Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses how old age and technology are entangled also in a historical study. Using material on old age homes in Denmark in the period from 1891-1974, I analyze the old age home as a compound technology, which installs and materialize different and historical specific old ages.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses how entanglements of old age and technology can be operationalized in a historical study. Understanding old age as entangled and constituted in different material and discursive practices is also analytically productive for historical studies of old age.

The paper arises from my on-going PhD project on, how old age was configured in specific practices of the old age home, within the municipality of Copenhagen, Denmark. The project is situated in the period ca. 1891-1974. In the paper I will explore examples of the historical materialization of the old age homes, by combining documentation of the very materiality of the homes such as buildings, surroundings and interiors with source materials like regulations, administrative records and documents.

In the first part of the paper I qualify the old age home as a compound technology, which is configured by a range of diverse elements, including regulations, materiality and knowledge. The technology the old age home works not only by housing old age, it also produces old age in a certain way, which is entangled with norms and visions of bodies and the good life in old age.

In the last part of the paper I characterize different aspects of the particular old age, which is produced and materialized in the old age home. Here I tentatively propose to focus on three heterogeneous aspects of the old age of the old age home; work, experiment and routines. These aspects serve to connect to the old age home as a compound technology.