, 2004, 2007; Thrift, 2004). In this perspective, the body is understood to actively experience, interrogate and absorb cultural processes and material objects vis-à-vis pre-reflective sensory pathways (Merleau-Ponty, 1962), and collective (cultural) circumstances (Mauss, 1979). This shift in thinking challenges dominant assessments of driver behaviour and task analysis, conceptualisations of safety, and the objective measurement of driver performance by highlight the driving body as a collection of interrelated beliefs, thoughts, emotions, practical skills and preferences. Informed by phenomenological and sociological thought, we argue that a social and cultural perspective can reveal complex local relationships between the body, self and technology that can, in turn, affect the degree of fit between human and machine or, in this case, driver and automobile. The human factors approach risks interpreting the older driver body as unaffected or independent of culture and time, and limits understanding of the intersections that exist between driving, the ageing body and the socio-cultural-material world. However, the incorporation of phenomenological and sociological insights renders visible the everyday social and cultural aspects of driving that take place as older drivers engage with new technological vehicles.

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Reconsidering the human–machine interface: embodied dimensions of driving with technology Our contribution to reconsidering the ageing human–machine interface as an everyday sociological phenomenon is built from countering the following four specific problems found in the human factors approach. First, although a human factors approach posits driving behaviour as altered by age-related change, it does not consider that perception and driving experience exist within – and occur through – an ageing body. An embodied approach however, views perception while driving to be grounded in meaning and the sensual experience of an object (such as an automobile). This object is seen, heard and felt directly by a subject in a body that is distinct because of biographical, contextual and socio-historical circumstances. Second, human factors specialists investigate user experience – using taskanalysis – to develop a blueprint of human involvement in a system (Kirwan and Ainsworth, 1992). For instance, the actions a ‘user’ performs to complete a function (such as reversing using a back-up camera) are identified, and then sub-divided into physical and cognitive demands, and outputs (for example, duration or frequency of the task). While task analysis places emphasis on the physical environment, it ignores other contextual experiences of driving such as the culturally situated quality of sensations, emotions, memories and embodied habits that can affect driver–car interaction. Third, a human factors approach and related driving models (see Michon, 1985) tend to configure driving behaviour around cognitive information, processing and mental factors (for example, personality, attention control) that can affect safety outcomes. The view that perception is inseparable from embodiment can result in investigations that discount how experiences of ‘safe driving’ are anchored in relationships with other humans, cars, and the kinesthetic ways the body moves within the material world. Fourth, human factors research has identified behavioural adaptation – a process whereby drivers develop an idea or mental model of how invehicle technologies work and change their behaviour in ways that are ‘unsafe’ – as a ‘problem’ that requires investigation (Sullivan et al, 2016, p 6). Where the human factors approach interprets behavioural change as a threat to safety, an embodied perspective considers adaptation as an artifact of the pre-reflective and sensory capacity of the body. It is through this bodily capacity that the driver acquires knowledge and new embodied habits, which may ultimately enable them to feel ‘in sync’ or at ease in a changing material world.

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Taken together, these four critical points form the basis for our application of a phenomenological and sociological perspective, and exploration of how corporeality can advance the comprehension of the human–machine interface, and the changing relationship to driving. The next section draws on first-person accounts with older drivers of technological vehicles as a means to explore the relationship between the ‘driving body’ and the ‘ageing body’, and demonstrates the relevance of adopting an embodied perspective. Our study focused on older drivers who had recently purchased vehicles with advanced vehicle technology, and explored how they experienced this technology and new forms of driving on sensory, affective and practical levels. Data were collected by means of in-depth interviews2 with 35 older drivers (20 men and 15 women) aged 60 to 85 years of age.3 The sample included 32 vehicles with a range of advanced vehicle technologies.

Driving a high-tech automobile: the experiences and bodily adjustments of low-tech older driver bodies In the interviews, older people reported feeling both ‘safe/comfortable/ in control’ and ‘unsafe/uncomfortable/out of control’ while driving a technologically advanced vehicle. In this section, we focus on ‘automotive emotions’ (Sheller, 2004) or the visceral feelings that emerge through embodied relationships with socio-cultural features, through material things (including physical existence, technology, the driving environment), and in relation to personal biographies. The feelings of being ‘in sync’ (that is, safe/comfortable/in control) or ‘out of sync’ (that is, unsafe/uncomfortable/out of control) seem to depend on how the physicality of a high-tech automobile intersects with lowtech embodied experiences, beliefs, preferences and routines. When ‘out of sync’, older bodies adjusted to the novel external conditions and acquired practical understanding by changing their driving habits, through the process of tinkering with the technology, the pre-reflective and sensory capacity of the body, and purposive and deliberate cognitive reflection on action. We argue that older drivers experience contrasting sensations while driving because the ageing body is concurrently at ease (‘in sync’) and uneasy (‘out of sync’) as the technological vehicle shifts the driver’s role from an active ‘controller’ to a ‘supervisor’ who is only required to intervene occasionally (Sullivan et al, 2016). Using verbatim quotes from the interviews, we show that the ‘automotive emotions’ older drivers experience while driving a high-tech automobile arise out of bodily memories, established driving habits, and embodied sensory

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and affective preferences acquired vis-à-vis a low-tech automobile, and in doing so, ground processes of bodily adaptability. Feeling safe/comfortable/in control and unsafe/uncomfortable/out of control Participants described feeling comfortable driving a high-tech automobile because AVTs made them feel safer and in control of driving. These feelings emerged in response to the experience that driving is a physically and mentally demanding task, and in relation to the car culture of ‘driver responsibility’. In this car culture, individuals are considered to be ‘rational-actors’ (Sheller, 2004) who have the obligation to make well-reasoned and non-risky decisions while driving to ensure the safety of themselves and others. As such, participants appreciated AVTs because they could more readily identify hazards, and respond quickly and effectively to prevent a crash. They also experienced AVTs as a means to extend the pre-existing capacities of the human body and compensate for human fallibility in ways they perceived made driving safer for themselves and others. As Raymond (aged 60) pointed out, back-up camera technology, enhanced the sensory apparatuses typically used to drive: “[It] allows you to see everything below the trunk level [translation: boot in the UK] that you couldn’t see even if you turned your head”. For these reasons, AVTs made participants feel more “comfortable”, confident, and “happy” while driving. These feelings support the proposition that ‘automotive emotions’ are entangled with the material and kinesthetic dimensions of driving, as illustrated by the transactional experience between human bodies (for example, a limited field of vision, cognitive workload) and dynamic environments (such as traffic, pedestrians): “[It’s] more comfortable knowing that you’re not putting the vehicle or people at risk of a collision because you have to engage so much in order to be able to determine where you are.” (Wallace, age 65; proximity sensors) “[With GPS technology] I don’t think I’d have the courage to go [drive] down [south to the United States]. Because early on, before I learned to use the GPS, I’d find myself going around in circles.” (Marjorie, age 79; GPS] “[Probably] three times since I’ve owned the car, in spite of me looking over my shoulder. I thought there was nobody

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there. And as soon as I put that directional signal on, it tells me. And then the car goes whizzing by me. And so I just am so happy to have that on my car.” (Cheryl, age 72; blind-spot monitor) Participants felt safe, comfortable and in control when driving a hightech automobile for different reasons. Similar to Evelyn, some felt that the technology enabled [them] to “feel that [they are] controlling things” because AVTs provided the tools to “make a judgement”. Such discussions were rooted in the interpretation that it is the duty and responsibility of a “human” to act and take control of the task of driving. By comparison, some participants felt more safe and comfortable while driving because the technology had the capacity to supervise their driving. For instance, Mabel explained how she has a “nice feeling” and less “worry” because “computers” oversee her driving by prompting her to act or retake control through mechanisms that monitor both her driving behaviour and the health of the vehicle to ensure she stays safe: “[It’s] lovely to have that camera.… It gives me an assist to make a judgement, but ultimately, it’s still my judgement … and my responsibility.… I just like to feel that I’m controlling things.… I have these assists, but they are just to assist.… [T]hese new innovations help me to be more aware of what’s around me … [but they] cannot take over my responsibility and my control.” (Evelyn, age 70; backup camera) “[T]here are so many computers … to monitor everything. Like, it monitors your brake thickness, your tire pressures, everything, so you don’t even have to.… [Y]ou don’t worry that maybe you’ve got a soft tire or something because it would let you know.… [I]f you go above a certain speed in snow tires it warns you that … maybe you shouldn’t be going too fast.… [I]t’s a nice feeling.… [It’s] not the worry about some old rattletrap that’s maybe not going to make it both ways.” (Mabel, age 61) Conversely, older drivers reported how AVTs also made them feel unsafe, uncomfortable and out of control while driving. Several participants experienced the embedding of technology in the vehicle ‘cockpit’ as unsettling.4 For example, they found display or touch

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screens to be “complicated” and “tricky”, preferring instead the action of “feeling for” and “turning knobs” rather than “looking at” a screen and “searching for” digital icons. Since using a “screen” required new habits and skills, the body (and older person as an actor) experienced consternation and disequilibrium with its environment. As the following account by Maxwell illustrates, fractures in bodily harmony occurred for participants when their driving habits, and the practical and sensory orientations integral to driving that had been incorporated into the body, did not align with a technologically advanced vehicle. As such, the formerly mundane and comfortable task of driving suddenly felt uncomfortable or “complex”, and, thus, unsafe as a consequence of the touch screen being experienced as “distracting” and difficult to control: “It is just incredibly complex. And part of the problem is not the function of the stuff, it’s the touch screen operations. You have to look at them. You know you can’t reach out and turn off the heater fan. You have to look at it and push this little thing six times to increase the fan speed or turn on the defroster.… It’s not intuitive and it’s not easy. And it’s very distracting.… I mean we’re sort of used to a couple of knobs, or a knob and a sliding switch or something.… I don’t want to have to go through heating, defrost, ventilating, air conditioning, before I get to defrost.” (Maxwell, age 66) Although the earlier illustration from Evelyn demonstrated comfort with AVTs, many participants were uneasy driving their high-tech automobile because they felt AVTs took the control of driving away from humans. They felt displaced as a driver and worried about automation degrading critical driving skills that would be needed in the event of technological break-down. Participants were especially concerned about becoming dependent on the technology after personally encountering instances where the AVTs performed in unexpected, erratic and nonsensical ways. These concerns demonstrated that participants’ perceptions were experienced as ‘out of sync’ with an embodiment that was acquired in a low-tech automobile that entailed “human” command and mastery over driving. The following first-hand accounts highlight the tensions between AVTs and physical affordances that required older drivers to relinquish control, and adapt their pre-existing driving habits as well as their embodied preferences:

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“[T]he vast majority of them [alerts] are false positive.… [I]t’ll see a shadow in bright light conditions … and think there’s a car there.… [I]t is the one you know that I put the least … weight on.… [T]here are many situations where … [if] you’re driving along the highway and … somebody’s doing 80, and I’m doing 120, it doesn’t even register it.” (Joshua, age 68; blind-spot monitoring) “Sitting back and doing nothing but steering. I’m depending on that technology the way it’s set … [W]hat happens if something doesn’t work?… I’ve put my trust in that equipment … [to] allow me to drive down the vehicle at 120 … kilometers an hour.… You can’t depend on it. Things happen too quickly and it’s too crazy out there.… [I]t’s not thinking that the car can’t perform, it’s the fact that I don’t have the control.” (Connor, age 72; adaptive cruise control) Bodily adjustment Although older drivers in our study described feeling disoriented in their high-tech automobile, driving came to feel natural, familiar and automatic once their bodies adjusted to changes in the automobile. Participants’ responses demonstrated how new routines emerged as their former driving habits were modified in relation to technological features. Moreover, as AVTs prompted the development of new bodily driving habits, rearranging occurred based on individual preferences and the sensuous and kinesthetic dispositions integral to driving. For example, participants acquired the ability to make sense of “sounds” and two-dimensional images on “screens” as information was re-routed through their “ears” and “eyes” in a high-tech car. Heidi explained how listening and looking became entangled through new driving habits that were reconfigured as technology re-prioritised the sensory skill of “listening” over “looking”. Many older people discussed how ‘listening through technology’ arose as an integral and preferred approach to changing lanes. Other participants outlined how the intrinsic bodily power of proprioception (for example, looking over the shoulder) is no longer needed to ascertain where a vehicle is, relative to space. In the high-tech car, participants attained the competence to use “lines”, “grids”, “lights” and sounds emitted by sensors to facilitate their movement, commenting positively about these new practices:

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“[I]t beeps if there is somebody beside me.… I listen, I would say, I listen more for that.… So I tend to listen for that, but I always look over my shoulder.” (Heidi, age 60; blind-spot monitoring) “[I]f you’re turning into the garage it’ll beep as you get to the front, um, where you stop and um, like, as the corner goes around. It just kind of keeps the exterior of the car in your conscious mind. It, it makes you aware of what’s going [on] all around you so I really like it.” (Mabel, age 61; proximity sensors) Participants tinkered with the technology to achieve bodily adjustment and mastery of the tools. For instance, participants discussed how they learned to discern the meaning of different tones, the speed of sound cues, and the colours/“grid” lines on a back-up camera’s screen. Tinkering enabled them to acquire information about how the technology worked, confirmed or refuted assumptions and interpretations about the technology, and resolved conflicts identified between pre-existing driving habits and technologically mediated information. The goal of tinkering for participants was, as Connor clarified, to “make sure that the technology and me were in sync”. This entailed achieving harmony, or convergence, between technological affordances, sensory orientations and habitual techniques, and driving performance. In the following excerpts, participants describe the strategies they used to experiment with the technology and sensory activity in order to advance perceptual and practical understanding and how they acquired knowledge about their driving body/habits in relation to the technology: “I assumed it meant car lengths and so I had my husband standing behind the car one day and said, ‘You stand one car length back and let me just see … exactly what it is’.” (Janet, age 73; right-side camera) “I started placing objects just to know where I park. You know or I go swing by the bush and I said, ‘OK, I’m actually hitting the bush, it’s really doing this’. You sometimes park into a spot and it beeps, but I say, ‘My experience tells me I’ve got more than a foot but its telling me, warning me’.… [Y]ou have to develop [understanding about] … what those

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warnings and those signals are.” (Frank, age 67; proximity sensors and back-up camera) “[A]t first that beep, beep, beep, I thought, I can’t be that close to that line. And then I would drive, test out the left side.… But, you know I’ve come to realise that I do tend to drive too far to the right.” (Janessa, age 79; lane-departure warning) Part of the process of achieving a bodily experience of equilibrium with the new driving habits that AVTs permit meant developing new ways of relating to the car and themselves as drivers. Participants developed purposive and intelligent dispositions with the technology that were tailored to embodied preferences and the demands of the driving situation. This process entailed engagement in cognitive thought or reflexivity as participants confronted new physical and sensate experiences that prompted them to sort out how they would orient to and act with the materiality of their high-tech automobile. In the following excerpt, Jeffrey elucidates that adjustability is required when driving with technology, and further, how reflection is central to the process of achieving bodily symmetry: “I’ve tried to identify what they are and use them. And when I’ve used them, I’ve said, ‘OK, is that the best way to do it?’. And once you get used to it, like the adaptive cruise control: When should I use it? When shouldn’t I use it? Should I change the distances? Those kinds of things. Those are how you adapt to it. I [had to do] a lot of adapting.” (Jeffrey, age 65) Many participants deliberated over how much control technology had on their driving. Even though participants could feel more comfortable and safe with technology taking over control or responsibility for their driving, they also experienced this as feeling uncomfortable and/or unsafe in some situations. As such, participants responded by reflecting on how they could achieve synchronicity with the technology in such circumstances. As the accounts below illustrate, participants achieved order by finding ways to stay in control. These involved processes of determining when – and when not to – interact with technology, or “rely” on the technology in their cars. Participants also made intentional adjustments while driving a high-tech automobile that entailed overriding technologically mediated forms of communication

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and judgement, opting instead to use low-tech bodily-based forms of perception and practice. The presence of embodied low-tech driving skills enabled them to feel as if driving was safer, easier, more comfortable and more controlled when not overtaken by technology. These accounts outline how their use and response to AVTs is grounded in an embodied autobiography that is accustomed to being in control, rather than supervising, the task of driving: “[Y]ou’ve gotta be in control rather than letting them be in control.” (Mabel, age 61) “It’s in control as far as I wish it to be. I can stop any of the things any time I want. I can take the cruise control off if I want. I can turn the lane avoidance off. I’ve never bothered turning off the blind spot or any of the other ones and I rely on them, but I don’t rely on them.” (Roberto, age 69) “[T]here’s a time when you can use that technology and time when you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta do the work. And as you get closer to [the big city] it’s time to shut all that stuff down, and do the driving yourself because, you just can’t, you can’t have it. You can’t depend on it. Things happen too quickly and it’s too crazy out there.… I don’t suppose it’s not thinking that the car can’t perform. It’s the fact that I don’t have the control.” (Connor, age 72; adaptive cruise control)

Discussion and conclusion This chapter has examined the ‘fit’ between the bodies of older drivers and the demands of everyday driving in a changing, technologically advanced automobile. The key argument we have presented is that the older driving body experiences distinct ‘automotive emotions’ while driving a high-tech automobile. The ageing-body driver is composed of an intricate ‘driving style’, habitual skill set, and personal autobiography that was developed and informed by sociocultural, material and technological interactions with a low-tech automobile. As such, insights from older people driving a high-tech vehicle extend beyond the dominant human factors approach to the driver–car interface and support our phenomenological and sociological perspective on embodiment in relation to driving (see Dant, 2004; Sheller, 2004, 2007; Thrift, 2004) and habit in relation to the driving subject (see

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Mauss, 1979; Dewey, 2011; Crossley, 2013; Shilling, 2016). In doing so, we illustrate the inter-relationality between present-day sensory and affective experiences of technology use – the ‘practical sensory knowing and doing’ (Shilling, 2016, p 4), and ‘car culture’ (Sheller, 2004). Moreover, we extend phenomenological studies on driving by revealing how ‘feelings for, of and within cars’ (Sheller, 2004, p 222) arise at the interface of ageing bodies, body techniques, technology and ‘low-/high-tech’ car cultures. A high-tech automobile is a poignant object for older drivers because it has the capacity to transform drivers and driving. In our study, older drivers expressed both appreciation and anxiety about the changes in driving style and driving habits that technology offers. On the one hand, older drivers were keen to acquire technologically mediated driving skills. Participants recognised and experienced the capabilities of technological advancement through the pre-reflective capacity of the driving body. In driving their new high-tech cars, the sensations of comfort, safety and control emerged from sensory and affective experiences that were constituted by the socio-materiality of a lowtech driving style (see also Gish et al, 2017a, 2017b). Such changes and associated feelings of appreciation arose as the human sensory receptors (e.g., ears, eyes) of a low-tech driving body interacted with the novel auditory sounds and visual displays integral to AVTs. On the other hand, older drivers were also apprehensive about driving a technological vehicle. This apprehension can be explained, in part, as a result of how the high-tech car led the older driving body to experience ‘dys-appearance’ (Leder, 1990), thereby rendering the everyday task of driving the focus of self-consciousness. With a driving body that was ‘out of sync’ with the affordances of a technological vehicle, participants encountered fractures in bodily experience and knowledge that resulted in feelings of discomfort, difficulty, danger and lack of control while driving. Although older driving bodies experienced disharmony with a changing automobile, this process was temporary, with the ageing body adapting and developing new practical driving skills with familiarity and time. Older drivers established new embodied competencies and sensibilities with the automobile through the pre-reflective capacity of the body to acquire knowledge, and the human ability to think about and explore alternatives within and outside of direct physical experience (see Dewey, 2011; Crossley, 2013). This adaptation occurred through the process of tinkering with the technology, and intentional, and meaningful, deliberation about how interaction with the technology would produce ‘safe driving’. Through such strategies,

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older drivers negotiated a customised driving style, whereby prior/ practical knowledge and embodied experiences with low-tech driving entailed both acceptance and resistance to technological supervision, and intervention over the task of driving. Older drivers established what they perceived and experienced to be safe driving practice in and through their ageing bodies, which concurrently felt safe/comfortable/ in control and unsafe/uncomfortable/out of control. Our research, which illuminates the sociology of ageing in everyday driving life, suggests that the following recommendations be considered by the automobile industry and associated regulatory bodies, informed as they are by the human factors perspective. First, an embodied approach reveals that chronological age is not necessarily a factor that creates deficiencies that require user-centred human engineering. Instead, the ageing driving body is a composition of physical, socialcultural, embodied and cognitive resources that can enable a degree of fit to be established between human capabilities, task demands, technology and the environment. Moreover, not all late-life driving bodies will similarly experience a high-tech car and adjust in the same ways because autobiographies and somatic experience are differentially constructed in relation to social factors, such as, gender, occupation, life events and time. Second, a mismatch between human and machine is not necessarily a problem that requires adjustment through redesign by human factors specialists. Fractures between pre-existing bodily experience, competence and habits are opportunities for ‘body pedagogics’ (Shilling, 2016) and the development of new sensory and practical ways of engaging with the world. In fact, mismatches can create moments of phenomenological disruption that prompt cognitive reflection on the tasks and demands of driving, and produce meaningful and deliberate forms of driving practice that are perceived and experienced to be safe and comfortable. Third, when conducting user or usability testing, human factors specialists ought to align design features with the needs of the ageing socio-cultural body, rather than a physiological ‘deficient’ older body. Thus, we encourage human factors specialists to find ways to make the vehicle cockpit more usable (for example, with its screens and consoles) for older users who ‘carry practices [or body techniques] of the past forward into the present’ (Crossley, 2013, p 154). While subjective feelings of security and comfort may not be viewed as objective indicators of driving performance, they may in fact produce an embodied experience that aligns with the human factors desire to enhance safety when behind the wheel. Finally, to achieve these recommendations, we suggest that the new world of automobility more broadly consider the contributions of

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critical qualitative research and its ability to reveal the complexities of everyday driving life, especially for older drivers, as it moves forward with even greater AVT developments that will implicate new intimacies in the human–machine interface. Acknowledgments This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Labarge Optimal Aging Initiative. The authors are grateful to participants who shared their experiences of driving. We also wish to thank our research assistant, Benita Van Miltenburg, for her contributions to this research. Notes 1

2

3

4

Common technologies across the participants’ vehicles in our sample included the back-up camera, blind-spot monitor, global positioning systems, lane-departure warning, proximity sensors, adaptive cruise control and voice control. Three couples were included in the study, and in these cases, both participants drove the same vehicle. Most participants were between the ages of 60 and 69 (15), and 70 and 79 (15) years of age. Four participants were older than 80. One participant did not disclose their age. In the automotive industry the ‘vehicle cockpit’ refers to the area where a driver sits. It contains a range of instrumentation and controls that are used by a driver to operate a vehicle. With technological innovation instrument clusters are now digital rather than mechanically based displays. The language of the ‘vehicle cockpit’ can also be read as a metaphor that likens the driver’s seat to that of an aircraft or spaceship.

References Boot, W., Nichols, T., Rogers, W. and Fisk, A. (2012) ‘Design for aging’, in G. Salvendy (ed) Handbook of human factors and ergonomics (4th edn), Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, pp 1442-71. Canadian Council of Motor Vehicle Administrators (2016) Canada’s road safety strategy 2025. Towards zero: the safest roads in the world, Ottawa: CCMTA, available at http://strategiesecuriteroutiere.ca/ files/RSS-2025-Report-January-2016-with%20cover.pdf. Crossley, N. (2013) ‘Habit and habitus’, Body & Society, vol 19, no 2/3, pp 136-61. Dant, T. (2004) ‘The driver-car’, Theory, Culture & Society, vol 21, no 4/5, pp 41-59. Dewey, J. (2011) How we think, London: Martino.

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Dickerson, A., Molnar, L., Eby, D., Adler, G., Bédard, M., Berg-Weger, M., Classen, S., Foley, D., Horowitz, A., Kerschner, H., Page, O., Silverstein, N., Staplin, L. and Trujillo, L. (2007) ‘Transportation and aging: a research agenda for advancing safe mobility’, The Gerontologist, vol 47, no 5, pp 578-90. Eby, D., Molnar, L., Zhang, L., St. Louis, R., Zanier, N., Kostynuik, L. and Stanciu, S. (2016) ‘Use, perceptions, and benefits of automotive technologies among aging drivers’, Injury Epidemiology, vol 3, no 1, pp 28. Gish, J., Grenier, A., Vrkljan, B. and van Miltenburg, B. (2017a) ‘Driving with advanced vehicle technology: a qualitative investigation of older drivers’ perceptions and motivations for use’, Accident Analysis & Prevention, vol 106, pp 498-504. Gish, J., Grenier, A., Vrkljan, B. and van Miltenburg, B. (2017b) ‘Older people driving a high-tech automobile: emergent driving routines and relationships’, Canadian Journal of Communication, vol 42, no 2, pp 235-52. International Ergonomics Association (2017) ‘Definition and domains of ergonomics’, IEA website, available at www.iea.cc/whats/index. html. Karwowski, W. (2012) ‘The discipline of human factors and ergonomics’, in G. Salvendy (ed) Handbook of human factors and ergonomics (4th edn), Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, pp 3-37. Kirwan, B. and Ainsworth, L.K. (1992) A guide to task analysis, London: Taylor & Francis. Leder, D. (1990) The absent body, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lenior, D., Janssen, W., Neerincx, M. and Schreibers, K. (2006) ‘Human-factors engineering for smart transport: decision support for car drivers and train traffic controllers’, Applied Ergonomics, vol 37, pp 479-90. Mauss, M. (1979) ‘Techniques of the body’, in Sociology and psychology: Essays, Translated by , London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp 70-88. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962) Phenomenology of perception, Translated by C. Smith, London: Routledge. Michon, J. (1985) ‘A critical view of driver behavior models: what do we know, what should we do?’, in L. Evans and R.C. Schwing (eds) Human behavior and traffic safety, New York, NY: Plenum Press, pp 485-520. Norman, D. and Draper, S. (1986) User-centered system design: New perspectives on human-computer interaction, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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Oppenheim, I. and Shinar, D. (2012) ‘A context-sensitive model of driving behaviour and its implications for in-vehicle safety systems’, Cognition, Technology & Work, vol 14, pp 261-81. Sheller, M. (2007) ‘Bodies, cybercars and the mundane incorporation of automated mobilities’, Social & Cultural Geography, vol 8, no 2, pp 175-97. Shilling, C. (2016) ‘Body pedagogics: embodiment, cognition and cultural transmission’, Sociology, doi/full/10.1177/0038038516641868. Sullivan, J., Flannagan, M., Pradhan, A. and Bao, S. (2016) Literature review of behavioural adaptation to advanced driver assistance systems, Washington, DC: AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, available at www. aaafoundation.org/sites/default/files/BehavioralAdaptationADAS. pdf. Thrift, N. (2004) ‘Driving in the city’, Theory, Culture & Society, vol 21, no 4/5, pp 41-60.

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Dancing with dementia: citizenship, embodiment and everyday life in the context of long-term care Pia Kontos and Alisa Grigorovich

Introduction This chapter offers a critical understanding of the use of dance as an arts-based approach whose creative-expressive power draws on the body’s capacity for innovative action. Most importantly, dance, as a practice and field of study, embraces non-verbal communication, intersubjectivity, affect and embodied or somatic expression (Green, 2007; Rouhiainen, 2008; Eddy, 2009; Mullan, 2014; Ravn, 2017), all of which are essential dimensions of experience and care when it comes to dementia (Kontos et al, 2016, 2017; Miller and Kontos, 2016). Despite these critical points arising from phenomenological and somatic conceptualisations of dance, the mainstream perspective on dance scholarship and practice in dementia care largely represents a contemporary movement towards cognitive science with an emphasis on embodied cognition and psychotherapeutic use of dance (Warburton, 2011). Our argument is distinct from cognitive science, which holds that agency is dependent on cognition – a relationship of dependence that implicitly denies that the body itself, separate and apart from cognition, could be a source of intelligibility, inventiveness and creativity in everyday life. Such a cognitivist perspective on agency has restricted understanding of dance in dementia and thus has limited the development of opportunities to more fully support this embodied form of self-expression in long-term residential care settings. Rather, we argue for the need to broaden understanding of dance in a way that more fully supports embodied and creative self-expression by persons living with dementia. We further argue for the need to give greater prominence to embodiment while also addressing the ethical imperative to support dance through institutional policies, structures, and practices. To achieve this, we explore how a relational model of

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citizenship (Kontos et al, 2016, 2017; Miller and Kontos, 2016) brings a new and critical dimension to understanding the importance of dance in the context of dementia. The model is furnished with a human rights ontology that recognises that embodied selfhood and relationality are central to body-self/body-world relations. Embodied selfhood is a theory previously advanced by author Kontos (2004, 2005, 2006a, 2012b), which foregrounds pre-reflective ways of being-in-the-world when examining selfhood. Embodied selfhood highlights our intrinsic corporeality of being-in-the-world, which sustains and animates self-expression – despite even severe dementia – and which is always intertwined with a shared world. In this sense, embodied selfhood is inherently relational. A human rights ontology that recognises corporeality and relationality as fundamental to self-expression, interdependence and reciprocal engagement necessitates that they be supported through socio-political institutions and organisational practices at the local level of citizenship. As such, relational citizenship is arguably more apposite than other approaches such as person-centred care and social citizenship for improving the status and treatment of persons living with dementia. The relational model of citizenship has already been applied to explicate an ethic of sexuality that offers an important alternative to the positivist legacy of bioethical principles in the field of dementia (Grigorovich and Kontos 2016, Kontos et al, 2016). Here, our application of the model to understand and support dance in the context of everyday life with dementia is novel. It sets an important ethical agenda to realising and supporting such expression through communal entitlements that promote flourishing for individuals living with dementia in long-term residential care settings (Jennings, 2009). Following a critical review of scholarship on dance, we demonstrate the significance of the relational model of citizenship by analysing examples of dance in the context of everyday life from an ethnographic study of selfhood in Alzheimer’s disease conducted by author Pia Kontos in a Canadian long-term care home (2004, 2005, 2006a, 2012b).

The turn to the arts in dementia care The management of neuropsychiatric symptoms in residential longterm care settings involves extensive use of high levels of antipsychotics, which have deleterious effects (Lucas et al, 2014). These effects include evidence that these and other pharmacotherapies suppress purposeful and meaningful communication (Cohen-Mansfield, 2001; Dupuis et

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al, 2012b) and increase risk of death (Maust et al, 2015). In response, arts-based programmes have been adopted in dementia care primarily as a non-pharmacological means to improve ‘behaviour’, cognition and affect (de Medeiros and Basting 2013; Petrovsky et al, 2015). Such programmes have been shown to effect favourable clinical outcomes (Cohen-Mansfield et al, 2007; Beard, 2012). Given these positive outcomes, and the rapidly growing field of arts in healthcare that integrates the arts into medical settings (State of the Field Committee, 2009; Stuckey and Nobel, 2010), providing opportunities to participate in the arts is deemed critical in dementia care (Beard, 2012; National Care Forum, 2011). Common arts-based programmes in dementia care include music (Sung and Chang, 2005; Raglio et al, 2008), art therapy (Harlan, 1993; Rusted et al, 2006), dance/movement (Coaten, 2002; Palo-Bengtsson and Ekman, 2002), visual arts (Cohen, 2002), storytelling (Basting 2009) and drama (Lepp et al, 2003; Basting et al, 2016). While dance has been found to support the potential for ‘empowerment and pleasure for the moment’ (Beard, 2012, p 643, emphasis in original), like other art and leisure activities, it has been adopted within an interventionist paradigm. Much of the research on dance and dementia focuses on its therapeutic impact on problem ‘behaviours’ and functioning (Dupuis et al, 2012a; Genoe and Dupuis, 2014). As a result, dance programmes in long-term care are for the most part implemented as a therapeutic intervention that combines the physical benefits of exercise with psychosocial therapeutic benefits (Guzmán García et al, 2013; Karkou and Meekums, 2014). Most notably, dance therapy in the United States or dance movement psychotherapy in the United Kingdom use dance as a psychotherapeutic treatment and rehabilitative medium for individuals with a range of conditions, especially those for whom verbal communication is difficult (Karkou and Meekums, 2014).

Somatics, dance science and their integration Somatics developed out of experiential investigations into the body’s transformative capabilities and natural healing potential. The earliest somatic work originated in Europe and later America and Australia as a distinctly Western educational tradition. Somatics has been growing as a creative science for roughly 200 years and includes diverse Eastern physical and spiritual practices such as yoga, Pilates and t’ai chi. Somatics as a field of scholarship focuses on ways of valuing, interpreting, and approaching bodily movement, corporeal feelings of movement, and tacit knowing (Rouhiainen, 2008; Eddy, 2009). Diverse somatic

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practitioners are linked by a shared desire to regain an intimate connection with bodily processes (for example, breath, movement, impulse, balance, sensibility). Within dance, somatic practitioners have focused on efficiency of movement, recovery from injury and improvement of coordination, physical functioning, and sensory awareness (Batson and Schwartz, 2007). By contrast, dance science is a relatively new academic discipline that has emerged within the context of physical education and rehabilitation science (Green, 2007; Batson et al, 2012). As dance developed into an academic discipline, it appropriated the curricular visions of these other health sciences, thus creating hybrid amalgams such as ‘dance kinesiology’, which approaches dance movement analysis relative to biomechanics, physiology, and motor action and control. This integration of supplemental academic training coincided with a shift to acknowledging the importance of attending to dancers’ health and wellness. Somatics is often grouped with the dance sciences. Indeed, there are scholars who maintain that dance science offers objective and quantitative methodologies that enhance the scientific legitimacy of somatics and argue that closer integration of the two fields would allow for the progression of dance practice (Rouhiainen, 2008; Batson et al, 2012). Somatics, however, is typically treated as an addition to anatomy and kinesiology, with science overshadowing the unique insights offered by somatics (Green, 2007). Further, in the context of dance science, somatics is used to enrich the virtuosity of professional dance, while effectively neglecting its broader significance for illuminating a myriad of intentional, sentient and tacit forms of knowledge and expression. The neglect of somatics within dance science has created reductionist methodologies that are ill-equipped to capture the first-person lived experience of the phenomenon of dance (Green, 2007; Jola et al, 2012). Perhaps the most visible example of this methodological limitation in dance science is its adherence to a theory of embodied cognition, which is a cognitive science theory that ascribes a physically constitutive role to the body (Warburton, 2011; Batson et al, 2012). The mind, in the theory of embodied cognition, is conceptualised as being distributed throughout the body as an elaborate network of interconnections (Rosch et al, 1991). Dance, then, is thought to epitomise embodied cognitive processes such as somatosensation, learning, memory, multimodal imagery, visual and motor perception, and motor simulation (Sevdalis and Keller, 2011; Bläsing et al, 2012). The emphasis with this perspective is to examine cognitive and neural processes that are implicated in the generation, execution, expression and observation of dance movements by the dancer and dance spectator

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(Sevdalis and Keller, 2011; Bläsing et al, 2012). The problem is that while embodied cognition grants a dynamism to the body, that dynamism is conceptualised solely in relation to cognitive processes. In turn, this approach fails to accommodate the very premise of the origin of somatic knowledge: a pre-reflective notion of agency that incorporates, rather than isolates, embodied intelligibility. It is our argument, therefore, that somatic knowledge is what should be granted primacy in efforts to understand how people with dementia engage with dance. Further, to more fully support dance as a medium of expression by those living with dementia (that is, beyond therapeutics) requires engagement with the fields of citizenship and human rights because these fields focus on social entitlements and state responsibility to support citizens’ everyday existence (Turner, 2006; Somers and Roberts, 2008). Where insights from these respective fields have been integrated in the model of relational citizenship (Kontos et al, 2016, 2017; Miller and Kontos, 2016), they are particularly pertinent for more fully supporting dance among people living with dementia.

The ethnographic setting Chai Village (a pseudonym) is an Orthodox Jewish long-term care home that accommodates 472 residents and is located in an urban region of southern Ontario. The majority of the 79 residents (11 men and 68 women) on the unit where participant observation was conducted were living with probable Alzheimer’s dementia. All of the residents were Jewish, of Eastern European descent. The methodological details of the study have been described elsewhere (Kontos, 2004; 2005; 2006a; 2012b). Our analysis here focuses on a series of interactions of everyday life in Chai Village, specifically during religious social programmes and unstructured activities. These interactions highlight critical intersections between selfhood, embodiment, memory, materialities and society that challenge dominant discourses about dementia and dance. The relational worlds between material and embodied contexts are particularly apposite to understanding dementia in terms of sedimented bodily norms and intercorporeal becoming. These dynamic ways of being-in-the-world are fundamental to all human existence, yet their significance is all too often obscured by the primacy given to cognition, rationality and independence.

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Ritual and ceremony ‘Jewishness’ is a vital, integral part of the daily life at Chai Village. There are two rabbis (teachers of the Torah, the central text of Judaism) on the staff, daily synagogue services are offered onsite, a facility-wide kosher food policy (conforming to Jewish dietary law) is in place, and there are Sabbath and other holiday observances. The following two field notes capture the enactment of different ancient ritual gestures relating to the holidays of Simchat Torah and Hanukkah. Each ritual involves certain symbols that pertain to the Jewish home and family, as well as customs that are enacted, and are thus profoundly corporeal experiences. Synagogue services are well attended; a porter, personal support worker, or family member will escort residents, and services are led by a rabbi. The major ritual associated with the eight-day holiday of Hanukkah is the lighting of the branched menorah lamp. The menorah is lit each night of Hanukkah after sundown with the shammash (the candle used for lighting the other candles, which is placed higher on the menorah to differentiate it from the others). One candle is added each night until all eight candles (nine including the shammash) are lit on the last night of Hanukkah. The last day of Hanukkah is considered to have special significance as the culmination of the holiday, the day when the menorah burns most brightly. It is on the eighth and final day of this religious occasion that a concert and party are arranged for the residents in the recreation room. A ceremonial lighting of the menorah is part of this celebration. The first author’s observation of Dora during a Hanukkah celebration powerfully captures her love of dance, which requires neither that she has a partner nor the need to stand up from her wheelchair: The concert began with piano and a strong alto voice filling the room with Yiddish song. As I stood listening and watching, I noticed Dora. Somehow sitting in her wheelchair, Dora was dancing. She created a sense of fluidity and abandon with the elegant movement of her arms above her head and the delicate wiggling of her fingers while slowly lowering her hands to each side of her wheelchair. Dramatically tossing her head back, she extended her arms above her head in the style of an arabesque. So choreographed was her dance that I wondered if she was reenacting a performance from another time. When the song finished, applause erupted in appreciation for the

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singer and pianist, and Dora moved her upper body forward in her chair as if to take a bow for her own performance. Jelly donuts, brought out by staff and volunteers, were served to the residents on plastic plates with a napkin. Dora ate her donut as she continued to listen to the music. With her hands busy with the donut, she struggled to stretch her legs out in front of her. Her swollen feet looked almost delicate as she gently brought her toes together and then her heels together alternating these movements to the rhythm of the music. Simchat Torah is one of the most widely celebrated rituals of the Jewish faith. It is the day of celebration for the gift of Torah, the five books of Moses. The following observation illustrates the enactment of an ancient ritual gesture related to the holiday of Simchat Torah. On Simchat Torah the synagogue at the facility rang out powerfully in hymn.… My attention was drawn to the centre of the synagogue where the men prayed with intensity and passion. Among the participants stood Jacob. Jacob would often chastise residents who, because of their dementia, were disruptive. Ironically, his own advanced demented state had limited his verbal expression to the use of single words.… [Yet] Jacob moved his lips with the service leaders’ chants. I watched as he swayed deeply, stepping forward and back, bowing, and striking his chest with clenched fists as is commonly done in Jewish prayer. He was energetic and forceful … in his fervent bodily movement of prayer.…The leader held a Torah scroll and circled the interior of the synagogue, followed by honoured members of the congregation who held the other scrolls. After the procession of Torah bearers circled the synagogue, the leader broke out in joyous song and all the congregation joined in singing and dancing. In the centre of the synagogue the men formed a circle and danced around those who held a Torah scroll … Jacob … joined into the pounding dances. He threw his body completely into rejoicing with the Torah, twisting his shoulders and hips and snapping his fingers in the air.

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Unstructured movement Dancing was not confined exclusively to scheduled social activities. It was common to see residents dancing and playfully moving their bodies spontaneously in the hallways, living room or dining room, which reminds us of the unstructured nature of the embodied self. The following two field notes are noteworthy in this respect: A personal support worker approached Florence as she was walking in the hallway and said enthusiastically, ‘Hello gorgeous! You look great!’ Florence lifted her arms above her head and shook her hips from side to side and then pushed her hips forward and backwards in brisk accentuated movements. Florence laughed with the personal support worker as she did this. Florence waved to her and said, ‘Okay, see you on the next one’ and continued walking down the hallway. A personal support worker came into the living room and turned on the radio. She paused to listen to the soft music and then walked over to Abe who was seated on the sofa, holding her hands out for him to take. He grasped her hands and stood up. Standing close together and facing each other, they naturally moved into dancing position: He put one hand on her waist and she placed one hand on his shoulder, and their free hands clasped together and were held out to the side. Once they were in position the two of them began to move, slowly turning in unison, following the gentle pace of the music. When the song was over, Abe released his hands, stepped back from the personal support worker slightly and bowed. She smiled and gave him a hug and then helped him back onto the sofa.

Discussion With the lens of the relational model of citizenship, we can see how Dora’s, Jacob’s, Florence’s and Abe’s movements are perfectly suited to the exigencies of their interactions with others. We also see that they are not launching their bodies into blind attempts to perform an action; every movement is inextricably both movement and intentionality, or embodied selfhood. Thus, in reference to the primordial source of

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selfhood, dance is understood not in cognitive terms but rather in terms of all the latent knowledge the body possesses. This latent knowledge can be understood as ‘kinesthetic background’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p 116), with both dance and its background being ‘moments of a unique totality’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p 110). The background to the dance movements, or its form, is not related by way of being a mental representation that is externally linked, but rather is immanent in the movements themselves, impelling and sustaining them at every moment. This form of know-how functions below the threshold of cognition and is enacted as practical sense at a pre-reflective level. Dance is thus not the function of a cognitive form of consciousness as cognitive and dance science models propose. Instead, dance is a bodily form of consciousness, what in ‘embodied selfhood’ terms is the body’s pre-reflective ability to direct itself towards the world (Kontos, 2012a, 2012b). Dance thus derives from the non-consciousness of habituation, rather than consciously learned principles and rules. In the context of dementia, where the pre-reflective body is the fundamental means of engaging with the world, dance is a powerful corporeal and relational means of engaging with the world and with others. There is also a socio-cultural style or content to self-expression and interactive practices, as manifest in the aforementioned four ethnographic examples of dance. For example, Jacob’s performance powerfully illustrates how embodiment and enculturation are coimplicated. The emotion that is commonly expressed by Eastern European Jews in gesture and speech is similarly expressed in prayer through dance and bodily movement. In Jewish faith, gestures and movements are essential ingredients in the life of prayer, enabling worshippers to put the whole of themselves into the act of worship (Jacobs, 1972; Rosenberg, 1997). On Simchat Torah, as Jacob prayed he swayed deeply, stepping forward and back, bowing, and striking his chest with clenched fists, a kind of dance reflecting an intense and vital bodily force that is common in Jewish prayer. Thus, Jewish heritage was fundamentally influential in that ritual aroused deep memories; those surges of remembrance are not merely accurate and extensive, but bring with them the essences and textures of their original context, transcending time and even dementia. Re-enacting rituals that were part of one’s early childhood is not a matter of delving into the past through a cognitive operation. Rituals carry a potent emotion and cultural rootedness that is embodied. ‘The past returns with the ritual movements, gestures and recapitulations’ (Myerhoff, 2000, p 435), all evoked through the senses, linking the individual to associations and feelings of previous times. In this sense, rituals underscore the

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active presence of the past in the body itself. We could say, along with Bourdieu, that ritual is ‘embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history’ (Bourdieu, 1990, p 56). The presence of the rabbi and congregants, the touch of the Torah, the scent of burning candles and the sanctuary all offered a dynamic field of sensual mutuality that intersected with Jacob’s embodied selfhood, thereby eliciting the dispositions necessary for his expression through dance. We can see that Dora’s dance was also connected with a ritual of the Jewish faith, one that carries with it a joyous sentiment that was reflected in the ‘fluidity and abandon’ with the movements of her arms, the wiggling of her fingers, and the playfulness in how she brought together her toes and then her heels in an alternating pattern. There was a congruence between her movements and the celebratory nature of the occasion. We can say that it is embodied selfhood that harmonised her dance in that her knowledge of the movements was pre-reflective and activated only when evoked in practice. To be even more precise, it is a ‘“practical reactivation” whereby the knowledge that the body reproduces is not a memorization of the past but rather an enactment of it’ (Kontos, 2006a, p 210, emphasis in original). In this sense, Dora’s dance discloses a kind of mastery in the form of ‘transposable dispositions that collectively function as a matrix of perceptions and actions’ (Kontos, 2006a, p 209) that are acquired as part of primary learning, reinforced through socialisation within a Jewish home, and implemented only by way of immersion within a practical state. Abe’s performance demonstrates a similar mastery, attributed to the sedimented nature of socio-cultural dispositions evidenced in how he seamlessly assumed a ‘closed position’ – typical of the European style of social partner dancing – with the personal support worker. This cultural form of dance became incorporated in Abe’s embodied selfhood, which in turn was evoked in Abe’s subsequent enactment of the dance. Thus, embodied selfhood not only enabled Abe to recognise the personal support worker’s gestural offer to dance, but also facilitated the pertinent incitement of a capacity to grasp and engage in the dance. These analytical observations are not to suggest that selfhood is stable and already formed, lying dormant, sedimented and settled over time until elicited within a particular field. On the contrary, embodied selfhood should be understood as having a ‘generative spontaneity which asserts itself in the improvised confrontation with endlessly renewed situations’ (Wacquant, 1992, p 22), as it is articulated in lived experience and reiterated over time. Florence’s response to the personal support worker powerfully illustrates this, given that there was nothing specific to the personal support worker’s approach that

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called for the response Florence gave. And yet there was a coherence between the approach and the response that demonstrates sedimented ways of being-in-the-world that permitted Florence to respond instantaneously, coherently, and creatively. This example speaks to how embodied selfhood is a continuous achievement that is ‘never brought to completion’, but is in constant becoming (Käll, 2017, p 372). Drawing on the relational model of citizenship highlights that capacities, senses and experiences of bodies are central to self-expression through dance. More explicitly, in the encounter between the body and the social world, socio-cultural dispositions do not suppress the body’s power of natural expression. Rather these dispositions constantly utilise the pre-reflective, practical and implicit hold that individuals with dementia have on their body and the relation they have between the body and the world. Postures, gestures and movements of the body disclose a socio-cultural particularity that is shaped by socialisation associated by membership in a particular cultural and historical context, but socio-cultural practices are always dependent on a basic level of intentionality, impelling and sustaining socio-cultural expressions at every moment (Kontos, 2006b). By foregrounding the body’s pre-reflective capacity and socio-cultural dispositions for dance, interdependence, and reciprocal engagement, our analysis challenges dominant approaches to understanding the generative mechanisms of dance that privilege cognition. Highlighting the relational, intercorporeal nature of selfhood in the ethnographic examples provided underscores how this nature of selfhood characterises all human existence. People with dementia engaging with dance seem exceptional only because such expressions do not conform to the conventional conception of selfhood, which hinges on cognition, rationality, and independence. Yet, as Käll argues in relation to musicality and dementia, and here extended by us to the case of dance, such creative expressions of persons with severe dementia are ‘unremarkable’ (2017), given that relationality and intercorporeality are essential to all interactions between the embodied self, the world, and others. Given, as well, that embodied selfhood is fundamental to all human interaction and communication, and is foundational to everyday existence, it is egregious that dance as an embodied selfexpression is restricted to its instrumental application as a therapeutic tool to improve ‘behaviours’ and cognitive functioning. Finally, we wish to argue that the implication of our analysis of dance is that embodied self-expression must be supported in and through a matrix of human rights, such as the freedom of expression and human dignity (Kontos et al, 2016). This entails the mobilisation

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of socio-cultural structures and economic resources to nurture and facilitate opportunities for people with dementia to engage with dance as part of their everyday life in long-term care settings. Introducing policy initiatives and organisational practices will be necessary to raise awareness of the body’s potential for innovation and creative action, the expressive and emotive nature of dance, and the imperative to counteract the reductive adoption of dance for strictly therapeutic purposes. There are some innovative dance programmes already offered to persons living with dementia in long-term care, such as the Movement to Music programme offered by teachers from Canada’s National Ballet School and developed in partnership with Baycrest Health Sciences (Canada’s National Ballet School, 2016). However, these are rare and are not systematically offered across long-term residential care settings. Yet dance also needs to be supported outside of structured social programmes by diffusing the responsibility for enabling the creative and emotional enrichment of the long-term care environment. This would ensure that residents’ capacities are supported and nurtured in all aspects of institutionalised life and not exclusively through arts and leisure programming (Genoe and Dupuis, 2014; Moss and O’Neill, 2014). Such initiatives require fostering a social ecology of caring that supports embodied selfhood and relationality so that they become part of the moral fabric of everyday life in long-term residential care settings. Sir Ken Robinson, in an engaging TED Talk1 about the importance of creativity (2006), argued that we need to adopt a new understanding of human ecology, one in which we reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. We have extended his insight to argue that, in the context of long-term dementia care, such a conception of human capacity must accommodate both the embodied and relational nature of humanity, and the structural support for ‘human flourishing’ (Jennings, 2009). Ours is a call for relational citizenship, with its emphasis on embodiment, selfhood, and relationality in the context of micro-interactions, spaces, movements and sensibilities, to be taken up by dance scholars and gerontologists equally committed to ensuring that those persons living with dementia are given equal opportunities to participate in life – including the pursuit of dance – to the fullest extent possible. Note 1

TED Talks are online talks by expert speakers posted free on the internet by media organisation TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design); www.ted.com/talks.

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Why clothes matter: the role of dress in the everyday lives of older people Julia Twigg In academic circles, clothing and dress are often regarded as somewhat frivolous topics. Although scholars (Entwistle, 2000; Carter, 2003; Crane and Bovone, 2006) have argued that interest in them within sociology and social anthropology goes back to the founding theorists of the disciplines, they remain marginal to the mainstream, associated negatively with the domestic world of women (unless analysed in terms of economic production), regarded as lightweight and superficial. In this they share something of the treatment of everyday life. Although work addressing everyday life (Adler et al, 1987) similarly goes back to the late 19th century and the founding decades of the social sciences – Georg Simmel is a theorist who is common to both areas – it has been as part of the unmarked, shadow tradition of analysis that has persisted in parallel to the dominant mainstream sociology, with its focus on socioeconomic structures, organisms and systems. However, with the complex of cultural, intellectual and social shifts that occurred in the late 20th century, broadly associated with postmodernism, this unmarked tradition has grown in scope and influence. Particularly under the impact of analytic categories such as gender, emotion and embodiment, and with the growing interest in methodological approaches that focus on the experiential, the embodied and the visual, new subjects have come into view. These developments have created what Sztompka (2008) terms the new ‘third sociology’– that of social existence – to be added to the earlier ones of social structures and social atoms. As a result, topics previously regarded as trivial and beneath scientific note, such as love, intimacy, eating out, shopping, fashion, anxiety, fitness, taxi riding, now feature in the catalogues of the most prestigious publishers in the social sciences (Sztompka, 2008, p 1). These developments have also begun – somewhat belatedly – to have an impact on age studies. Until the 21st century, age studies, in the form of social gerontology, remained relatively isolated intellectually.

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The field was structured around the discourses of public policy and social welfare, and these largely framed the problematic within which age was analysed. More recently, however, that dominance has been challenged, with the rise of analytic approaches broadly termed cultural gerontology (Twigg and Martin, 2015). These encompass a range of influences – theoretical, epistemological, methodological – that, together with new work in the arts and humanities, have greatly extended the scope and breadth of work on age. Much of this new work aims to put the lives and experiences of older people at the forefront of analysis. As part of this endeavour, there has been a revival of interest in the sociology of everyday life in relation to age, of which this collection is a welcome part. Clothing addresses both the central themes of this collection: materiality and embodiment. Clothes are material objects, part of the array of things that we surround ourselves with, and that reflect, endorse, create and convey meaning (Guy and Banim, 2000; Guy et al, 2001; Weber and Mitchell, 2004; Küchler and Miller, 2005; Woodward, 2007; Gonzalez and Bovone, 2012; Ekerdt, 2015). They are peculiarly intimately connected with the self and the body. They literally surround and enclose the body, forming part of the day-to-day embodiment of people’s lives. Dress is thus both an intimate experience of the body and a public presentation of it, so that we cannot separate the study of dress from the study of the body that wears it and gives it life (Wilson, 1985). As a result, dress needs to be understood in terms of Entwistle’s ‘situated body practice’ (Entwistle, 2000). Clothes thus offer a point of entree through which we can explore the cultural constitution of daily life through its materiality and embodiment. As such, they provide a means whereby we can analyse the ways in which age as a social category and as a bodily experience is presented and understood within specific cultures. I want to suggest here that a focus on dress, far from being the frivolous topic that it has been perceived to be in the past, can bring new insights into central questions of social gerontology, helping us address important debates around the constitution of age and ageing. For example, it can help us think about the interplay between bodily and cultural ageing. How much of what we understand of old age is physiological and bodily, and how much social and cultural, and what is the complex interaction between these two? What of the status of age as an identity – the degree to which we are perceived, ordered, judged by our position in an age hierarchy, and the ways in which this does or does not give meaning and shape to our lives? Dress is indeed one of the ways in which age identity is expressed, so that a study of its constitution allows us to

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explore the changing ways in which age is perceived and ordered. A focus on dress also allows us to explore the role of material culture – in this case clothing – in supporting or undercutting identity, enabling us to perform or to resist age in differing ways. As such, it relates, as we shall see, to the wider reconstitution of ageing thesis – the idea that the nature and experience of later years has undergone a shift in the past 40 years, particularly under the impact of consumption culture – and that with this, a new discursive space has opened out: that of the third age. Dress also allows us to explore the moral regulation of age – the ways in which older bodies are policed and disciplined in distinctive ways. In particular, it allows us to unpack the particular meanings and dangers that attach to dereliction in dress in old age, for such sartorial lapses in the old can signal a more general moral collapse, the threat of descent into pitiable, derelict old age. As a result, it becomes important to maintain a certain standard in age, if one is not to fall outside mainstream society. This symbolic denigration, of course, is not a new phenomenon, but it has acquired additional significance with the emergence of new modes of governmentality in age, and new disciplinary requirements linked to the wider bodily perfectionism that increasingly marks the current consumption-mediated world (Gilleard and Higgs, 2000; Katz and Marshall, 2003; Katz, 2005; Twigg, 2017). I want to suggest therefore that a focus on dress allows us to reposition and refresh our analysis, bringing a new lens through which we can capture the everyday experiences of older people. It allows us to avoid too narrow an emphasis on problematic old age, and on those aspects of old age that are of interest to policy makers, as opposed to old age as it is actually lived and experienced by older people at the level of their day-to-day lives. Over the past decade, I have aimed to explore the nature of later years and its cultural constitution through a series of empirical studies of dress. The first, reported in Fashion and age: Dress the body and later life (Twigg, 2013), focused on older women and the responses of the media and clothing industries. This work was further located in wider economic and historical context in a study I engaged in with Professor Shinobu Majima on patterns of expenditure in the UK from the 1960s onwards (Twigg and Majima, 2014). A third study, undertaken with Christina Buse, took forward these ideas, generated in relation to third age identities, and applied them to the situation of frailty in a study of dementia and dress (Buse and Twigg, 2014a, 2014b, 2016a, 2016b). This chapter draws together that work, showing how it addresses central themes of embodiment and materiality. It argues that dress, rather than being a trivial topic, is actually central to many of the key debates that concern us about age.

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Dress and age ordering in everyday life As Entwistle (2000) argues, dress is a basic fact of social life: no culture leaves the body unadorned. It is one of the means whereby bodies are made social, given identity and meaning. Dress is thus enmeshed in a complex of distinctive rules and codes; as a result, it forms one of the most familiar ways in which social difference is made manifest and visible (Breward, 2000). We are accustomed to such ideas in relation to key social categories such as class, gender and sexuality. The role of dress in articulating social class has indeed been part of mainstream sociological analysis from the days of Veblen (1953 [1899]) and Simmel (1971 [1904]); and it has remained a rich seam of analysis into the 21st century (Bourdieu, 1984; Davis, 1992; Craik, 1994; Skeggs, 1997; Crane, 2000; Entwistle, 2000; Appleford, 2013, 2016). The links between dress and the expression of gender are similarly profound, with additional complexities arising from the intersection with sexuality (Butler, 1993; Cole, 2000; Karaminas, 2013). ‘Race’ or ethnicity has also found expression in dress, with particular interest recently shown to it in the intersections of culture, religion, identity and nationality (Breward et al, 2002; Tarlo, 2010; Hume, 2013). Dress has thus had a long history of underpinning and displaying forms of social identity and difference. Albeit less often acknowledged in the sociological and dress literature, age also forms a profound form of social differentiation. This is most obvious in the early years of life when childhood and adolescence represent distinctive social categorisations, and ones that have often been articulated and expressed through dress (Paoletti and Kregloh, 1989; Paoletti, 2012). Such patterning applies, however, also to later years. There is a long tradition in the West of age ordering in dress, by which I mean the systematic patterning of cultural expression according to an ordered and hierarchically arranged concept of age. Certain forms of dress are deemed appropriate – or more significantly inappropriate, for this is a set of codes that is expressed in terms of the negative, what must be eschewed – for people as they age. The cultural pressures to dress appropriately apply particularly strongly to women, so that age intersects here with judgements about the significance of gender and sexuality in younger women. Although subject to historical and cultural variation, certain features of age ordering in dress recur. Ageappropriate clothes are those that cover more of the body, with higher necklines, longer skirts and looser cuts, in darker, more effacing, colours and less showy, fashion-oriented or ultra-feminine styles. They are

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self-effacing, and signal retreat from claims to sexual or other forms of attention. These features of age-associated clothing point to the ways in which dress makes manifest deeper ideological structures. As Barnard (1996) argues, clothes are ideological, part of the process whereby social groups establish, sustain and reproduce positions of power, relations of domination and subordination. They contribute to how inequity is made to seem natural, proper and legitimate. This perception has largely been developed in relation to gender and class, but it applies also to age. Many of the features of age-related dress – the low tones, drab colours, the retreat from fashionability or display – act to make manifest and reinforce the marginalisation and denigration of the old. They underwrite at a visual level the structural exclusion imposed on older people, naturalising at the bodily level processes that are social and cultural. This patterning of expectations is familiar historically. But have things changed? Has the performance of age altered recently, affected by wider changes within consumption culture? It is often asserted in the media that things are different now, and that older people need no longer tone down or retreat into invisibility in the way they did in the past, with such perceptions caught in phrases such as ‘60 is the new 50’ – or even 40. It is often asserted that the baby boomer generation in particular will refuse to don the mantle of age, and will continue to pursue youthful, fashionable styles. At an academic level, these ideas are associated with the reconstitution of ageing thesis whose advocates argue that the social location of old age itself has shifted under the influence of a series of social, cultural and demographic changes that have acted to create a new cultural space in the form of the third age, one marked by leisure, pleasure and active engagement with consumption (Gilleard and Higgs, 2000). Öberg and Tornstam argue that later years now need to be seen as part of an extended arc of middle years that persist until the eruption of serious ill health precipitates transfer into the fourth age of illness and decline (Öberg and Tornstam, 1999, 2001; Gilleard and Higgs, 2016). In an empirical study of dress and age, I explored the responses of older women to questions of age and its expression in everyday life. The study, which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in the UK, was based on interviews with older women (55+), with journalists, and with design directors of mainstream clothing companies (Twigg, 2010a, 2012, 2013). The study, reflecting dominant gender assumptions, focused on older women. However, I am currently engaged in a parallel study of the role of dress in the lives

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of older men in the UK, funded by the Leverhulme Trust (Twigg, forthcoming). In the study of older women, I found evidence of both continuity and change in dress norms. All the respondents in the study recognised and were aware of the traditional strictures to tone down, and most accepted and internalised the rules of age ordering. Respondents thus explained how they would avoid clothes that were ‘too young’. Ultra-feminine or girly styles were deemed particularly unsuitable and unflattering: “I wouldn’t wear a frilly dress.... It would make me look silly. I’m too old”. Narratives were marked by the need for older women to be ‘careful’, and to avoid styles that were deemed no longer ‘appropriate’. Often this meant styles that exposed the body: “You have to be careful when you get to my age. I always have to have something with long sleeves. I think one or two of the things are perhaps a bit too young for me. I always wear very long skirts. I don’t like showing my legs.” For some, this self-monitoring went with a sense of estrangement from the cultural practices of femininity and with that, regret at exile from an area of pleasure in their lives. For them femininity was linked to youthfulness – a connection deeply endorsed in the values of the wider culture – and loss of its expression in dress was a source of sadness. Some described the ‘changing room moment’ when they had looked at their reflection in the mirror and seen familiar and well-loved styles no longer suited. As one woman recounted: “I’m very sad, I’m very upset. I mean some of the styles are quite gorgeous and I’d love to be able to wear them.... When you’re in the changing room and you see, oh goodness! Is that me? [laughter]. And I just think, ‘No no, I can’t wear it any more’. It’s a lovely style, and I just can’t wear it. I just feel very sad. And then I’ve got to look for something that’s more appropriate for my age.” Some, as a result, had retreated from active engagement with dress, no longer finding the pleasure in it they had in the past. They felt that it was pointless to engage actively with an area of life that offered diminishing returns and that it was better to adjust to a new way of seeing oneself in which appearance was less significant. As one women commented:

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“It’s a much more relaxed type of life that I lead.… We relax as we retire, and perhaps neglect ourselves a little … I’m quite happy in old trousers and my wellies and my hands in the garden.” But there was also clear evidence for cultural change in the study. Many of the respondents recounted how they felt that their lives were different from those of their mothers and grandmothers, and that this was reflected in the sorts of clothes they wore, which were much more mainstream and youthful in feel. “When my grandmother was older, she wore a pinny1 and her hair up in braids. And she was the same age as me! I’m 62. And when she was 62, she was walking round in this paisley pinny and her hair up.” They felt they belonged to a different generation. They were part of the cohort that had worn jeans and hippie dress, shopped at Biba (Barbara Hulanicki’s famous London store) and aspired to Mary Quant (the epitome of swinging London). They did not want to sink into the kind of age related dress that previous generations had worn. “I say, ‘What day do I wake up and I really just want a Crimplene2 skirt? What day do I wake up and do that?’. I don’t think I’m ever gonna wake up and do that … I don’t think our generation ever is. I think that generation’s gone.… We won’t change a lot. We’ll still be in our jeans, and we’ll still be in our tops.” So while respondents were concerned to avoid styles that were ‘too young’, they were also keen to avoid ones deemed ‘too old’, a finding also found in Klepp and Storm-Mathisen’s (2005) Norwegian work. Above all, respondents were keen to avoid the drab, frumpy dress they associated with age, epitomised in elastic waists, pleated skirts, ‘comfort’ trousers, machine embroidery and floral fabrics, all of which were singled out for vilification and rejection. ‘Dressing old’ could also have much more negative connotations, in the sense not just of appearing frumpy and old-fashioned, but also untidy, down at heel and shabby. Older people may find that their bodies in age are subject to new, more stringent forms of surveillance. The torn jeans, grubby tee shirts and grunge fashions enjoyed by the young are now read as signs of bodily and psychological decline. One

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working-class respondent explained how it was important to keep up standards in dress in order to send a message that one was not a pitiable old woman: “I don’t want to walk along and somebody think, ‘Oh we’ve got to move out of the way for the old dear’. I mean I’m dressed, as far as I’m concerned, presentable. Not to be thought, ‘Oh dear, she’s old’. So, I’m just carrying on wearing what I’ve always worn.” For her, wearing neat, clean, modern clothes was part of resisting social exclusion, of showing she still acceptable socially, and had not yet fallen into derelict old age. Many of the respondents were critical of the fashion industry and what they saw as its failure to address their needs. Fashion, they felt, was dominated by the youth market and had little to offer older women. “I’ve found modern fashion is for children basically. I mean little short things and puff sleeves and very exposed bosoms and all this, I just can’t cope with any of that, because it doesn’t fit me.” Part of the issue related to fit, and to the ways the body changes with age. This is a physiological process. As the body ages, it alters in systematic ways – waists thicken, shoulders move forward, height reduces, flesh softens – and this necessitates some adjustment of the cut, particularly if the clothes are close-fitting and formal. But questions of cut also reflect cultural norms that enjoin older people, particularly women, to hide signs of bodily ageing that are deemed culturally shameful through longer skirts, higher necks and styles that cover more of the body. Some of the respondents felt that changes in the fashion system were helpful, with the spread of more casual dress in recent decades making it easier for older women to find clothes that were attractive and modern, and that fitted. Some reported that fashion had in fact become less age-ordered, and they felt free to select from a wider range of mainstream dress than was the case in the past. As one respondent commented: “They’re not age-conscious clothes.… They’re not for young people, they’re not for middle people and they’re not for old people. They’re for anybody, anybody.”

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Evidence to support this sense of greater integration can be found in data concerning overall spending patterns. I undertook a sub-study with an economic historian, Professor Shinobu Majima, that explored spending patterns in the UK in 1961-2011, drawing on secondary analysis of the UK-based Family Expenditure Survey and supported by the British Academy (Twigg and Majima, 2014). This analysis showed – unsurprisingly – that across the historical period younger women consistently shopped more frequently for clothes than older ones. But it also showed that the shopping cycle speeded up for all groups over the period, including older ones. As a result, women over 75 were shopping as often for clothes in the early 21st century as those in the 16-30 age group had in 1960s. These data supported the view that over this historical period older women were drawn into the same consumption practices as were younger ones, and that to this extent, dress offers one of the ways in which they have become increasingly linked to, and integrated culturally with, the mainstream.

Dress and the fourth age It is sometimes suggested that the new focus on cultural gerontology and on themes like dress, while reflecting the lives of younger old people, fails to do justice to those who are distinctly older, and that indeed the move towards a ‘cultural’ framework represents a wider dereliction of responsibility in relation to frail elders, who are passed over in this new focus. In this way, the state of frailty itself may be consigned by our analyses to a dark residual category of abjection and separation, forming what Gilleard and Higgs and others have characterised as the ‘black hole’ of the fourth age (Gilleard and Higgs, 2015, 2016; Lloyd, 2015). A focus on dress, with its attendant frivolity, might fit such an interpretation. It was partly for that reason that I embarked on a third clothing study that explored the role of dress in the embodied experiences of people with dementia, seeking to show how material and cultural elements could still play a part in their lives. The dementia and dress study, undertaken with Christina Buse and funded by ESRC, was based on interviews and observation in care homes and domestic settings in the UK (Buse and Twigg, 2014a, 2014b, 2016a, 2016b). This research showed clearly how dress in its widest sense remains relevant in the everyday lives of older people, even those with considerable levels of dementia. It does so in a number of ways. Clothes represent the ‘environment closest in’ (Twigg, 2010b). They lie directly against the skin, enclosing the body. In a context where sensory grasp of

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surroundings is reduced or confused, and where the surrounding world can seem strange, items of dress that are immediately available to touch, directly under the hand of the person, can bring security and comfort. We saw this in the study with participants who repeatedly smoothed, touched and felt their clothes, deriving reassurance from them. Dress also has the capacity to support habitual embodied personhood, allowing the person with dementia to continue to wear the same clothes, to present the same social persona that they had in the past. The quality of dress presentation also affected how an individual was seen and judged by others, forming part of the interactional order of the social setting, with a capacity to support benign, person-centred forms of interactions, just as derelict, wild, soiled dress – which incidentally we did not observe – would potentially have undermined the same, endorsing the version of the person with dementia as derelict, lost and abject (Buse and Twigg, 2016a). This influence on the interactional order was not confined to the responses of staff and visiting relatives, but extended to the residents themselves, who retained some of the habits of female sociability that attach to dress. Residents would sometimes offer compliments to one another on the colour of a jumper, or other aspects of presentation. Dress also acted as prop, enabling individuals to continue to perform their identities, as Kontos (1999) showed in her account of a string of pearls in a care home. We similarly observed how women in the care homes would hold their handbags close to them, using them as an identity resource, containing items of significance in their biographies that could be examined and felt, and how this brought reassurance in a context that could be intermittently alien or strange (Buse and Twigg, 2014a). Clothes were not just part of the current interactional order. They could also be part of remembering and being located in the past, used by residents to remind themselves, and those around them, of the person they were and had been. One man in the study had been a builder and he remained attached to his former work clothes: the dusty jeans and heavy sheepskin jacket that he wore on site. He struggled to express his connection to these clothes verbally, but through wearing them, he was able to re-enact his past identity and remind himself and others who he was (Buse and Twigg, 2016b). This process of looking back and envisaging an embodied and clothed self could still occur, even though the garments themselves had long gone. They could still be a way of travelling back mentally to a better place. Rita had quite severe dementia and was living in the care home. She often used to

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talk about her clothes, those she wore currently and in the past. In particular, she remembered a treasured gold lamé jacket. “I used to have a lamé jacket ’n all, that used to sort of light up when I was in a room, they’d all stare because it sort of shone. You know how it does, lamé?… I liked it, and I like that lame … it glittered, it stood out. Do you get me? Sort of shone, like. It did! It’s true.” Within this narrative, her jacket exudes a shine or radiance that is imbued with almost magical and transformative properties. Although long ago lost, it still had the power to evoke memories, in the context of the care home, of standing out and of being ‘someone’. It was about performativity in the imagination and memory as much as in actual enactment. It is a quotation that is eloquent evidence of the enduring transformative power of dress. In it we can see how dress continues to reach across into the day-to-day lives of people, even those with dementia.

Conclusion We now return briefly to the issue alluded to at the start of this chapter: the sense that dress is a frivolous topic, lightweight and trivial, and one that has little to say to the lives of older people, particularly when one considers the very real struggles and difficulties that many of them face in their everyday activities and environments. This feeling is sometimes linked to a larger sense that the shift within gerontology towards the questions of appearance, clothing and consumption threatens an apolitical analysis, one in which the structural bases of ageism – the networks of power, exclusion and suffering that underlie the situations of older people in Western culture – are evaded. I think this perception is wrong. Topics like dress, and with them the related cultural turn, do not undermine our engagement with the politics of age, but deepen it. Since the 1970s, we have come to see how political struggle needs to be understood as extending beyond the familiar territory of conventional politics, with its focus on access to economic goods or structural positions of power, towards a wider focus on the politics of everyday life as they are played out in the day-to-day texture of peoples’ lives. This insight has opened up an understanding of how politics is potentially present in every context, addressing issues like the contestation of normalised identities, or the social relations in which one individual or group is subordinated to another, wherever

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these occur in the social field (Nash, 2001). This is true as much of age as any other social category, so that the turn to culture, rather than weakening our political engagement, in fact deepens it, allowing us to understand and contextualise how cultural norms implicitly marginalise and render less visible the experience of age. Dress is part of this. Norms of dress that call for the social retreat of older people, that enjoin them to cover up, to slip into the background, and to cease to make claims for attention are part of the materialisation of this marginalisation at a directly embodied level. This is why the body is a key site for the politics of age. As disability theorists in parallel work have shown, some of the most profound forms of exclusion, and most deeply felt assaults on self-worth, occur at the level of the body (Morris, 1992; Hughes, 2000; Barnes and Mercer, 2010). This is true also of age. Ageing is indeed a profoundly embodied phenomenon. This affects not only the day-to-day experiences of getting older – the aches, pains and limitations, as well as the continuing pleasures of life – but also the social and cultural judgements that are made about individuals, their standing and worth. How the body is presented, how it is adorned, hidden, effaced or emphasised, plays a central part in the story of how age is experienced, both now and in the past. Acknowledgement I would like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council Fund, the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust for their generous funding and support of the research that underlies this chapter. Notes 1 2

‘Pinny’ is a shortened form of pinafore, which is a type of apron. Crimplene is an artificial, rather plastic fabric, typically in bright colours. It once epitomised the easy-care dress of a certain generation of older women, although, in the way of things, it has recently returned to fashion favour.

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Paoletti, J.B. and Kregloh, C.L. (1989) ‘“The children’s department”’, in C.B. Kidwell and V. Steele (eds) (1989) Men and women: Dressing the part, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, pp 22-41. Simmel, G. (1971 [1904]) ‘Fashion’, On individuality and social forms: Selected writings, Translated by D.C. Levine, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Skeggs, B. (1997) Formations of class and gender: Becoming respectable, London: Sage Publications. Sztompka, P. (2008) ‘The focus on everyday life: a new turn in sociology,’ European Review, vol 16, no 1, pp 1-15. Tarlo, E. (2010) Visibly Muslim: Fashion, politics, faith, Oxford: Berg. Tseëlon, E. (1995) The masque of femininity, London: Sage Publications. Twigg, J. (2010a) ‘How does Vogue negotiate age?: fashion, the body and the older woman’, Fashion Theory, vol 14, no 4, pp 471-90. Twigg, J. (2010b) ‘Dementia and dress: a neglected dimension’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 24, no 4, pp 223-30. Twigg, J. (2012) ‘Adjusting the cut: fashion, the body and age in the UK high street’, Ageing & Society, vol 32, no 6, pp 1030-54. Twigg, J. (2013) Fashion and age: Dress, the body and later life, London: Bloomsbury. Twigg, J. (2017) ‘Fashion, the media and age: how women’s magazines use fashion to negotiate age identities’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, doi 10.1177/13675417708432. Twigg, J. (forthcoming) ‘Dress, gender and the embodiment of age: men and masculinities’, Ageing & Society. Twigg, J. and Majima, S. (2014) ‘Consumption and the constitution of age: expenditure patterns of clothing, hair and cosmetics among post war “baby boomers”’, Journal of Aging Studies, vol 30, pp 23-32. Twigg, J. and Martin, W. (2015) ‘The field of cultural gerontology: an introduction’, in J. Twigg and W. Martin (eds) Routledge handbook of cultural gerontology, London and New York, NY: Routledge, pp 1-16. Veblen, T. (1953 [1899]) The theory of the leisure class: An economic study of institutions, New York, NY: Mentor. Weber, S. and Mitchell, C. (eds) (2004) Not just any dress: Narratives of memory, body and identity, New York, NY: Lang. Wilson, E. (1985) Adorned in dreams: Fashion and modernity, London: Virago. Woodward, S. (2007) Why women wear what they wear, Oxford: Berg.

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Our Fitbits, our (ageing) selves: wearables, self-tracking and ageing embodiment Barbara L. Marshall At the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, electronics giant Samsung surprised business watchers with a major shift in market development plans. Expected to focus on robots, Samsung instead announced that it saw more potential in the wearable health sector, believing that ‘an ageing society will help this market segment grow more quickly’ (Maslakovic, 2017). While wearable devices include a range of technologies, wearable digital fitness trackers are the heart of this large and growing market (Lamkin, 2016). In this chapter, I consider the ways that embodied ageing may be shaped by these devices and their consequences in the everyday lives of older adults. As these devices translate bodily movement into quantifiable outputs, they produce data that can then be used, shared and/or displayed in different ways, and are bound up with discourses of risk management. While research in the biomedical and exercise sciences focuses on how self-tracking devices can enhance interventions aimed at behavior modification with older adults, I argue that we need to attend more carefully to how practices of self-tracking and the data they produce circulate through networks of technologies, relationships and regimes of expertise, and the ways in which quantification is embedded in everyday social worlds.

Self-tracking and the production of healthy ageing ‘lifestyles’ Industry observers seem surprised that manufacturers have been so slow to recognise the potential in the ‘grey’ market. After all, self-monitoring for health is hardly a new activity, especially for older people, who have long been expected to ‘live by numbers’ (Oxlund, 2012) by measuring and monitoring such things as weight, blood pressure and cholesterol

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levels (see also Pickard and Rogers, 2012; Crawford et al, 2015). One senior industry analyst, for example, suggests that: … it makes sense that the older demographics show interest.… For one, they’re much more engaged in their health due to general focus around chronic diseases, and they’re in that risk group. Secondly, we know that older demographics have adopted mobile technology at a rate which we had not expected, and most of these activity trackers use the smartphone or tablet as a hub device. (Roshan, cited by Japsen, 2016) A website reviewing products for seniors and their caregivers further suggests that: ‘When an elderly person uses a tracker it does not only help in monitoring their fitness level, but it can also help to predict possible changes in health, such as health decline associated with ageing’ (Toriola, 2017). So, fitness trackers take on a unique positioning in relation to ageing populations – one focused on health rather than performance, and on producing data readily viewable on mobile devices to help responsible ageing individuals mitigate risks for, or identify onset of, age-related decline. As one observer remarks: ‘Using a Fitbit or similar device makes monitoring one’s health part of a lifestyle’ (Bajarin, 2015). The shaping of digital fitness tracking as integral to healthy ageing lifestyles should make it of particular interest to social scientists. Katz (2013) has provided a trenchant analysis of ‘lifestyle’ as a contentious concept in contemporary gerontology. On one hand, mainstream professional gerontology tends to understand ‘lifestyle’ as a collection of practices voluntarily adopted by individuals rationally seeking ‘successful’ ageing outcomes (see, for example, Zantinge et al, 2014). It is this understanding that underpins the growing professional literature on the role of digital fitness trackers in encouraging ageing individuals to engage in more physical activity (see, for example, Cadmus-Bertram et al, 2015; Mercer et al, 2016; Tiedemann et al, 2016). On the other hand, there is a more critical and sociological sense in which ‘lifestyle’ represents a ‘complicated series of spaces whereby individual agency and social structure come together in ways that define ageing today’ (Katz, 2013, p 44). This understanding requires that we recognise the ways that social conditions, political priorities and the authority of ‘experts’ conjoin to shape the everyday embodied experience of age. Building on this perspective, I conceptualise selftracking as both an individual and social practice, shaped by new

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pressures on ageing individuals to manage and optimise their bodily resources in such a way as to avoid dependency.

Existing research on self-tracking A growing body of scholarship locates self-tracking in the range of devices, technologies and practices categorised as ‘personal health technologies’ (Fox, 2015), ‘mHealth’ (mobile health) technologies (Lupton, 2013; Rich and Miah, 2016), ‘biosensors’ (Nafus, 2016), or ‘digital health technologies’ (Lupton, 2014). As two recent monographs mapping this emerging field have stressed, while self-tracking may appear to be an individualistic practice, it can only be understood in relation to fundamentally social beliefs about how societies work (or should work) and the moral responsibility of its members (Lupton, 2016b; Neff and Nafus, 2016). Lupton’s (2016b) comprehensive sociological take on ‘the quantified self ’ argues that self-tracking ‘may be theorized as a practice of selfhood that conforms to cultural expectations concerning self-awareness, reflection and taking responsibility for managing, governing oneself and improving one’s life chances’ (p 68). Lupton draws attention to the relationship between these practices of bodily management and dividing practices premised on ‘moral meanings associated with binary oppositions such as thin/fat, healthy/ill and normal/pathological’ (p 52). Missing from this list – and increasingly important today – are oppositions of functional/dysfunctional, independent/dependent and young/old. As the binary of normal/pathological has been supplanted by that of functional/dysfunctional, ageing bodies have become measured, standardised and managed according to a new logic that opens them to a variety of techniques of quantification and locates them in a biosocial order (Katz and Marshall, 2004). At a time when demographic shifts and shifting regimes of governmentality conjoin to problematise ageing bodies, it should not be surprising that an appeal is made to the sort of technical means of measurement and management that self-tracking and associated algorithmic calculations embody (Marshall and Katz, 2016). Neff and Nafus (2016), writing from the perspective of science and technology studies, locate self-tracking more firmly in relation to biomedicalisation, which, they argue, ‘carves a groove in our collective imagination that makes close measurement of the body both conceivable and desirable’ (p 20). While not central to their analysis, they at least acknowledge the silence around age and ageing,

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particularly when they examine how producers of wearable tracking devices envision consumers other than those already young and fit: We quickly find ourselves in a different market, the ‘independent living’ market, one where older people are treated as if they are only ever in need of surveillance, where other human needs like beauty or curiosity somehow just disappear.… [W]hat is left on the table in the ‘health line’ are people who do not fit the mold of the young body that can be optimized, or the mold of the docile body in need of extensive management by others. The industry has little to say to those in between – the injured, the disabled, the poor, or the middle-aged – unless they too share the same narrow view of what an optimal body is. (Neff and Nafus, 2016, p 124) A division is reproduced between wearable tracking technologies as either enabling agency and self-control, exemplified by the younger fitness buff (the fitness tracker market), or enabling others to monitor and manage an older person’s activity (the ‘independent living’ market). Most empirical studies have focused on one or the other of these. None of the limited existing research on everyday practices of self-tracking has focused on age, or even included those over 40 in their samples (Rooksby et al, 2014; Ruckenstein, 2014; Pantzar and Ruckenstein, 2015; Lomborg and Frandsen, 2016; Sharon and Zandbergen, 2016). Studies such as these provide important insight into what have been called ‘everyday analytics’ (Pantzar and Ruckenstein, 2015) or ‘lived informatics’ (Rooksby et al, 2014), but they miss the opportunity to locate self-tracking in the broader biopolitical landscape, where age and ageing figure centrally as both population problems and individual challenges. The other side of the divide is dominated by studies on wearable technologies that permit ambient monitoring, exploring the role that they might play in extending opportunities for ‘ageing in place’ (Sixsmith, 2000; Hossain and Ahmed, 2012; Lie et al, 2015). The focus here has been on elders confronting physical challenges, dementia or other factors that may jeopardise their ability to remain in their homes. While these, too, are important topics, there remains a significant gap in the existing research on self-tracking, one that tends to replicate the division between young/independent/fit and old/dependent/frail. It is this gap that the present study aims to address, by raising questions

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about the ways in which active older adults who engage in self-tracking understand its practice and the data it produces.

Self-tracking and ageing embodiment: practices and context Methodology The empirical component of this chapter is based on a small (N=10) exploratory study. Adults aged 55 or over who either currently use a digital fitness tracker, or who had previously used one, were invited to participate in a semi-structured interview lasting between 45 and 90 minutes (most took between 60 and 80 minutes). All participants were asked about their history of use, the things that they track, the way(s) they view, share and use the data, and their thoughts about how tracking their fitness relates to their experiences of ageing. The sample included eight women and two men who ranged in age from 55 to 79 (mean age was 64.2). All were white and the majority (eight) were retired or semi-retired from professional, skilled or clerical occupations. Most had varying models of Fitbits except for one with a Garmin runner’s watch and one who currently did not wear a tracker. Not surprisingly, given the topic of the study,1 most reported a history of ‘being active’. Four participants (two women, two men) identified themselves as either former or current runners, with one still doing marathons. Walking, however, was the activity most likely to be tracked with a device, even if the participants engaged in other activities, such as swimming, yoga or weight training. While such a small and unrepresentative sample is limiting in terms of generating conclusions, some recurring themes in the interview data raise some interesting and important questions. In the remaining sections, the chapter addresses the following four themes: the temporal practices of self-tracking; interpreting the numbers; embodying ‘healthy ageing’; and connectedness, community and citizenship. Temporal practices of self-tracking Gilmore (2016) has called wearable fitness trackers ‘everywear’ technologies, in that they are designed to be worn constantly, continually collecting and transmitting data about the individual. Most of the study participants indicated that they wore their trackers all day, every day, removing them only for charging. For some, these devices transformed existing tracking habits, particularly for those who self-

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identified as runners or former runners (Brenda, 63; Larry, 61; Robert, 55; Nora, 66). Robert recounted that when he started running (at 50) he “learned that if you wanted to get serious you had to get a tracker” so you could have “stats available at your fingertips when you were running”. There is a distinct shift from this type of time-limited and activity-specific tracking (“when you were running”) to the continual data production of their current devices. Larry and Nora also noted the shift to continual monitoring of their heart rate. Among the nonrunners, Moira (58) gave a typical account of previous tracking history: “Sort of … I probably kept track more of my weight, um, and then depending on where my weight was how many times I needed to go to the gym … I don’t think I wrote it down … just took note of it”. The fact that trackers also doubled as timepieces meant that participants noted the immediacy of the data. As Dianne (62) put it: “I tend not to just look at the time; if I look at the time I look at the steps”. Different things tracked took on different temporal significance. For example, ‘steps’ accumulated on a daily basis and this data were rarely viewed as anything but connected to that particular day. Rhoda (79) was typical in reporting that she did not “collect” such numbers but “noticed” them: “Mostly I just look at the numbers achieved during the day”. For those with devices that tracked heart rate, however, this measure was treated as more important than any daily accumulation of activity. Heart rate was disembedded from any particular day, and seen as a malleable measure that reflected overall health status. Moira, like others, treated her step-count as interesting in the present, but her resting heart rate was the only thing she kept track of over time: “Heart rate for me means health – you know the lower your resting heart rate is, the better shape your heart is in … so my goal was to get a sense of where my heart rate was and to see whether or not I could lower it”. For others, heart rate also indicated a measure of functional age beyond chronology. Robert, for example, described himself as a “55-year-old in a 40-year-old’s body”; Nora, too, was adamant that “age doesn’t apply; it’s fitness level”. Interpreting the numbers As the example of heart-rate tracking suggests, the data-driven basis of self-tracking makes numbers important. As other researchers have argued, data need to be interpreted and made meaningful to users (Lynch and Cohn, 2016; Lomborg and Frandsen, 2016), who bring varying levels of technological and health literacy to this practice as they draw on a complex network of both lay and expert discourses. This

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is reflected in the ways quantification was related to both motivation for increasing activity and confirmation of participants’ existing selfunderstanding as ‘active’. All participants accepted the 10,000-step goal that came pre-set with their trackers, although none could say exactly where that number came from or who ‘they’ referred to in statements such as “they say that’s what you should get” (Lucy, 60).2 Participants usually noted that they had “read” or “heard” that this goal was “the one that’s recommended” (Hayley, 67). Moira was explicit in linking this diffuse expertise to a desire to measure herself against the norm: “I had heard for sure that the goal for an active, regular normal activity level for somebody, anybody was about 10,000 steps, so that was my goal, so I wanted to measure whether or not I was close to that.” While users were encouraged to measure themselves against this age-less norm, few indicated that they regularly met this goal and even fewer seemed worried if they failed to do so. As Dianne noted: “There aren’t that many days that I don’t get 10,000, but even then, you have to let it go [laughs], you have to say ‘Don’t be crazy’!”. Larry admitted that “there’s a lot of days that I don’t get 10,000, I’ll get 8,000 or 9,000, but it gives you a benchmark for where you should be”. This sense of the numbers providing a ‘benchmark’ was reiterated by Brenda: “I take the information with a grain of salt, I know it’s not 100% accurate, just a sense of how you’re doing in a day”. Most also implicitly recognised both the messages of increasing activity and avoiding sedentariness: “I don’t purposefully go out in a day to do 10,000 or even 7,000 … but definitely if I don’t do, um, I’m going to say 2,000, I’m like that’s way too low, I’ve got to get moving” (Hayley). Participants enjoyed the positive feedback – such as vibrations and ‘badges’– that their devices provided when they reached their goals: “It’s like a pigeon getting your pellet” (Diane). Some reported that the numbers produced did motivate them to enact change in their routines. Moira was particularly articulate in this respect: “For me, I find it interesting, I like that it identifies, um, parameters … I find the information useful because of what it calls on me to do differently” (emphasis added). Some participants, however, were candid about being more circumspect around days or times when the numbers might be discouraging. Nora, who otherwise faithfully entered everything she ate and drank into her Fitbit app, admitted that she avoided doing this “on a couple of days or a weekend when I knew I’d just blown it … I’m

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not going to make myself feel bad”. Larry had second thoughts about sharing his numbers through a Facebook group when he considered the possibility of negative feedback: “If I got someone making a comment like, ‘Gee, Larry, you didn’t do much today’, I’d be gone, I couldn’t deal with the negative comments. I always like to get positive feedback”. Lucy, whose daughter (who gave her the device as a gift) was her Fitbit ‘friend’, felt compelled to make excuses at times when her activity level was particularly low (“I had to take it off to charge it” or “I forgot to put it back on after my shower”). While research in kinesiology treats the numbers generated by wearable self-trackers as data that can be used to assist in a closed loop of goal setting and feedback (Lyons, 2014; Lynch and Cohn, 2016), these experiences suggest that the feedback loop is not as straightforward as the behavioural sciences might have it. Larry’s hesitation to ‘go social’ and Lucy’s attempts to mediate her daughter’s potential reaction to low activity numbers also raise questions about connectivity and surveillance, issues discussed in a later section. Many participants wanted the numbers to confirm their selfunderstanding as ‘active’. There was frustration when certain activities did not add to the step total, when there were perceived inaccuracies or when participants forgot to wear their trackers. Dianne complained that if she went kayaking or cycling “it wasn’t giving me credit”. Nora echoed this, noting that exercises manually entered into her Fitbit did not increase her step total: “I’d like to see it recorded because I’d like to get those 10,000 steps, but I know I’ve done it”. Hayley raised another sense of ‘not getting credit’ when she found that her wrist-worn tracker did not accurately record walking with a shopping cart: “So you go all around Costco and come out with basically the same number of steps you went in there with!”. Hayley’s complaint has particular relevance in terms of how older adults may engage with tracking numbers, given findings by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) that self-tracking devices are inconsistent in recognising steps in other ways, such with those who take shorter steps or use a walker (AARP, 2015). Cherry, the only participant not currently wearing a tracker, abandoned her previous device (a pedometer) when she noted the difference between the step-count she was credited with and those of her friend who had a Fitbit: “She did more than I did! I didn’t know how she did that because she doesn’t, I know she doesn’t – she sits more … and I walk faster than some people because they tell me to slow down so my steps are more than some others.”

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Cherry repeated several times that she would get a Fitbit if she could afford one so that she could get ‘credit’ for her activity, which she felt was considerable. This emphasis on ‘getting credit’ highlights the tension between the perceived authority of numbers, and the individual’s own embodied sense of self. Sometimes participants relied more on how they felt they were doing than checking the numbers, but at other times the numbers were convincing. Hayley, for example, recounted regularly, checking the ‘dashboard’ on her tracking app when she was recovering from hip surgery: “I was always curious to see how active or inactive I was. I thought I was active, but then I found out I wasn’t all that active”. However, her re-evaluation of herself as ‘not that active’ was in relation to that ageless 10,000-step goal – which she has since revised downwards. Both Brenda and Dianne said they paid more attention to the numbers when they first got their trackers than they do currently. According to Dianne: “It puts you in tune to how active or inactive you are, I do believe it just makes more of a connection, I mean it’s quantifiable.… Initially it did give me new information.… Now it’s more confirming as I’ve established that baseline.” Both, however, continue to wear their trackers all day, every day, and both indicated that they would replace them if lost or damaged. Despite their attention to numbers, both women (as well as other participants) suggested that tracking was also “interesting” and “fun”, suggesting that it was an affective activity as well as an instrumental one. Evidence of continuing investment in the authority of numbers is provided by participants’ willingness to share data from their trackers with healthcare professionals as a way to confirm their activity level. While this was a hypothetical question for most, Hayley did share her numbers with both her doctor and physiotherapist when recovering from hip surgery: “… telling them I had a good day, or a good week, I would use numbers as part of that”. Participants were far less enthusiastic about sharing their data with insurance companies in return for reduced premiums – in this hypothetical scenario, many recognised the potential for misinterpretation of numbers, particularly should they change, which could result in them being reclassified as ‘risky’.

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Embodying ‘healthy ageing’ Regardless of their fitness history, all participants acknowledged that ageing and age-related bodily changes had prompted their selftracking. This is not surprising, given the widespread promotion of fitness and physical activity as ‘forms of body work directed toward “not becoming old”’ (Gilleard and Higgs, 2013, p 131), where ‘old’ connotes dependence and lack of agency. Participants endorsed this message, using self-tracking as a form of risk management. At the same time, they acknowledged the potential constraints and ‘surprises’ that are part of everyday life. All participants firmly believed that continual physical activity was part of a healthy ageing ‘lifestyle’. Most, like Dianne, felt that it was not just physical health that was at stake: “I’ve heard the message loud and clear…. I’ve always been active, but I think it’s something I think about more now, physical activity and um, cognitive, um maintaining health. They associate physical activity with so much more than they did previously.” Many talked about witnessing age-related decline in their parents or other relatives, and hoped that their embrace of an active lifestyle would provide them with better outcomes. Hayley remarked: “When you see people – I think of my mother, she was not very active, and she went downhill so fast by 60 she could hardly walk – when I see that, I see that you definitely have to keep it going.” Moira located herself and her decision making in terms of calculated risk presented by her family history: “Now the older I get, the more concerned I am for sure about family history of heart disease … so whatever it is I can do to sort of pay attention to that stuff I’m going to do and this [her tracker] helps me to, you know, give me the data that helps me to shape the decisions I make about that.” Robert, after recounting his family medical history, summed up his motivation succinctly: “If you can do anything to avoid that wheelchair, then do it”. So, for many, measuring and monitoring activity is a way

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of managing future health risks ‘through attention and action in the present’ (Mort et al, 2016, p 606). Many participants remarked that being “deliberate about fitness” in this way was something particular to their generation, the first where “at age 55 or so … you began reading articles about how for your own sake and for the healthcare expense sake you should really take up lifelong fitness” (Rhoda). Championing activity as a uniform prescription for healthy ageing, however, tends to downplay the many constraints individuals may face. Participants mentioned a number of factors – physical, social and relational – that could impede even the best intentions towards an ‘active’ lifestyle. They were aware that fitness trackers might be too costly for some, and several noted that activities they enjoyed required memberships to gyms or fitness centres: “great for retired teachers with pensions” (Rhoda). Many mentioned that Canada’s harsh winters curtailed free outdoor exercise for much of the year. Hayley faced physical limitations related to her hip surgery. Cherry articulated a more complex set of issues: “About every 10 years there are surprises.… Well you know I’ve got this pain here, my husband’s ill I can’t get out today, it’s not just yourself that’s affected it’s your family members, your grandchildren you have to pick up from school, these sorts of things.” Cherry’s commitment to walking every day was particularly disrupted by caring for her husband during his terminal illness: “I knew in my mind that I should be out there – the more you’re out there the better it is – but you just don’t have that time – you’re at the hospital, you’re waiting for the doctors, they changed the appointment, there are so many other things.” The vicissitudes of the life course may put paid to the most committed of self-tracker’s plans for a ‘successful ageing lifestyle’. Connectedness, community and citizenship The final theme suggested by the interviews describes the way that selftracking is related to broader questions of connectedness, community and responsible citizenship. Some researchers have suggested that what is really distinctive about digital tracking is its ‘social capacity

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– specifically the ability to sync quantified data to applications and websites to subsequently share with friends over social networking websites’ (Gilmore, 2016, p 2526, emphasis in original). Producers of self-tracking devices certainly promote the formation of user communities – both through the networking capacity of their devices (as in lists of ‘friends’) and through connecting with strangers through user groups on their websites. The Fitbit website, for example, contains hundreds of age-related user groups with names like ‘Fantastically Fit Seniors’ or ‘Grandparents on the Go’, where individuals can share their goals, activities and successes with others. There was no interest among the participants in this study, however, in joining these kinds of social networks. Only one (Brenda) said she browsed them when she first got her Fitbit, but remarked that “It just didn’t appeal”. Neither, in general, were participants interested in sharing their data with friends or family members; only one or two people did so. Moira had one ‘friend’ whom she thought had been important at first to motivate her, suggesting that if her friend had not done so, she might have been one of those people who “puts it [her device] in a drawer”. Lucy, ‘friends’ with her far-away daughter, enjoyed the ongoing connection that social networking provided, but – even though she joked about it – seemed somewhat anxious about how any decline in her activity levels might be interpreted. Sharing veered a bit too close to surveillance in her case. A lack of interest in social networking around self-tracking did not mean, however, that participants treated their activity as strictly individualised. Social connections were important in their ideas of what constituted a healthy and ageing ‘lifestyle’. Surprisingly, participants’ seemingly individualised self-tracking activity could also prove connective, with Rhoda, for example, recounting that her Fitbit was “a great conversation starter”. Moira also said she often used it as an icebreaker when encountering acquaintances, saying “Hey, how many steps have you got today?”. So, while participants confirmed Copelton’s (2010) findings that the sociality of activity was most important, they integrated, rather than rejected, the use of trackers. Finally, while all participants wholeheartedly endorsed the message that continued physical activity was linked to healthy ageing, they differed widely in their views as to what sort of role digital tracking could play in this, and in their views on how public a responsibility this becomes. At one end of the spectrum was Robert, whose transformation from overweight couch potato at 50 to extremely fit marathon runner at 55 prompted an evangelical zeal: “I honestly think that if you get your [government health insurance] card you

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should get your Fitbit.… I fantasise that every night your data would be downloaded to Health Canada”. At the other end is Rhoda, who argued that “You don’t want to have a new absolutism that somehow you’re morally inferior because you’re not working out”. She went on to say, however, that: “If you’re community minded you generally want to cost your community as little as possible in health care costs.” While self-trackers might be seen as promoting the greater good by encouraging continued physical activity, participants recognised that it “might not be for everybody” (Lucy) or that there might be “a lot of reasons why someone wouldn’t want to use one [a fitness tracker]” (Moira).

Conclusion: our Fitbits, our (ageing) selves? Obviously, it is impossible to draw firm conclusions from such a small and exploratory study. However, the insights of these older self-trackers both confirm and challenge some of the assumptions of existing research. Certainly, technologies like wearable fitness trackers and their associated apps multiply the number of things that can be measured, increase the frequency with which they are measured and produce data that are both at one’s fingertips and digitally archived (Neff and Nafus, 2016). The fact that devices come ‘out of the box’ with pre-set recommendations (like 10,000 steps) invites users to compare their performance with what is presented as an authoritative standard. The design and intended use of wearable self-trackers has been described as ‘biopedagogy’, teaching users how to be healthy, responsible citizens (Fotopoulou and O’Riordan, 2016). Yet none of these imperatives is uncritically taken up by the participants in this study, who draw on experience and embodied knowledge to resist what Fotopolou and O’Riordan call ‘the biopower of data’ (2016, p 13). At the same time, participants show a keen awareness of themselves as ageing, and as part of a generation for whom ‘staying active’ is widely accepted as the primary way to age successfully. They are interested in quantification as a way to gain knowledge about themselves and as influencing decisions they might make, but also as confirming the ways in which they already experience their embodiment. They envision their ageing futures as simultaneously constrained by family histories, open to active reshaping, and subject to uncontrollable events. In her delineation of ‘diverse domains’ of self-tracking, Lupton (2016a) distinguishes between that which is private, voluntary and self-initiated, and what she calls ‘pushed’ tracking, which ‘involves encouragement for people to monitor themselves from other agencies’

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(p 103). The designation of an entire demographic as risky if its members fail to monitor and manage their activity provides a clear example of how fine the line is that distinguishes these, and of the danger that certain stigmatised populations will be increasingly required to demonstrate that they are discharging their ethical responsibility to move. As Emmanuelle Tulle (2015) has argued, digital devices provide a ‘proverbial kick up the backside’ to the already extensive manner in which the ‘everyday life of the aged body is colonised, known and monitored by measurement’ (p 17). The ethical imperative for ageing bodies to demonstrate their constant motion is likely to become stronger, and no doubt the market for devices to both measure and motivate will expand. Acknowledgements This research was supported by a grant from the ACT (Ageing, Communications, Technology) research network, funded through a partnership grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I am grateful for both the financial and intellectual support of the ACT network, as well as for research assistance from Agata Wesolowski and Kirsten Ellison, and helpful comments by Stephen Katz and anonymous reviewers. Notes 1

2

A similar observation was made by Ruckenstein (2014), whose study ‘had to deliberately restrict the number of active athletes in order to get a more heterogeneous participation’ (p 72). Interview participants were not the only ones who had difficulty identifying the source of the 10,000-step target. Rooksby and colleagues (2014) suggest that its origin is in a Japanese marketing campaign.

References AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) (2015) Build a better tracker: older consumers weigh in on activity and sleep monitoring devices, Washington, DC: AARP. Bajarin, T. (2015) ‘Here’s why fitness trackers are here to stay’, Time, available at http://time.com/3934258/fitness-trackers-fitbit. Cadmus-Bertram, L.A., Marcus, B.H., Patterson, R.E., Parker, B.A. and Morey, B.L. (2015) ‘Randomized trial of a fitbit-based physical activity intervention for women’, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, vol 49, pp 414-18. Copelton, D.A. (2010) ‘Output that counts: pedometers, sociability and the contested terrain of older adult fitness walking’, Sociology of Health & Illness, vol 32, no 2, pp 304-18.

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Crawford, K., Lingel, J. and Karppi, T. (2015) ‘Our metrics, ourselves: a hundred years of self-tracking from the weight scale to the wrist wearable device’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol 18, no 4/5, pp 479-96. Fotopoulou, A. and O’Riordan, K. (2016) ‘Training to self-care: fitness tracking, biopedagogy and the healthy consumer’, Health Sociology Review, doi:10.1080/14461242.2016.1184582. Fox, N.J. (2015) ‘Personal health technologies, micropolitics and resistance: a new materialist analysis’, Health, https://doi. org/10.1177/1363459315590248. Gilleard, C. and Higgs, P. (2013) Ageing, corporeality and embodiment, London: Anthem. Gilmore, J.N. (2016) ‘Everywear: the quantified self and wearable fitness technologies’, New Media & Society, vol 18, no 11, pp 2524-39. Hossain, M.A. and Ahmed, D.T. (2012) ‘Virtual caregiver: an ambientaware elderly monitoring system’, IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, vol 16, no 6, pp 1024-31. Japsen, B. (2016) ‘Wearable fitness devices attract more than the young and healthy’, Forbes, available at www.forbes.com/sites/ brucejapsen/2016/07/11/wearable-fitness-devices-attract-morethan-young-healthy/#74b80f5a5dab. Katz, S. (2013) ‘Active and successful aging: lifestyle as a gerontological idea’, Recherches sociologiques et anthropologiques, vol 44, no 1, pp 33-49. Katz, S. and Marshall, B.L. (2004) ‘Is the functional “normal”? Aging, sexuality and the biomarking of successful living’, History of the Human Sciences, vol 17, no 1, pp 53-75. Lamkin, P. (2016) ‘Wearable tech market to be worth $34 billion by 2020’, Forbes, available at www.forbes.com/sites/ paullamkin/2016/02/17/wearable-tech-market-to-be-worth-34billion-by-2020/#4f00f12d3fe3. Lie, M.L.S., Lindsay, S. and Brittain, K. (2015) ‘Technology and trust: older peoples’ perspectives of a home monitoring system’, Ageing & Society, doi:10.1017/S0144686X15000501. Lomborg, S. and Frandsen, K. (2016) ‘Self-tracking as communication’, Information, Communication & Society, vol 19, no 7, pp 1015-27. Lupton, D. (2013) ‘Quantifying the body: monitoring and measuring health in the age of mhealth technologies’, Critical Public Health, vol 23, no 4, pp 393-403. Lupton, D. (2014) ‘Beyond techno-utopia: critical approaches to digital health technologies’, Societies, vol 4, no 4, pp 706-11.

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Lupton, D. (2016a) ‘The diverse domains of quantified selves: selftracking modes and dataveillance’, Economy and Society, vol 45, no 1, pp 101-22. Lupton, D. (2016b) The quantified self, Cambridge: Polity Press. Lynch, R. and Cohn, S. (2016) ‘In the loop: practices of self-monitoring from accounts by trial participants’, Health, vol 20, no 5, pp 523-38. Lyons, E.J. (2014) ‘Behavior change techniques implemented in electronic lifestyle activity monitors: a systematic content analysis’, JMIR: Journal of Medical Internet Research, vol 16, no 8, p e192. Marshall, B. L. and Katz, S. (2016) ‘How old am I? Digital culture and quantified aging’, Digital Culture and Society, vol 2, no 1, pp 145-53. Maslakovic, M. (2017) ‘Samsung shifts focus to wearable healthcare devices’, Gadgets and Wearables, available at http:// gadgetsandwearables.com/2017/01/14/samsung-wearables. Mercer, K., Giangregorio, L., Schneider, E., Chilana, P., Li, M. and Grindrod, K. (2016) ‘Acceptance of commercially available wearable activity trackers among adults aged over 50 and with chronic illness: a mixed-method evaluation’, JMIR Mhealth Uhealth, vol 4, no 1, p e7. Mort, M., Mary Roberts, C., Furbo, M.K., Wilkinson, J. and Mackenzie, A. (2016) ‘Biosensing: how citizens’ views illuminate emerging health and social risks’, Health, Risk & Society, vol 17, no 7/8, pp 605-623. Nafus, D. (ed) (2016) Quantified: Biosensing technologies in everyday life, Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Neff, G. and Nafus, D. (2016) Self-tracking, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Oxlund, B. (2012) ‘Living by numbers: the dynamic interplay of asymptomatic conditions and low cost measurement technologies in the cases of two women in the Danish provinces’, Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society, vol 37, no 3, pp 42-56. Pantzar, M. and Ruckenstein, M. (2015) ‘The heart of everyday analytics: emotional, material and practical extensions in self-tracking market’, Consumption Markets & Culture, vol 18, no 1, pp 92-109. Pickard, S. and Rogers, A. (2012) ‘Knowing as practice: self-care in the case of chronic multi-morbidities’, Social Theory & Health, vol 10, no 2, pp 101-20. Rich, E. and Miah, A. (2016) ‘Mobile, wearable and ingestible health technologies: towards a critical research agenda’, Health Sociology Review, doi:10.1080/14461242.2016.1211486. Rooksby, J., Rost, M., Morrison, A. and Chalmers, M. (2014) ‘Personal tracking as lived informatics’, Paper presented at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Toronto.

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Ruckenstein, M. (2014) ‘Visualized and interacted life: personal analytics and engagements with data doubles’, Societies, vol 4, no 1, pp 68-84. Sharon, T. and Zandbergen, D. (2016) ‘From data fetishism to quantifying selves: self-tracking practices and the other values of data’, New Media & Society, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ pdf/10.1177/1461444816636090. Sixsmith, A. (2000) ‘An evaluation of an intelligent home monitoring system’, Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, vol 6, no 2, pp 63-72. Tiedemann, A., Hassett, L. and Sherrington, C. (2016) ‘A novel approach to the issue of physical inactivity in older age’, Preventive Medicine Reports, vol 2, pp 595-97. Toriola, A. (2017) ‘Best fitness and activity trackers for seniors’, Best Choices for Seniors, https://bestchoicesforseniors.com/best-fitnessactivity-trackers-for-seniors-theelderly/. Tulle, E. (2015) ‘Physical activity and sedentary behaviour: a vital politics of old age?’, in E. Tulle and C. Phoenix (eds) Physical activity and sport in later life: Critical perspectives, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 9-20. Zantinge, E.M., van den Berg, M., Smit, H.A. and Picavet, H.S.J. (2014) ‘Retirement and a healthy lifestyle: opportunity or pitfall? A narrative review of the literature’, European Journal of Public Health, vol 24, no 3, pp 433-9.

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Afterword. Relational entanglements: ageing, materialities and embodiments Kim Sawchuk “Ageing, it sure isn’t what it used to be.” So quipped a woman in her 80s when interviewed about her media and communication practices. When I pressed her to explain, she simply nodded towards her large screen television, the remote controls on the coffee table, her mobile phone and the tablet computer that was a recent gift from her children. With a wry laugh and a nod of the head, she articulated much with embodied economical eloquence. Her choice of phrase, her gestures and the sight of this plethora of digital techno-media in her living room immediately brought to mind images of visits with my Baba (grandmother) some 30 years earlier. My Baba’s life, of course, was not absent of either media or technologies. She had newly bought a microwave oven with a digital readout to warm dishes from the small chest freezer tucked in her hall closet. Her daily routines were synched to the rhythms and flows of her favourite shows, or “my stories” as she called them, on her television. She often noted how her experiences of ageing were distinct from that of her mother, mostly for the better in her opinion. She had her own private telephone not a “party line”. She never felt the pressure to don a ‘babushka’ (a traditional Ukrainian head covering) even when attending church at Easter. My relationship with my grandmother gave me a lasting view of the intimate flows of everyday life that constitute the meanings of growing older. Her world of ageing, full of moments, engagements, things and experiences, created a meshing of resources that also contextualised her time and place, the 1980s in Manitoba, Canada, when austerity programmes were not in full swing either federally or provincially. She had access to a variety of health and home-care services then provided by the provincial government. (If she were alive, I am sure she would have noted, with dismay, how successive changes to pensions, rates of inflation, and cutbacks to subsidised services would have transformed her everyday life and conditions of existence.) When we are privileged

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enough to be in touch with and touched by an older person, we can learn how the seemingly ordinary contexts of their everyday life are maps and paths to understanding the wider culture in which ageing is situated. As Raymond Williams asserted in the title of one of his famous essays, ‘culture is ordinary’ (1989 [1958]), and the realm of the ordinary is a rich site from which to unravel the dynamic entanglements that shape how we live together on a day-to-day basis in cultures and in the world under differential conditions of power and privilege. A perfect example of this complex idea of the ‘ordinary’ is where Julia Twigg elegantly asserts in Chapter Ten of this volume that takenfor-granted topics like clothing and dress are part of a ‘cultural turn’ in age studies (Twigg and Martin, 2015). For Twigg, the examination of the cultural practices and politics of everyday life do not ‘undermine our engagement with the politics of age, but deepen it’, adding that: ‘Since the 1970s we have come to see how the political struggle needs to be understood as extending beyond the familiar territory of conventional politics with its focus on access to economic goods or structural positions of power, towards a wider focus on the politics of everyday life as they are played out in the day-to-day texture of peoples’ lives’ (see page 191 in this volume). Twigg also comments on how the disciplines of social and cultural gerontology have shifted and evolved over time, a reminder that fields of inquiry themselves age, mutate and transform. What matters in one period may no longer be relevant in another moment. Current contexts and conditions may require different intellectual strategies to respond to current contexts and conditions in which we experience our ageing. Such strategies include the study of many of the practices outlined in this volume, such as watching films, reading newspapers online, dating, dancing, driving a car, exercising or having sex. If I had to characterise Ageing in everyday life in one sentence, I would say that it is a lively contribution to a cultural and relational study of ageing for the present moment. Each chapter is a unique case study in an emergent area. At the same time, all the chapters are collectively part of a lineage of social and cultural gerontologies of the everyday (for example, Gubrium and Holstein, 2000; Faircloth, 2003; Hurd Clarke, 2011; Loe, 2011) that proffers methods and theoretical vocabularies from other disciplines, including cultural geography and mobility studies, film and media studies, and sexuality studies, to name but a few. In this collection, the reader is invited into different sites of the everyday: into the driver’s seat of a technologically sophisticated automobile, into the hallways and cafeterias of care homes, into a seniors’ residence for those with dementia, into the struggles of those

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trying to get rid of their stuff and downsize, into the fantasy world of ageing in exotic places like the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and into the diaries that share the intimate spheres of ageing masculinity. This timely collection brings us to these places in the everyday, sharing the words of their interlocutors and their observations. In this sense it is worth recalling the words of Tia de Nora on music and life. As she pithily asserts, ‘Music is not about life. Music is formative of life, importing shape and texture to being, feeling, and doing’ (DeNora, 2000, p 152, emphasis added). I have emphasised DeNora’s use of the prepositions ‘about’ and ‘of ’ in this quote to draw attention to the different forms of relationality implied by her comment, which also suggests that the authors of Ageing in everyday life do not simply write about the processes of ageing and the everyday; they also bring the reader into these different contexts of ageing in everyday life. The book’s chapters underscore how ageing is a temporal process of embodied transformations that engages with other ageings that surround us. A cultural study of ageing seeks to understand ageing processes as materially inscribed in the everyday world of the technologies that become dated, the clothing that wears through successive washings, or furniture that breaks and needs repair or replacement. The authors pay explicit and implicit attention to everyday practices and to the co-existence of what Stephen Katz calls the ‘fascinating and divergent temporal conditions’ of ageing (2005, p 233). This ageing, as a divergent temporal process, is not merely a condition reserved for us humans alone, as Katz points out. Thus, in this moment in time, the study of how things around us age is connected to the specific historical and economic conditions where ageing and identity are increasingly tied to cultures of consumption. While, for example, consumption has been a topic of past work (see, for example, Blaikie, 1999), several of the chapters in Ageing in everyday life go further to analyse the operations of current cultures of consumption, to the convoy of material possessions that we accumulate over a life course, as described by David J. Ekerdt in Chapter Two. As Ekerdt writes, these things – the material consumables or goods – are often associated with different stages of one’s life, such that ‘Childhood is unthinkable without toys, just as adulthood is unthinkable without keys’ (see page 29). Some of these objects acquire greater value and meaning because they endure with us throughout our lives. We become attached, develop memories and invent stories about our relationship with these material goods. We let others disintegrate and we dispose of them. For Ekerdt, the changes that are wrought by the processes of ageing with ‘stuff’ create new challenges. In these material objects, one

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is confronted not only with a life of accumulation, but an awareness of the contingency of what one understands as valuable: a china set, teacups, spoons collected during travels, all precisely acquired with purpose or pleasure at one time, become stuff to manage later. Other consumer goods, such as the Fitbits that monitor health and the everyday practice of walking, examined by Barbara L. Marshall’s extraordinary research on quantified ageing in Chapter Eleven, are discursively repositioned according to age. In marketing terms, when Fitbits are positioned for a youth market the discourse emphasises fitness; when they are marketed to older adults these very same devices are aligned with the need to maintain good health. Like the online representations described by Julia Rozanova, Mineko Wada and Laura Hurd Clarke in Chapter Six, there are powerful discourses on successful ageing tied to larger narratives of productivity. Such discourses endure and shape both the material forms that emerge from the companies that produce these items, as well as our expectations for managing our bodily lives by cajoling us into taking just one more step and fulfilling that elusive goal of 10,000 steps a day. Discourses may not age, but endure, finding new sites to spread and materialise. They are, in the terms used by Donna Haraway, ‘material-semiotic actors’ (1991, p 208) that have performative embodied effects – they represent, but they also performatively animate who we become as subjects who are ageing. While this collection is divided into two sections, on materialities and embodiments, it should be clear by now that these two terms are inextricably entangled. I use the word entanglement deliberately. As feminist philosopher Karen Barad explicates in Meeting the universe halfway (2007): To be entangled is not simply to be intertwined with another, as in the joining of separate entities, but to lack an independent self-contained existence. Existence is not an individual affair. Individuals do not pre-exist their interactions; rather individuals emerge through and as a part of their entangled intra-relating. (p ix) I am drawn to Barad’s concept of entanglement as a way to understand just one of the unique contributions of so many of the works in Ageing in everyday life. Barad’s notion of ‘entanglement’ highlights the relational and processual aspects of our co-existence in a complex world inhabited by people, material objects, animals and technologies that do not exist in isolation, but in ‘intra-action’. Barad uses the phrase ‘intra-relating’ to make the point that we are not separate ‘entities’ or monads that

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confront each other or intersect from a position of externality. Barad’s concepts of entanglement and intra-relating are directly relevant to ageing studies, because from within the ontological position suggested by these terms, all of life is in constant transformation and change as the result of a manifold of interactions that are profoundly material, relational and embodied. Further, Barad builds on Judith Butler’s idea of the ‘performative’ to move away from a secluded analysis of representations to shift ‘the focus from questions of correspondence between descriptions and reality (e.g., do they mirror nature or culture?) to matters of practices/doings/actions’ (2003, p 802). The work in this collection that is most explicitly theoretically akin to this theoretical position is that outlined in Chapter Four by Gavin J. Andrews and Amanda M. Grenier. The authors issue a clarion call for thinking through ageing and movement-spaces as a type of interactional ‘becoming’. Drawing inspiration from Nigel Thrift’s non-representational theory (NRT), they assert that one examines the entanglements of ageing and everyday life by placing ‘the raw performance of the world at the centre of its inquiries, as an analogy providing the “running commentary” on life’s unfolding’ (see page 66). Andrews and Grenier clearly outline five elements that form the core of their analysis, asking us to pay attention to rhythm, momentum, vitality, infectiousness and encounter. These five elements constitute what they term an ‘ageing movement-space’. As they argue, this conceptualisation is intended to contribute ‘to an altogether livelier brand of social gerontology’ (see page 63). Andrews and Grenier’s theoretical explorations and explication of NRT for age studies are refreshing and thought-provoking. They also set the philosophical terms for Chapter Eight, by Jessica A. Gish, Amanda M. Grenier and Brenda Vrkljan, on driving. This chapter, to a great degree, intellectually enacts the non-representational and phenomenological perspective by describing in detail the corporeal complexities of engaging with ‘new cars’ for older adults whose driving habits were formed within another set of materialities and protocols. As the authors’ research reveals, while many of the new technologies found in cars, such as the rear-view television screen, were welcome additions, at the same time, ‘the formerly mundane and comfortable task of driving suddenly felt uncomfortable or “complex”, and, thus, unsafe as a consequence of the touch screen being experienced as “distracting” and difficult to control’ (see page 153). A key theme that connects and traverses many of the chapters in this collection is that of relationality. While not every chapter or author may agree with the ontological position of feminist post-structuralist

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theorists, such as Barad and Butler, they all in some way indicate the rising importance of relationality in age studies, even as it is a term that is situated in different intellectual traditions, epistemologies and ontologies. Writing from a phenomenological point of view in Chapter Nine, relationality is a key term in Pia Kontos and Alisa Grigorovich’s extraordinary recounting of life in a Jewish residence for those with dementia. Their research brings the reader into the swirling movements of their dance, capturing the sounds of fingers snapping, arms raising, feet shuffling. Kontos and Grigorovich, drawing on earlier work by Kontos, explicitly describe their theory as one of ‘relational citizenship’ (Kontos et al, 2016, 2017; Miller and Kontos, 2016), a term they use to describe and unsettle ideas associated with dementia. As they argue in their chapter, relationality can produce radical results, both in practice and in thought: ‘The relational worlds between material and embodied contexts are particularly apposite to understanding dementia in terms of sedimented bodily norms and intercorporeal becoming’ (see page 167). Corporeality and relationality are positioned in this work as ‘fundamental to self-expression’ in this rendering of relational citizenship through the pleasures of dance, both informal and ritualistic. Relationality is also part of Julia Twigg’s Chapter Ten, where dress presentation has a mediating performative dimension that produces interactions and opens up the potential for communication. As she summarises from previous work (Buse and Twigg, 2016) and working from within a feminist cultural studies approach, Twigg here says that dress presentation affects ‘how an individual was seen and judged by others, forming part of the interactional order of the social setting, with a capacity to support benign, person-centred forms of interactions, just as derelict, wild, soiled dress – which incidentally we did not observe – would have potentially have undermined the same, endorsing the version of the person with dementia as derelict, lost and abject’ (see page 190). Further, Twigg’s discussion of relationality draws out the pleasure that is materialised through bodily connections of touch, through clothing, which she evocatively calls that environment that is closest to us. Clothing is a key, yet often neglected, component of later life because through it we can see how one’s ageing identity shifts through time in interaction with most intimate, necessary and material parts of our daily life. Relationality and intimacy are at the core of Linn J. Sandberg’s brilliant Chapter Seven on ageing and masculinity, which situates relationality through an attention to touch. Her research with three older Swedish men draws on the materialist-feminist psychoanalysis of Luce Irigaray, combining embodied diaries and interviews of ageing

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and sexuality that are deeply personal and tender recountings of bodily change, adaptation and shifting zones of pleasure. Sandberg views ‘the men’s choice to emphasise intimacy and touch as a way of selfpresentation as a respectable sexual subject, distant from the stereotype of the “dirty old man”’. She adds that these shifts in how the men relate to themselves and to their sexual partners ‘also spring from an experience of changing embodiment. When erections decline, touch opens onto a wider horizon of sexuality’ (see page 133). Again, in David Ekerdt’s imaginative convoy theory of material possession in Chapter Two, relationality is evoked where it is used to call on Glen Elder Jr’s research on ‘linked lives’ to challenge the idea that possessions are not simply individual. As Ekerdt writes, ‘the material convoy of one household is, in part, inevitably the convoy of social counterparts, principally family members. Thus, the personal belongings of autonomous individuals become an intergenerational and collective matter’ (see page 34–35). In Susan Braedley’s reading of Dorothy Smith’s concept of the ‘relations for ruling’ in Chapter Three, relationality takes a feminist Marxist turn where Braedley uses this framework to describe the metaphors that influence the very design of residences for older adults. As her research on these spaces indicates, ideas and values associated with ‘hospital, home and hotel’ become embedded into the infrastructures of different residential settings, which in turn shapes the ‘social relations’ of nursing home care within these spaces. At the same time as she describes the performative effects of these metaphors for mainstream care facilities, she brings us to a different care facility that ‘evades these ruling metaphors by drawing on an alternative social imaginary to conclude that a more expansive, equitable social imagination for care is possible, while also constrained by broader social inequalities’ (see page 46). A potent aspect of Braedley’s analysis is a concern with how material-discursive conditions structure relations and dynamics of power, an aspect shared with Sally Chivers in Chapter Five in her cogent deconstruction of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films. While we learn that these films purport to present ‘new’ and positive images of ageing, Chivers demonstrates that they are deeply entangled with the legacies of colonial relations of power that assert a hierarchy of whiteness. As in Braedley’s chapter on care homes, there is an emphasis here on the performative aspects of fantasy, for as Chivers explains: ‘Everyday practices of ageing emerge from and merge with these mesmerising fantasies’ (see page 84). In her analysis, ‘The presumed whiteness of old age as conveyed in contemporary cinema reveals telling assumptions about everyday late life’ (see page 85). In relation

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to questions of consumption and the cultural politics of representing everyday late life, the protagonists in these films regain their value, and cultural worth as ageing subjects, through acts of consumption in their new location in India, which itself relies on the perpetuation of racism. Indeed, in the Marigold Hotel series, the Indian characters become the infrastructure to support the ageing British owners. As Judith Butler’s reading of relationality underscores, ‘relationality includes dependency on infrastructural conditions and legacies of discourse and institutional power that precede and condition our existence’ (2014, p 11). In the writings of Braedley and Chivers, there is a recognition that any discussion of relational entanglements of ageing, materiality and embodiment needs to be attentive to such relations of power. Since my own field of ageing is about media and communications technologies, I am delighted to see that one of the key cultural shifts highlighted in many of chapters, and one of the major contributions of this collection to the literature on ageing and everyday life, is the place of media and communication technologies within highly networked societies and their influence in changing identities and practices. For example, Gish, Grenier and Vrkljan’s writing on the high-tech automobile, Marshall’s exploration of Fitbits, and Rozanova, Wada and Hurd Clarke’s analysis of representations of online dating in Canadian newspapers, connect technology to the moulding and shaping of ageing identities. As Rozanova and colleagues state, the practice of online dating produces the need for ‘a continuous renegotiation of discrepancies between a person’s actual and virtual identity (that is, how they would have liked to be seen versus how they are seen)’ (see page 100). As in Marshall’s discussion of the Fitbit, here technology and ageing are tied to discourses of successful ageing such that ‘online dating in later life is alternately portrayed as a vehicle for “successful” ageing among those who defy older age and embrace indefinite youthfulness, and as a litmus test that reduces ageing experiences to portrayals of vulnerability and need’ (see page 100). In this myriad of ways, Ageing in everyday life takes the reader through the historical and locational specificities of what it means to age in particular entanglements of ageing, materiality and embodiment. As such, the chapters all contribute to a nascent trend in the cultural study of ageing, what I argue is a ‘relational turn’. Because they are situated within different epistemological traditions and take up different sites for their analysis of the everyday, their understanding and analysis of the terms of these relations differ. Yet they create a conversation that I believe traverses these testimonies to what it means to age at this point, in this time. To return to the thoughts of Judith Butler, there is a deep

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and intimate connection between materiality and embodiment. As she states: ‘We cannot talk about a body without knowing what supports that body, and what its relation to that support – or lack of support – might be’ (Butler, 2014, p 8). For Butler and as well as Barad, the body, in this way ‘is less an entity than a relation and it cannot be fully dissociated from the infrastructural and environmental conditions of its living’ (Butler, 2014, p 8). Butler adds an important point about relationality that concerns ageing research, when she says that, ‘the dependency on human and other creatures on infrastructural support exposes a specific vulnerability that we have when we are unsupported, when those infrastructural conditions start to decompose, or when we find ourselves radically unsupported in conditions of precarity’ (2014, p 8). Her point, as with the chapters of this book, is to wrest from current discussions of ageing assertions about the primacy of individuality and individualism and move towards attending to our inter- and intra-dependencies as a necessary condition for not only critically understanding ageing in everyday life, but strengthening the resources its offers to our communal practices of it. References Barad, K. (2003) ‘Posthumanist performativity: toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter’, Signs, vol 28, no 3, pp 801-31. Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Blaikie, A. (1999) Ageing and popular culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Buse, C. and Twigg, J. (2016) ‘Clothing, embodied identity, and dementia: maintaining the self through dress,’ Age, Culture, Humanities, vol 2, pp 69-93. Butler, J. (June, 2014) ‘Rethinking vulnerability and resistance’, available at https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file. php?name=rethinking-vulnerability-and-resistance-judith-butler. pdf&site=41. DeNora, T. (2000) Music in everyday life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Faircloth, C.A. (ed) (2003) Aging bodies: Images and everyday experience, Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Gubrium, J.F. and Holstein, J. (eds) (2000) Aging and everyday life, Oxford: Blackwell. Haraway D. (1991) Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature, New York, NY: Routledge.

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Hurd Clarke, L. (2011) Facing age: Women growing older in anti-aging culture, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Katz, S. (ed) (2005) Cultural aging: Life course, lifestyle and senior worlds, Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press. Kontos, P., Grigorovich, A., Kontos, A. and Miller, K. L. (2016) ‘Citizenship, human rights, and dementia: towards a new embodied relational ethic of sexuality’, Dementia: The International Journal of Social Research and Practice, vol 15, no 3, pp 315-29. Kontos, P., Miller, K.L. and Kontos, A. (2017) ‘Relational citizenship: supporting embodied selfhood and relationality in dementia care’, Sociology of Health & Illness, vol 39, no 2, pp 182-98. Loe, M. (2011) Aging our way: Lessons from living 85 and beyond, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Miller, K.L. and Kontos, P. (2016) ‘The use of elder-clowning to foster relational citizenship in dementia care’, in T.A. Andreassen, J.F. Gubrium, and P.K. Solvang (eds) Reimagining the human service relationship, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, pp 158-77. Twigg, J. and Martin, W. (eds) (2015) Routledge handbook of cultural gerontology, London and New York, NY: Routledge. Williams, R. (1989[1958]) ‘Culture is ordinary’, Resources of hope, democracy, socialism, London: Verso Books, pp 3-14.

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Index Page numbers followed by t indicate reference to a table.

A A Passage to India (novel and film)  95 AARP (American Association of Retired Persons)  109, 113, 204 actor-network theory  38–9, 40 advanced vehicle technologies see AVTs affect  73, 163, 165 ageism in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 89– 90 and clothing  191 in literature  2, 125 in media  99–116 Ahmed, Sara and Stacey, Jackie  137 American Association of Retired Persons see AARP American Journal of Sociology 6 American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery 106 American sociological tradition  5–8 Amour (film)  84 antipsychotic medication  164–5 Antonucci, T. C. et al (2011)  30 Aske, S.  111 assistive devices  29 ‘automotive emotions’  150–7 AVTs (advanced vehicle technologies)  145–7, 150–7

B Baan Kamlaangchay, Thailand  85 baby boomers  108–11, 185, 187 Bajarin, T.  198 Baker, J. D.  87 Barad, K., Meeting the Universe Halfway 218–19 Barnard, M.  185 Baudrillard, J.  48, 49 Baycrest Health Sciences  174 Beard, R. L.  165 Because I Said So (film) 84

Belk, R. W.  38 belongings see possessions Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, T., The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge 6 Bergson, H.  68 Berlin 6 Berlin, University of   6 The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films  85– 96 employment in  94 idea of home in  88 rejuvenation in  89, 95 US in  93 whiteness in  87–92, 95 Biba 187 Bielski, Z.  108 biomedicine and biomechanics  64 Blumer, H.  5 body ageing of  125–6, 188 bodily adjustment and driving  154–7 functioning 105–6 perfectionism 182 responses to  105–6 body clock see circadian rhythms body diaries  129, 130, 132, 133, 135–8 Bollywood  83, 94 Bourdieu, P.  172 The British Academy  189 Brown, W.  85 The Bucket List (film)  84 the built environment  29, 47, 52, 89 Bumstead, C.  111 Buse, C.  183, 189 Butler, J.  219, 222, 223

C Canada long-term care homes  46, 49–52

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Ageing in everyday life portrayals of online dating  99–116 Public Health Agency  112 services for older people  215 single older people  100 ‘snowbird’ culture  25 weather and exercise  207 Canada NewsWire  108 Canada’s Road Safety Strategy 2025 145 Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality 108 capitalism  4, 48, 57–8, 85, 86, 93 CBCA (Canadian Business & Current Affairs) 102–3 Chicago, University of   5, 6 cinema see film circadian rhythms (body clock)  68 citizenship relational model  163–4, 167, 170, 173, 174, 220 self-tracking and  207–9 Clarke, H.  140 clothing 181–92 age-appropriate 184–9 ‘cultural turn’ in age studies  216 gender and  185–9 female relationships and  190 femininity and youthfulness  186 in film  94 ‘fourth age’  189–91 and intersectionality  184 social identity and difference  184 spending patterns survey  189 cognitivist approach  163 co-housing 58 collective living  57 colonialism in film  85–96 exoticism  85–7, 92–6 white lives  87–92 consumer electronics  30 Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas 197 Cooley, C. H.  5 Copelton, D. A.  208 cosmetic surgery  106 Crossley, N.  159

D dance, psychotherapeutic use of  64, 163–74 somatics 165–7 unstructured embodiment  170 ‘dance kinesiology’  166 dance science  165–7, 171 Dawney, L.  75 Day, K. et al (2000)  55

de Certeau, M.  4 Degnen, C.  7 Deleuze, G.  3, 9, 73, 74–5 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F.  68 dementia arts-based therapies  64, 163–74 film portrayals of  84, 89 home metaphor for nursing home  53 hotel metaphor for nursing home  47, 54 therapy metaphor for nursing home 55–7 Dench, J.  113 DeNora, T.  217 determinism 71 Dewey, J.  5 Diaz Moore, K.  39 disability theory  192 disempowerment 100–1 Disneyland  48, 49 Doheny, K.  105 domestic labour  56 downsizing  10, 33, 35 dress see clothing driving 145–60 age-related change  148–9 advanced vehicle technologies  145–7, 150–7 behavioural adaptation  149 embodied approach  149–50, 159 film portrayals  93 human factors approach  147–8, 159

E Economic and Social Research Council see ESRC The Economist  111, 112 Edmondson, R.  7 embodied cognition theory  166–7 embodiments  125–6, 211–13; clothing  182, 183; and driving  146, 149, 153, 157; in film  86; male sexuality  129–37, 141; online dating  105; selfhood  164, 171, 172; therapeutic dance  163, 171, 174; wearable health trackers  201–9 employment  see labour encounter  63, 71, 74–5, 137 ‘entanglement’ 218–19 Entwistle, J.  182, 184 environmental psychology  64 erectile dysfunction  131, 133–5, 141 ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council)  185, 189

226

Index ethnographic approach  4–7, 46–7, 102, 131–2, 164, 167, 171, 173 ethnomethodology  5, 6 European sociological tradition  4–8 everyday life, literature on  3, 4, 7–9 ‘everyday fantasy’ in film  96 exclusion  185, 188, 191, 192

F female sexuality  132 Family Expenditure Survey, UK  189 feminist approach Barad 218–19 Dorothy Smith  8, 46, 47–8 Irigaray  130, 132–40 literature on  125–6, 132 intersectionality 2 on the male body  135 Marxism 221 Sandberg  7, 141 Twigg  7, 137, 183 film 83–96 The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films 85–96 ‘everyday fantasy’ in  96 portrayal of ‘M’  113 portrayals of older people  84–5 and technology  83 Fitbits see wearable health trackers Florida, Canadian ‘snowbird’ culture  25 Forster, E.M., A Passage to India 95 Fotopolou, A. and O’Riordan, K.  209 ‘fourth age’  9, 185, 189–91 Fries, J. F. and Crapo, L. M.  72 Frisby, D.  6, 7

G Gardiner, M. E.  8 Garfinkel, H.  6 gender  2–3 and the body  106, 126, 130, 134 clothing 184–5 demography 110–11 labour and  53, 54, 56 and possessions  33 power and  8 social pressure and appearance  99, 106, 126 gerontology on The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films 86 cultural  182, 189 embodiments and  125–6 environmental  38, 39 encounter in  75

feminist  2, 125, 130 infectiousness in  73 literature  2, 25, 101, 125, 198 momentum and  70 movement and  64–6 non-representational theory  75–6 rhythm and  68 social  63, 181, 182 on stereotypes  114 vitality in  72 gero-transcendence 72 Gilleard, C. and Higgs, P.  125, 189, 206 Gilmore, J. N.  201, 208 globalisation  9, 93, 95 Goffman, E.  5, 100, 114 Greaves, M.  111 Greenhough, B.  71 Grosz, E.  139 Gubrium, J. F.  8 Gulli, C.  107, 109

H Haraway, D.  218 Hauch, V.  107–8, 109, 111 health, self-monitoring see wearable health trackers Health and Retirement Study see HRS Hitchcock, A.  83 Holden, S.  94 Holmlund, C.  139 Holstein, J.A.  8 home as ruling metaphor  51–3 hospital as ruling metaphor  49–51 hotel as ruling metaphor  53–4 HRS (Health and Retirement Study), US  30, 32, 34, 39–40 Hulanicki, B.  187 human rights  164, 167, 173

I identity clothing and  182–4, 190, 220 possessions and  30, 37, 217 sexual 115 social change and  9 ‘spoiled’  100, 114 I’ll See You in My Dreams (film)  84 impotence see erectile dysfunction India, film portrayal of  85–96 exoticism  85–7, 92–6 infectiousness  63, 72–3 institutional ethnographic methodology 46 intergenerational ageism  100–1

227

Ageing in everyday life ‘intergenerational encounter’  75 International Ergonomics Association 147 interventionism 165 Irigaray, L.  130, 132–40 ‘When Our Lips Speak Together’  132, 134, 139 Iris (film) 84

longevity  72, 113, 125 Lupton, D.  199, 209

M

J James, W.  5 Jameson, M.  106, 108 Japsen, B.  198 Johnson, R.  106, 110 Joyce, P. and Bennett, T.  38 Judaism in long-term care setting  167– 74 Hanukkah 168 Simchat Torah  168–9, 171

K Kahn, R. L. and Antonucci, T. C.  30 Kakar, S.  96 Käll, L. F.  173 Katz, S.  125, 198, 217 King, R.  95 Kleinplatz, P. J.  108 Klepp, G. I. and Storm-Mathisen, A. 187 Klippel, H.  83 Kolářová, K.  85, 87 Kontos, P.  172, 190 Korosec-Serfaty, P.  32 Kvällsstunden (newspaper)  131–2

L labour  gender and  53, 54, 56 and independence  94 and race  54, 85, 86, 91, 95 in ‘therapeutic’ community’  57 Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M.  49 Last Tango in Halifax (television series) 99 Latham, A.  76 Leader Post (newspaper) 104t, 110 Lefebvre, H.  3, 4, 68 Lenior, D. et al (2006)  147 Leverhulme Trust  186 life-course  3, 4, 9, 34, 68 life-course studies  31, 37 lifestyle as concept  198 ‘linked lives’  34–5 Loe, M.  7 Long-Term Care Act 2007, Ontario  50

M (character in film)  113 Majima, S.  183, 189 male sexuality  129–41 case studies  133–40 erectile dysfunction  131, 133–5, 141 phallocentrism  132, 134–7, 140, 141 Manitoba, Canada  215 market metaphor  48–9 Marxism  4, 221 Maslakovic, M.  197 materialities  25–6, 219; clothing  182, 192; driving  156, 158; film  96; nursing home  47; possessions  30, 35, 39–41; sexuality and ageing body  132, 133, 134 Mauss, M.  146 May, V.  8 McCormack, D. P.  65–6, 68 McCracken, G.  37 McGowan, M.  84 Mead, G. H.  5 media portrayals of ageing and clothing  185 erectile dysfunction  133 impact of  83–4 nursing home scandals  45 online dating  99–116 memories  26, 33, 37, 149, 150, 171, 191 Merleau-Ponty, M.  171 Merriman, P.  66 migration  9, 54, 64–5 momentum  63, 69–70 Mort, M. et al (2016)  207 Movement to Music  174 ‘movement-space’ 63–77 encounter 73–5 infectiousness 72–3 ‘mobilities research’  64–5 momentum 69–70 non-representational theory  63–6, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75–6 public health  64 rhythm 67–9 traditional approach  64–5 vitality 70–2 Myerhoff, B.  171

N National Ballet School, Canada  174 Neff, G. and Nafus, D.  199–200

228

Index neoliberalism  48–9, 85, 93, 95, 114 Netflix 83 new materialism  71, 75–6 New School of Social Research, New York  5, 6 non-reproductive sexuality  140 Nova Scotia, Canada  46, 51–3 NRT (non-representational theory)  63–6, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75–6 nursing homes  45–58 home as metaphor  51–3 hospital as metaphor  49–51 hotel as metaphor  53–4 ruling metaphors  46–9 negative image of  45 as regulated environment  49–51 scandals 45 sexism and domestic labour  56 short-term for bed-blockers  54 ‘therapeutic’ environment  55–7 NVivo10 software  104

O Öberg, P. and Tornstam, L.  185 Ochiai, E.  87 online dating, media portrayals of 99–116 acceptability of  107 fraud 112–13 methodology 102–4 normalisation of  107–9 reasons for  110–11 risks 112–13 stereotypes 114–15 stigma  100, 111, 114 and successful ageing  105–9 victim blaming  114 youthful profile  113 Ontario, Canada, long-term nursing homes  46, 49–51, 53, 167 Oppenheim, I. and Shinar, D.  147 Otter, C.  38

P PCAs (personal care aides)  49–51 Peirce, C. S.  5 la perruque (wig) (de Certeau)  4, 5 person-centred design  147 phallocentrism  132, 134–7, 140, 141 phenomenological approach  125, 146, 148, 150, 157–9, 163 Phillipson, C.  9 physical places  38, 39, 46 Pinker, S.  107

possessions 29–41 accumulation through neglect  32 cherished-object method  36–7 and continuity of self  34 as convoy of material support  30–40 divestment of  33–8 excess of  32–3 and identity  37 inertia and worry  34–5 infrastructure of  38–40 as intergenerational issue  34–5, 37–8 manageability 33–4 material agency  38–40 motives for keeping  31–2 and relocation  39–40 replacement without divestment  32 Postmedia News 104t, 113 postmodernism 181 post-structuralism 12 power relations  8, 11, 46, 48, 185, 216 see also The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films; disempowerment pragmatist appraoch  5 property maintenance  33–4 Prus, R. C. and Puddephatt, A. J.  5 Psathas, G.  6 public amenities and attractions  30 Public Health Agency of Canada  112

Q Quant, M.  187 Quartet (film) 85

R race and clothing  184 in film  85–96 and labour  54, 85, 86, 91, 95 Ray, S.  95 reconstitution of ageing thesis  185 registered practical nurses see RPNs relational citizenship  167, 173, 174 relationality  158, 164, 173–4, 217, 219–23 relocation  25, 39–40 abroad 85–95 downsizing  10, 33, 35 rhythm  63, 67–9 Robinson, Sir K.  174 Robinson, T.  109 Rooksby, J. et al (2014)  210n2 Rousseau, N.  5 Roy, S.  95 RPNs (registered practical nurses)  51 Ruckenstein, M.  210n1

229

Ageing in everyday life ruling metaphors  46–54 Ryan, D.  112

S Samsung 197 Sandberg, L.  7, 141 Sandvine 83 Sartre, J.-P.  29 The Savages (film)  85 Schein, R.  57–58 Schutz, A.  5–6 The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (film)  85, 86–7, 92–5 self-object relations  36–8 Settersten, Jr, R. A. and Trauten, M. E. 9 sexuality discourses of  131 erectile dysfunction  131, 133–5, 141 female 132 male 129–41 norms of  109 pressures 131 and ‘successful’ ageing  101–2 sexually transmitted diseases see STDs Sheller, M.  150, 151, 158 Shilling, C.  158, 159 Silverman, D.  103 Simmel, G.  4, 5, 6–7, 181, 184 sleep  68, 136 Slumdog Millionaire (film) 95 Smart, C.  8, 9 Smith, A.  8 Smith, D.  8, 46, 47–8 social folding  3 socio-emotional selectivity theory  101 somatics and dance science  165–7 ‘spoiled identities’  100, 114 Srinivas, L.  83, 93, 95, 96 STDs (sexually transmitted diseases)  106, 108, 112 stereotypes  100, 101, 108, 114, 115, 116, 133 Still Mine (film) 84 storytelling 73 Sweden, nursing homes  47 symbolic interactionism  5 Sztompka, P.  181

Toriola, A.  198 Tornstam, L.  72 touch 129–41 Ahmed and Stacey on  137 and intimacy  133–8 Irigaray on  132, 134, 136, 139 and lips  132, 134 literature on  3 Tulle, E.  7, 210 Turner, N.  107 Twigg, J.  7, 137 Fashion and Age: Dress, the Body and Later Life 183

U UK, nursing homes  55–7 US, nursing homes  53–4

V Veblen, T.  184 Viagra  106, 132 ‘vibrant matter’  71 vitality  63, 70–2 volunteers  51, 55, 56, 57

W Wacquant, L.  172 ‘wayfinding’ 64 wearable health trackers  197–210 ‘biopower of data’  209 community and citizenship  207–9 existing research on  199–201 and ‘healthy ageing’  206–7 interpretation of  202–5 methodology 201 positive feedback  203 temporal practices of  201–2 Wentzell, E.  140 whiteness  54, 84–92, 96, 221 Williams, Raymond  216 Wolff, K. H.  4

T Texas, US, nursing homes  53–4 ‘therapeutic community’ metaphor 55–7 ‘third age’  9 Thrift, N.  66, 73

230

AGEING IN A

Applying interdisciplinary perspectives about everyday life to vital issues in the lives of older people, this book maps together the often taken-for-granted aspects of what it means to age in an ageist society.

International contributions, including from the UK, USA, Sweden and Canada, provide a critical guide to inform thinking and planning our ageing futures. Stephen Katz is Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology and Distinguished Research Award recipient at Trent University in Peterborough, Canada. He is author of Disciplining Old Age (1996) and Cultural Aging (2005) and publications on ageing bodies, technologies, critical gerontology, biopolitics, sexuality, and cognitive impairment.

ISBN 978-1-4473-3591-7

www.policypress.co.uk @policypress

PolicyPress

9 781447 335917

Edited by Stephen Katz

Part of the Ageing in a Global Context series, the two parts address the materialities and the embodiments of everyday life respectively. Topics covered include household possessions, public and private spaces, older drivers, media representations, dementia care, health-tracking, dress and sexuality. This focus on micro-sociological conditions allows us to rethink key questions which have shaped debates in the social aspects of ageing.

Ageing in everyday life 

“This pathbreaking book changes our understandings of contemporary ageing by providing innovative, theoretically-rich analyses of everyday life, meanings and material culture.” Sara Arber, Centre for Research on Ageing and Gender, University of Surrey

GLOBAL CONTEXT

AGEING IN EVERYDAY LIFE Materialities and embodiments EDITED BY STEPHEN KATZ