I am a Research Intern, moving into Applied Research. My professional background is as a Vision Rehabilitation Specialist in adult social care, with local authorities and as an independent locum. I attended this workshop at the end of 2024 to discover current debates within the field of research with older people, and to gain awareness of scholars working in this area. I was careful to record the names of speakers so that readers of the blog can contact them if research interests coincide.
There were many presentations during this full day, hosted by sociologists working at Liverpool University. The day was split into five themes; this post is a chance to share the first three themes with you.
- Living with Frailty. Speakers: Paul Higgs (chair), Alastair Comery, Bram Vanhoutte, Marius Wamsiedel.
The term frailty has become associated with medicalisation and individualisation, with a cultural shift towards each person becoming responsible for their own health. Alastair Comery’s critique considers frailty as a biographical disruption to a notion of self. His study was working with people with Long Covid, whose experiences of physical change happened suddenly and then became chronic.
Bram Vanhoutte discussed the impact of subjective age, that understanding the interaction between how old people feel and their numerical age is complex and affects health, activity, and choices. His work links with Bourdieu’s habitus, and de Beauvoir’s ‘the other me within me’, understanding age as a response to visual appearance. He mentioned Bernard Lahire’s 2010 book, The Plural Actor, as a text which explores the multiplicity of identity. I question if feeling younger being viewed as positive is part of marginalising older age.
Marius Wamsiedel spoke about contrasting paradigms in China. He spoke about ‘healthism’ which is part of the individualisation, making health a moral obligation. According to a more traditional Chinese outlook called ZIRAN, adapting to ageing is key. Financial resources and strain on traditional familial piety is affecting older Chinese people, and rural residents experience barriers to accessing health care.
- Cognitive Frailty and Dementia. Speakers: Choo Fang (chair), Chris Gilleard, Ieva Stoncikaite, Yu Song, Quiling Chao, Lingyi Feng.
Chris Gilleard spoke about age and frailty, in the context of Biden’s presidency. He is asking ‘What does too old mean? And when does it happen?’ Retirement age is politically and financially determined. Gilleard agrees with Susan Pickard in saying that ageing has become medicalised. When did ‘natural senility’ become Alzheimer’s Disease?
Most people do not accept that they are frail. What happens to people after they are told they are frail, and how do people who are doing the labelling respond to them?
Gilleard speaks about frailty as a shaky concept, an indistinct idea.
My response was ‘Is frailty a frail concept?’
Ieva Stoncikaite used the publication of a posthumous novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s sons as a way of critically exploring mental capacity and decision making. His sons decided ten years after the author died to publish an unfinished novella. Marquez’s wishes had been that this book was not to be published. Marquez lived with dementia in the final decade of his life and so his creativity and linguistic artistry was compromised. She asks about cultural validity, artists, and the rights of the public to have another experience of an artist’s expression and storytelling. Does publishing this novella affect our perception of cognition and dementia?
Prof Yu Song spoke about dementia in the Chinese context. She reminds us that 1 in 4 people with dementia live in China; there are predictions that there will be 28.98 million people with dementia by 2050. This is the long-term impact of the One Child Policy. There are legal mechanisms to ensure that offspring take care of their parents, but this tradition is slipping away. There are lower fertility rates, older people are being left behind and are most often considered as carers for their grandchildren. The Chinese state is expecting that 90% of all older people will be cared for at home.
- Revisioning Frailty. Speakers: Susan Pickard (chair), Sophia Millman, Victoria Cluley, Liam Shore.
Sophia Millman, shares her understanding of Simone de Beauvoir’s books on ageing to suggest that feminist pessimism is a way of exploring the changes of older age. De Beauvoir is questioning that capitalism is associated with endless positive progress, that ageing is becoming vulnerable, and that conveying individual older woman’s experiences is disrupting cultural expectations. De Beauvoir and younger collaborators made a film about Care Homes revealing institutional mistreatment and other aspects of ageing. This was revolutionary when it was shown in France. There are other French thinkers:
Annie Ernaux The Years
Laure Adler Old People Revolt
Didier Eribon The Life, Old Age, and Death of a Working-Class Woman
Victoria Cluley unpacks frailty in a post-humanist perspective. Post-humanism depicts life as a web but without the human at the centre. She mentions that post-humanism ontology can be depicted as a zig-zag (Deleuze & Guattari). She published a paper, Becoming Frail: a more than human exploration (Cluley, Fox & Radnor 2021).
There are specific terms associated with post-humanism:
Bodies means ‘items’ not necessarily living or human
Embodied means ‘items in the assemblage’
Embedded means ‘immersed in the context’
The last two themes covered in this workshop will be summarised in part 2 of Rebecca’s blog, published later this month.