Paper short abstract:

The fields of political economy of care and socio-gerontechnology have provided insightful contributions to study ageing and care. Although having similar interests, these two fields provide conflicting perspectives. In this presentation, I will examine this conflict and provide a synthesis.

Paper long abstract:

Recently, research on the political economy of care has emphasized the importance of the concept of ailment, which highlights the ways in which all human beings are vulnerable and interdependent in different degrees. Although vulnerabilities are shared, they tend to accumulate with ageing. Simultaneously, an emerging branch of research called ‘socio-gerontechnology’ has developed to critically examine the relations between ageing, society, and technology from the perspectives of science and technology studies and ageing studies. Research from this area has criticized the ways in which optimistic political discourses towards new care technologies produce ageing as a problem. When these discourses are enacted in care practices, they often lead to ageist representations of older users. The perspectives to ageing, care, subjectivity and technology in these two influential fields of research differ from one another. Importantly, they take conflicting stances towards ailment and ageism. In this paper, I will examine this conflict. Through this discussion the paper paves the way for further research in the nexus of political economy, ageing, care and technology studies. The proposal is an academic presentation of a theoretical article in the making.