Technogenarians E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Sociology of Health and Illness Monographs
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 497

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Technogenarians investigates the older person?s experiences of health, illness, science, and technology. It presents a greater theoretical and empirical understanding of the biomedical aspects of aging bodies, minds, and emotions, and the rise of gerontechnology industries and professions--. * A unique scholarly investigation into elders as technology users * Emphasizes the need to put aging, science, and technology in the center of analyses of health and illness * Explores the rise of gerontechnology industries and professions- * Offers a critical study of the transformation of aging bodies, minds, and emotions into medical problems in need of medical solutions * Combines two scholarly areas - Science and Technology Studies and the Sociology of Aging, Health, and Illness - to produce innovative scholarship

Leseprobe

Contents

Notes on Contributors

1 Theorising technogenarians: a sociological approach to ageing, technology and health

Ageing populations, health, and ageism

Theorising science, technology, ageing, and health

Collection overview

Moving from medical to elder-centred definitions of health

Acknowledgements

Notes

References

2 A history of the future: the e mergence of contemporary anti-ageing medicine

Introduction

Background

Methods

1990–1995: Hopes and anti-ageing beginnings

1996–1999: Predicting a new framework for ageing

2000–2008: From predictions to expectations

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Notes

References

3 In the vanguard of biomedicine? The curious and contradictory case of anti-aging medicine

Introduction

Methods

Framing their work: the significance of l anguage

In the vanguard of biomedicine?

Low-tech answers in high-tech times

The collaborative management of ageing bodies

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

References

4 Science, medicine and virility surveillance: ‘sexy seniors’ in the pharmaceutical imagination

Introduction: sexualising seniors

Sexual medicine and the sex/age problematic

Virility surveillance

Sexual function and biomedicalisation: tales from the pharmaceutical imagination

Sexy technogenarians?

Conclusions

Acknowledgements

Notes

References

5 Time, clinic technologies, and the making of reflexive longevity: the cultural work of time left in an ageing society

Introduction

The ethical demand: imagining and choosing the future

Methods

The forging of older person/patient sensibility

Conclusion: living (and) the future

Acknowledgements

Notes

References

6 Aesthetic anti-ageing surgery and technology: women’s friend or foe?

Introduction

Successful ageing and agelessness

Successful ageing and femininity

Data and analyses of the study

Faith and comfort in new technologies

Technological power, magic, and seduction

Technology as life-renewing, death resistant

The technological imperative

The feminine imperative

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Notes

References

7 ‘A second youth’: pursuing happiness and respectability through cosmetic surgery in Finland

Research material and methods

Beauty culture and cosmetic surgery in Finland

Curing the melancholic Finnish body

Well-deserved compensation

Regaining respectability

Mask of happiness?

Acknowledgements

Notes

References

8 Ageing in place and technologies of place: the lived experience of people with dementia in changing social, physical and technological environments

Background

Methods

Data and discussion

Conclusions

Acknowledgements

Note

References

9 Liberating the wanderers: using technology to unlock doors for those living with dementia

Introduction

Understanding wandering

Wandering as risky

Restraining or guiding wanderers: two models of intervention

Settings and methodologies

Technological interventions: locked doors or motion detectors?

The many faces of surveillance

Conclusions

Acknowledgements

Note

References

10 Output that counts: pedometers, sociability and the contested terrain of older adult fitness walking

Introduction

Pedometers and the quantification of walking

The social construction of pedometer technology

Health, sociability, and older adults

Research methods

Pedometers and the reconfiguration of the Walkie Talkies

Walking for health and camaraderie

The importance of conversation

Competition and hierarchy as threats to sociability

The moral economy and the failure to domesticate pedometers

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

References

11 Doing it my way: old women, technology and wellbeing Meika Loe

Introduction

Ageing in place

Elder tech users

Methods

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Notes

References

12 ‘But obviously not for me’: robots, laboratories and the defiant identity of elder test users

Introduction

Research methodology

The co-development of iRo and ideas about iRo’s elder user

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Notes

References

Index

Sociology of Health and Illness Monograph Series

Edited by Hannah Bradby

Department of Sociology

University of Warwick

Coventry

CV4 7AL

UK

Current titles

Technogenarians: Studying Health and Illness Through an Ageing, Science, and Technology Lens (2010)

edited by Kelly Joyce and Meika Loe

Communication in Healthcare Settings: Policy, Participation and New Technologies (2009)

edited by Alison Pilnick, Jon Hindmarsh and Virginia Teas Gill

Pharmaceuticals and Society: Critical Discourses and Debates (2009)

edited by Simon J. Williams, Jonathan Gabe and Peter Davis

Ethnicity, Health and Health Care: Understanding Diversity, Tackling Disadvantage (2008)

edited by Waqar I. U. Ahmad and Hannah Bradby

The View From Here: Bioethics and the Social Sciences (2007)

edited by Raymond de Vries, Leigh Turner, Kristina Orfali and Charles Bosk

The Social Organisation of Healthcare Work (2006)

edited by Davina Allen and Alison Pilnick

Social Movements in Health (2005)

edited by Phil Brown and Stephen Zavestoski

Health and the Media (2004)

edited by Clive Seale

Partners in Health, Partners in Crime: Exploring the boundaries of criminology and sociology of health and illness (2003)

edited by Stefan Timmermans and Jonathan Gabe

Rationing: Constructed Realities and Professional Practices (2002)

edited by David Hughes and Donald Light

Rethinking the Sociology of Mental Health (2000)

edited by Joan Busfield

Sociological Perspectives on the New Genetics (1999)

edited by Peter Conrad and Jonathan Gabe

The Sociology of Health Inequalities (1998)

edited by Mel Bartley, David Blane and George Davey Smith

The Sociology of Medical Science (1997)

edited by Mary Ann Elston

Health and the Sociology of Emotion (1996)

edited by Veronica James and Jonathan Gabe

Medicine, Health and Risk (1995)

edited by Jonathan Gabe

This edition first published 2010 Chapters © 2010 The Authors

Book compilation © 2010 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Edition history: originally published as volume 32, issue 2 of Sociology of Health & Illness

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.

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Notes on Contributors

Katie Brittain is a Lecturer in Social Gerontology within the Institute of Health and Society at Newcastle University. She is an experienced health services researcher with an academic background in sociology; she uses both quantitative and qualitative research methods to examine the social impact that illness can have on the lives of older people. Her recent work has focused around the wellbeing of older people and their lived experiences, particularly around how technology might support older people to 'age in place'.

Abigail Brooks teaches in the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Boston College. Her current book project investigates the meanings everyday women ascribe to ageng in an increasingly normalized culture of cosmetic surgery in the United States.

Denise A. Copelton is Assistant Professor of Sociology at The College at Brockport, State University of New York. Her prior publications examine the lived experience of pregnancy, breastfeeding, and abortion. Her current research explores the social experience illness, with a focus on celiac disease and social aspects of following a gluten-free diet.

Jennifer Fishman is Assistant Professor in the Biomedical Ethics Unit and the Department of the Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University. Her work examines the social and ethical dimensions of new biomedical technologies as they travel from the laboratory to the clinic. Her newest project examines the emergence of personalized genomic medicine.

Kelly Joyce is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the College of William and Mary. Dr. Joyce's publications include Magnetic Appeal: MRI and the Myth of Transparency (Cornell University Press, 2008) as well as peer reviewed articles in Science as Culture, Social Studies of Science, and Sociology of Health and Illness. Her main research areas are: (1) visualization in science and medicine; (2) medical knowledge and practice; and (3) ageing, science, and technology.

Sharon R. Kaufman is Professor of Medical Anthropology at University of California, San Francisco. Her current research explores technologies of life extension, risk awareness and time management in an aging society. She is the author, most recently, of… And a Time to Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life (University of Chicago 2006).

Meika Loe is Associate Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at Colgate University in New York, USA. She is the author of The Rise of Viagra: How the Little Blue Pill Changed Sex in America (NYU Press, 2004). She is currently writing a book on the oldest old in America.

Taina Kinnunen is an acting professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oulu, Finland. She examines the relationship between body and culture including fieldwork on cosmetic surgery and extreme body building. Her recent projects include research on the new working body and embodiment of ubiquitous technologies.

Barbara L. Marshall is Professor of Sociology at Trent University in Peterborough, Canada. She has published widely in the areas of gender, sexuality and theory. Her current research focuses on the re-sexing of ageing bodies and the graying of 'sexual health' as these are related to the pharmaceutical reconstruction of sexual lifecourses.

Courtney Everts Mykytyn earned her doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Southern California in 2007. She is currently working on a book that draws from a decade of research in anti-ageing science and medicine.

Louis Neven is interested in the design of technologies for elders and the way such technologies shape and are shaped in everyday life (care) practices. Louis works for the Science Technology and Policy Studies group at the University of Twente (NL) and is a visiting PhD student at the Centre for Science Studies at Lancaster University (UK). He is currently finalising his PhD thesis on user representations of elders in the design of Ambient Intelligent technologies, which is due to appear early 2011.

Johanna M. Wigg, PhD, is a social gerontologist committed to advancing the field of dementia research. She engages in daily, direct care of elders living with dementing illnesses, while simultaneously conducting research that seeks to increase knowledge concerning the social care of individuals living with dementia. Dr. Wigg is an independent consultant on dementia care who lectures, teaches, and is currently writing a book examining the 'myths' of dementia.

1

Theorising technogenarians: a sociological approach to ageing, technology and health

Kelly Joyce and Meika Loe

Science and technology are central to the lived experiences and normative definitions of health and illness for ageing people. From pharmaceuticals, to walking aids, to cell phones, old people interact with technologies and science on a daily basis. Everyday technologies as well as biomedical interventions can be part of the way older adults pursue, maintain, and negotiate life. In this way, old people are cyborgs in contemporary life, blending machine and biology in both their personal identities and their relations to the external world.

This monograph builds on sociology of health and illness scholarship and expands the analytical lens to include the myriad ways old people interact with science and technology to negotiate health and illness. For elders, perceptions of health and illness may not be limited to acute illness experiences, but may include an everyday understanding of a changing state of health and wellbeing that is managed and made more tenable through the use of multiple, assistive technologies and environmental design modifications. Old individuals may rely on a range of everyday technologies such as stairway railings, phones, adjusted toilet seats, and walking aids to create safer spaces and maintain health and mobility. Elders may also manage an array of drugs and supplements to treat chronic conditions such as high cholesterol, hypertension, diabetes, and vitamin deficiencies. But, old people are not passive consumers of technologies such as walking aids and drugs. Elders creatively utilise technological artifacts to make them more suitable for their needs even in the face of technological design and availability constraints. In this way they are technogenarians; individuals who create, use, and adapt technologies to negotiate health and illness in daily life. Combining science and technology studies and medical sociology frameworks together provides a framework to examine technogenarians in action.

Science and technology studies1 (also called STS, science studies and science, medicine and technology studies) puts science and technology in the centre of analyses. It is a multidisciplinary approach that draws from fields such as history, sociology, political science, and anthropology. Genealogies of STS scholarship highlight works by Thomas Kuhn (1962), Ludwik Fleck (1972 [1935]), and Robert Merton (1973) as early exemplars of the field, but a sustained effort to study the relations between society, science, and technology took off in the 1970s in North America and Europe. International professional societies such as the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) were formed in 1975. The European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) was officially created shortly after in 1981.