Journal of Aging Studies最新文献

Although hundreds of advice manuals for dementia carers have been published, most have serious limitations. They emphasize the various problems family members experience without noting the social and political context within which caring unfolds. As a result, they eschew structural reforms in favor of individual solutions, including self-care. The manuals also encourage carers to detach emotionally from people with dementia by viewing them in terms of their disease. In addition, the books hew so closely to the medical model of dementia that they ignore newer perspectives. Narratives by people with dementia provide a critical corrective. Those works argue that the disproportionate attention directed toward carers has eclipsed the perspective of people with dementia, that people remain individuals despite a dementia diagnosis, that issues of stigma and discrimination shape the experience of living with dementia, that more emphasis should be placed on promoting the autonomy of people with dementia, that they are entitled to reasonable accommodations, and that they should have more opportunities for growth.

I have reviewed the policies detailed in the guide and have no competing interests.

This article follows an increased interest in the octopus in both popular science and fiction. Octopuses have long held fascination and are commonly tied to processes of aging: Even though their life expectancy tends to be lower than that of humans, they are often framed as “old”, not only by appearing as mythical creatures from an unknown past but also by appearing wise and intelligent. Whereas the octopus has been framed as Other, prominently by inspiring the aesthetics of alien life forms, recent examples have underlined the possibility of inter-species contact and communication. This article traces these moments of contact and investigates the role of aging in such fictional encounters. By focusing on two recent examples, Shelby Van Pelt's Remarkably Bright Creatures (2022) and Gina Chung's Sea Change (2023), it illustrates the ways that contemporary fiction narratively links the octopus to older age and discusses forms of non-human aging.

A growing body of evidence has provided support for the beneficial impact of human-animal interactions on a range of biological, social, and psychological outcomes for humans; however, less is conclusively known about the association between animal companionship and psycho-social health specifically among aging populations. In this study, we assessed the association between animal companionship and psycho-social well-being in a large sample (N = 30,865) of community dwelling Canadians aged 45 and older. Using cross-sectional data from the Canadian Community Health Survey-Healthy Aging, we conducted hierarchical multiple regression to assess the relationship between animal companionship and four domains of psycho-social well-being (satisfaction with life, loneliness, depression, and levels of social support) after controlling for socio-demographic factors and psycho-social measures. Results indicate that those with animal companionship report significantly higher levels of social support than aging Canadians without animal companionship; however, animal companionship was also associated with significantly lower levels of life satisfaction and higher levels of both loneliness and depression. These findings complicate the existing literature on human-animal interactions by suggesting the benefits associated with animal companionship may vary across distinct domains of psycho-social health. As such, results from this study highlight the need for more nuanced model specifications when assessing the relationship between animal companionship and psycho-social well-being. Implications of these findings for the provision of social services to older adults with pets are provided.

The negative portrayal of ageing as a human decline burdening society has prompted Ageing Technology industries (AgeTech) to foresee solutions rooted in the Ageing in Place paradigm. These ostensibly neutral future interventions are intertwined with socio-technical dynamics. While Science and Technology Studies (STS) and anthropology scholars have questioned these AgeTech practices, limited literature explores industry's predictions of future AgeTech.

Drawing on STS and futures-anthropology literature, I interrogate AgeTech industry visions of future assemblages involving older people, smart home technology, and socio-material discourses rooted in their own discrepancies and dilemmas. To unpack AgeTech futures, my methods include a review of 49 industry reports and 29 interviews with industry experts. Based on the reports, I designed comics to be used in interviews with experts spanning CEOs and managers of companies designing technology for older people, consultants, and aged-care workers based in 12 countries.

Ageing futures are far from being neutral or a chronological process, instead they are non-consensual and fragmented. In the review and interviews, I captured future assemblages of a fragmented AgeTech industry in relationships with governments and industry giants. The fragmentation continues unfolding in participants from diverse countries and professions contesting dominant AgeTech narratives. In dissecting future assemblages, I also unpack non-consensual futures based on diverging experts' values (e.g. safety versus activity) and humans' values like control and improvisation challenging predictive and surveillance technology.

AgeTech Futures transcend physical matters or assemblages of technologies and humans. They encompass future normativities, tensions, divergent values, and ideological concepts. I propose not only alternatives to the visions found in industry narratives, but also encourage scholars to understand the AgeTech industry's dilemmas.

Taking as a starting point the conventional view of ageing as a linear process beginning in a youthful and productive stage but gradually deteriorating, this paper shifts the usual anthropocentric focal point towards technological artifacts which do not conform to this typical view. More specifically, three examples of technologies previously considered obsolete, but which have seen a revival in the last decade, are presented: the so-called dumbphones, analogue cameras, and vinyl players. Although very different at first glance, the three cases of these revived technologies show a similar evolution trajectory which breaks from the typical view of ageing in technological artifacts. Instead, they indicate how their revival does not simply entail a reconsideration of their initial value (such as it is often the case with antiques or heirlooms), but a transformation, hybridisation, and re-envisioned purpose.

To this effect, the agential realism theory is applied to show how the revival of technological artifacts and practices once considered outdated attempts to dissolve binaries such as old/new, young/old, or slow/fast. Furthermore, such artifacts reveal trajectories of ageing that are unlike their human counterparts, but which can make way for new manners of articulating issues pertaining to ageing as a process in humans as well.

The contribution of the paper lies in illustrating how adopting a non-linear view of ageing and fundamentally questioning its inherent binaries has the capacity to produce a much-needed nuanced view of ageing in humans, non-humans, and their sociomaterial entanglements.

A focus on the materiality within ageing studies brings into focus the material dimensions of space, rhythms and material objects in everyday life. The aim of this paper is to explore meanings around space in the context of the daily lives of people growing older and how materiality is embodied, embedded and performed in the material and social context of our everyday lives. The paper draws on data from the empirical research study Photographing Everyday Life: Ageing, Lived Experiences, Time and Space funded by the ESRC, UK. The focus of the project was to explore the significance of the ordinary and day-to-day and focus on the everyday meanings, lived experiences, practical activities, and social contexts in which people in mid-to-later life live their daily lives. The research involved a diverse sample of 62 women and men aged 50 years and over who took photographs of their different daily routines to create a weekly visual diary. The data reveals three interconnecting whilst analytically distinct themes within the materiality of ageing and the spaces around everyday life: (1) Space, materiality and everyday life; (2) Rhythms, routines and materiality; and (3) Social and material connectivity. The paper concludes by highlighting a complex engagement with space, in which participants drew and re-drew boundaries surrounding meanings of space, sometimes within the same interview or even within a discussion of the same photograph. Moreover, a focus on materiality has elicited rich and illuminating accounts of how people in mid-to-later life experience the intersections between ageing, bodies, time and space in their everyday lives.

The future will witness the substantial worldwide growth of older people with functional limitations or disabilities who have difficulties leaving their dwellings and traveling to their neighborhoods or other community destinations to realize their obligatory and discretionary needs and goals. This commentary offers conceptual arguments and literature findings proposing that the dwellings of this vulnerable population deserve new scrutiny because they have become more salient and positively experienced places to live where their occupants can maintain their independence and age in place. The catalyst for this commentary is the emergence of gerontechnological innovations relying on digital and sensor technologies, offering these older occupants a new category of dwelling connectivity solutions—constituting a paradigm shift—whereby goods, care, services, social supports, and information and leisure activities can be delivered to their houses and apartments. Incorporating this technological component has transformed their dwellings into dynamic “control centers,” connecting their occupants in real-time with the resources and activities offered in other places. These solutions enable older people to cope more effectively with declines and losses because their ability to live independently is less threatened by challenges they face accessing destinations with inadequate transportation options and less age-friendly land use or physical design features. By occupying more supportive, safer, and connected dwellings, these older people have overall more positive and salient residential mastery emotional experiences and feel more competent and in control of their lives and environment. Planning or policy recommendations directed to the World Health Organization (WHO) and its age-friendly city/community agenda follow from its conclusions. They highlight how dwelling environments containing gerontechnological solutions are becoming more critical influences of “active aging.” The commentary recommends that WHO allocates more resources to dwelling interventions that increase the awareness, availability, usability, and acceptability of these gerontechnological solutions, thus reducing the disincentives for older people to be adopters.

Offering fresh perspectives on the lived experience of ageing in extreme poverty, this article delves into unpacking the relationally driven processes of social, institutional, and self-othering that contribute to agency erosion in older adults. Positing that the context of extreme poverty in which a person ages is micropolitically shaped, where society, institutions, and ageing self interact in a complex way, it is argued that ageing in extreme poverty, inter alia, means ageing in subaltern conditions. A critical consequence of this process is the subjugation of older adults, leading to a life marked by the state of ‘social death’. Additional research is needed to unpack such nuances to better understand ageing processes in extreme poor societies. This necessitates an approach informed by postcolonial perspectives that take into account the dynamics of othering and agency erosion. It concludes by asserting that to reverse extreme poverty among older adults as well as to reverse their subaltern conditions requires a political project that empowers the older adults in society, restores agency and strengthens their ‘relational security’.

What can caring for, and being cared for by, a garden teach us about aging well? This article is a narrative exploration of care, aging, and wellbeing in later life through conversations with an older woman and her garden in Toronto, Canada during the months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus is on the interconnectedness of care across generations and species. Moving away from conventional generational scripts, the article expands notions of care and aging with an intersectional, feminist and decolonial approach to relationality across time and space.

The article uses interviews, photovoice-inspired sessions, and autoethnography, to look at aging and wellbeing as relational and more-than-human relationality. It extends the ethics of care beyond traditional boundaries, embracing perspectives that challenge normative assumptions of gender, age, and interspecies relations.

The article aims to contribute to the current debates around colonial research logics, though a critical feminist understanding of relationality and embodied learning. It emphasizes the importance of connecting across generations, seeing land as a way to restore human and more-than-human relations while prefiguring a more care-full present.

Having the choice to stay living in one's home and community for as long as possible is a desire of people living with dementia. Yet, for many, this is not a reality due to a lack of appropriate support, unsuitable housing and built environments, social exclusion, and stigma. The global movement called Dementia Friendly Communities aims to address such barriers and bring about positive change. At the local place-based level, Dementia Friendly Community initiatives are typically planned and implemented by committees, yet little is known about how they operate to enact Dementia Friendly Community principles. Using micro-ethnography and a case study approach, two Australian – Queensland Dementia Friendly Community committees and their activities were studied to better understand implementation at the local level. This involved 16 semi-structured interviews, participant observation and field notes identifying goals, approaches, and tensions. While both committees showed the capacity to raise awareness of issues impacting people living with dementia, there were substantial differences in the implementation of the key Dementia Friendly Community principle of inclusion of people living with dementia and carers. Key differences were the way people living with dementia were positioned and the part they were expected to play in committees, whether they were empowered and valued or tokenistically included yet not listened to. Three aspects of practice are central to more meaningful inclusion: engagement, power-sharing, and leadership. Local action groups directed and led by people living with dementia and their carers, with the support of key local people and organizations, help to progress Dementia Friendly Communities locally.