ABSTRACT
Social change in the twenty-first century is shaped by both demographic changes associated with ageing societies and significant technological change and development. Outlining the basic principles of a new academic field, Socio-gerontechnology, this book explores common conceptual, theoretical and methodological ideas that become visible in the critical scholarship on ageing and technology at the intersection of Age Studies and Science and Technology Studies (STS).
Comprised of 15 original chapters, three commentaries and an afterword, the book explores how ageing and technology are already interconnected and constantly being intertwined in Western societies. Topics addressed cover a broad variety of socio-material domains, including care robots, the use of social media, ageing-in-place technologies, the performativity of user involvement and public consultations, dementia care and many others. Together, they provide a unique understanding of ageing and technology from a social sciences and humanities perspective and contribute to the development of new ontologies, methodologies and theories that might serve as both critique of and inspiration for policy and design.
International in scope, including contributions from the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Australia, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, Socio-gerontechnology is an agenda-setting text that will provide an introduction for students and early career researchers as well as for more established scholars who are interested in ageing and technology.
Chapters 3, 5, and 15 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at https://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|76 pages
Bridges: critical frameworks of ageing and technology
chapter Chapter 3|13 pages
Fragile robots and coincidental innovation
chapter Chapter 5|15 pages
Elderliness
part II|78 pages
Encounters: empirical approaches to ageing and technology
chapter Chapter 9|14 pages
'Send me a WhatsApp when you arrive home'
chapter Chapter 10|14 pages
Making and unmaking ageing-in-place
chapter Chapter 11|15 pages
Age matters
chapter Chapter 13|14 pages
Between repair and bricolage
chapter Chapter 14|6 pages
Commentary
part III|61 pages
Design: critical reflections and new approaches