Active ageing technologies

TY - ABST

T1 - Active ageing technologies

AU - Lassen, Aske Juul

PY - 2013

Y1 - 2013

N2 - In the recent decade the concept of active aging has become important in the Western hemisphere. The World Health Organization and The European Union have staged active aging as a core policy area and initiated programs of physical activity, independence and prolonged working lives among the elderly. As part of this rearticulation of old age, many new technologies take form. This paper uses a wide concept of technologies (devices, regimes, strategies and ways of doing) and argues that technologies form active aging subjectivities, and on the other hand, that these subjectivities in their socio-material practices form active aging. Hence, active aging is a mutual entanglement (Callon and Rabeharisoa 2004) between technologies, practices and subjectivities. The paper is based on four months of participant observations and 17 in-depth interviews with elderly persons conducted at three ‘sites of active aging’ in Denmark. By presenting three technologies of active aging (billiards at an activity center for elderly persons, dancing tiles for rehabilitation after falls and an online fitness community for elderly persons) the paper suggests that active aging is more than regimes of physical and productive activity; e.g. that a game of billiards is a technology of active aging. Thus, active aging is enacted in the socio-material practices of the technologies in this paper. The paper contributes with a strengthening of the concept of active aging, by focusing on entangled practices and technologies that are often forgotten in the articulation of a new type of old age.

AB - In the recent decade the concept of active aging has become important in the Western hemisphere. The World Health Organization and The European Union have staged active aging as a core policy area and initiated programs of physical activity, independence and prolonged working lives among the elderly. As part of this rearticulation of old age, many new technologies take form. This paper uses a wide concept of technologies (devices, regimes, strategies and ways of doing) and argues that technologies form active aging subjectivities, and on the other hand, that these subjectivities in their socio-material practices form active aging. Hence, active aging is a mutual entanglement (Callon and Rabeharisoa 2004) between technologies, practices and subjectivities. The paper is based on four months of participant observations and 17 in-depth interviews with elderly persons conducted at three ‘sites of active aging’ in Denmark. By presenting three technologies of active aging (billiards at an activity center for elderly persons, dancing tiles for rehabilitation after falls and an online fitness community for elderly persons) the paper suggests that active aging is more than regimes of physical and productive activity; e.g. that a game of billiards is a technology of active aging. Thus, active aging is enacted in the socio-material practices of the technologies in this paper. The paper contributes with a strengthening of the concept of active aging, by focusing on entangled practices and technologies that are often forgotten in the articulation of a new type of old age.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - Active aging

M3 - Conference abstract for conference

T2 - 4S Annual Meeting

Y2 - 9 October 2013 through 12 October 2013

ER -