ABSTRACT
In the third section of the chapter, I argue that assistive technology’s reliance on formally decomposing older people’s relationship with their ‘environments’ is critically challenged by an understanding of caring practices that emphasises tinkering (Mol, 2008) and the order of the ‘familiar’ (Thévenot, 2007), that to say, by how care is crafted in the way persons accommodate themselves to their surroundings through trial and error. Tracing how this understanding partially overlaps with the first configuration of practices analysed in the chapter, I suggest that it makes possible the exploration of the emergent properties of familiar action that are enacted in, with and through the ‘caring environment’ (Pols and Willems, 2011). Realising this, the chapter concludes, should be an object lesson on how to revalue later life in contemporary technological societies.
