Newcastle University

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10 - 11 September 2009
Newcastle University

This symposium will promote discussion on ageing with particular attention to what embodiment means and entails in the context of older age. While social gerontology is an established and productive field of research, less prominent has been the careful sociological and anthropological attention paid to the experience of ageing, embodiment, and subjectivity. A small but growing number of scholars have been working at this point of intersection, but research in this area remains fractured and disparate. Furthermore, the attention that is generally paid in social science to embodiment usually relates to youth and middle age rather than in relation to the ageing body.

This meeting is an opportunity to bring social scientists working on such questions of ageing together to discuss their research, and seeks to open new space to consider the theoretical possibilities suggested by their work. In particular, the meeting seeks to bring together recent sociological and anthropological work investigating ageing and the body with colleagues working in medicine and assistive technology. Examples of the particular topics we will examine include:

* Reframing older people as agents and as human beings rather than merely as 'social problems' to be 'dealt with', 'managed', or medicalized;

* Alzheimer's and a 'losing' of the self;

* Embodiment and experiential approaches to ageing, self, and identity as well as older debates over continuity and transformation in later life;

* Ideas around ‘ordinary ageing’, expanding them to refocus attention on the experiences of older people themselves;

* Living longer with the support of a range of medical and assistive technologies, with the attendant social and ethical issues involved in the surveillance and monitoring of body function and mental capacity;

* The intimacy of caring relations;

* Notions of body integrity and autonomy.

Confirmed speakers include:

Professor Lawrence Cohen (Anthropology, Berkeley), The Cataract Body: Reflections on the Gift of Surgery in the Constitution of Aging Subjects

Professor Sharon Kaufman (Anthropology, UCSF), Time, The Clinic, and the Making of Reflexive Longevity

Professor John Bond (Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle), The Politics of Anti-Ageing Technologies

Dr Katie Brittain (Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle), Technocitizens: Ageing in Place for People with Dementia

Professor Paul Higgs (Royal Free and University College Medical School, Medical Sociology, UCL), The Sociology of Frailty

Dr Julian C. Hughes (Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and IAH)

Dr Wendy Martin (School of Health and Social Care, Reading), Ageing, the Lived Body and Everyday Life

Dr Tiago Moreira (School of Applied Social Sciences, Durham), Ageing in Technological Democracies: Experiments in Subjectivity

Dr Patrick Olivier (School of Computing Science, CultureLab, Newcastle University), Digital technologies and the preservation of personhood (co-presentation with Dr Wallace)

Dr Emmanuelle Tulle (Sociology, Glasgow Caledonian University), Physical Activity in Later Life: Subjectivity, Bodily Surveillance and Bodily Competence

Professor Julia Twigg (School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, Kent), Clothing, Identity, and the Embodiment of Age

Dr Jayne Wallace (School of Computing Science, CultureLab, Newcastle University), Digital technologies and the preservation of personhood (co-presentation with Dr Olivier)

The symposium will be held over a day and a half at Newcastle University. This will permit all participants the opportunity for informal networking at an evening reception, with a view to extending collaboration outwards from the symposium itself into future directions.

This symposium is generously supported by the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness, the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, HaSS Faculty, and the Institute for Health and Society.

For more information or queries, contact Dr Cathrine Degnen