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Short abstract:

Ageing in a nursing home is often seen as the opposite of self-determined ageing at home. Based on an ethnographic study in nursing homes, I show how digital technologies and the infrastructure of nursing homes produce new socio-technical practices of homemaking and care.

Long abstract:

Ageing at home - so-called ageing in place - is seen as the ideal place to age with autonomy and dignity. Ageing in a nursing home is often seen as the opposite of self-determined ageing at home, where institutional constraints and high levels of care dependency are perceived as a threat to subjectivity (Higgs and Gilleard 2015, Hillebrecht 2020). In this paper presentation, I take a geographical and feminist STS perspective on nursing homes and show how digital technologies and the infrastructure of nursing homes produce new practices of homemaking and care. Home is conceptualised as a process (Pasveer et al. 2020) in which home is produced through socio-technical practices. I present the findings of my ethnographic study in which I followed everyday life in institutional care spaces. Following feminist STS debates, I show that the introduction of new technologies is full of contradictions, with new norms and creative practices of appropriation (Schwartz Cowan 1976, Oudshoorn 2018). I show how socio-technical practices in institutional care spaces challenge the normative ideal of independent and self-determined ageing at home and dependent ageing in nursing homes. Further, fragile communities of care are emerging in old age that go beyond the nuclear family. These caring communities are made possible by digital technologies and the infrastructures of the nursing home. I challenge normative notions of ageing in place by asking how new homemaking and care practices emerge with digital technologies in nursing homes. The talk will be an academic paper presentation of 15-20 minutes.