Paper short abstract:

As part of a research project on the materialities of ageing, this paper focuses on the avoidance behaviour of the researchers during interviews conducted in the homes of frail elderly people, particularly in bathrooms and toilets.

Paper long abstract:

The 'Aging Humans, Changing Homes' project focusses on how elderly people’s homes change with the introduction of assistive devices and other daily living support objects. The fieldwork consists of home visits during which the researcher conducts a “home touring” interview and takes photographs of the assistive devices and their use, as well as the mundane objects used in daily life. The aim is to study how humans and objects cooperate (or not) in daily routines, and we ask people to tell us about the story of these objects (why and how did they enter the home) and their story with them.

Certain objects, such as the bath board or the raised toilet seat, are located in rooms that are, on the one hand, places of bodily intimacy and, on the other, identified by professionals working in the field of “ageing in place” as places of danger. During the drafting of the research design, the study of these places was obvious, but during fieldwork asking questions about certain objects appeared to be difficult. The further we went from the visitor area (living room) to the intimate spaces (bedroom, bathroom), the more our very human discomfort got in the way of scientific questioning, and the researcher hesitated: does she really want to hear the story of the raised toilet seat?

At the end of the fieldwork, team discussions turned into confessions about words that we had avoided collecting, and therefore avoided transcribing, with various pretexts, more or less consciously.