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- Convenors:
-
Gabriella Nilsson
(Lund University)
Sandra Hillén (University of Gothenburg)
Send message to Convenors
- Stream:
- Age
- Location:
- Aula 10
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 17 April, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract
From a perspective of critical age studies, this panel wishes to create a platform where the various meanings and implications of age are made transparent; that reflects on the transformations of what is expected, desired and predicted in different stages of life, in different cultural contexts.
Long Abstract
The demographic challenges of an ageing world put meanings, functions and consequences of age in the limelight. In most countries, age is an attractive tool for governmental practice. A broad spectrum of civil rights and obligations, resources and responsibilities, are tied to different ages, in various ways enabling and limiting the lives of the citizens. However, age is also a concept charged with different cultural meanings depending on the social and historical context. In times of welfare challenges the historical and cultural motivation for a certain age limit is sometimes made visible, and age norms problematized and questioned. Age and age categorizations are central parameters in many research fields and academic disciplines; however the meanings of age are not always explicitly addressed as the main interest, or as a more general matter. Sought with this panel is a platform where the various meanings and implications of age are made transparent; that reflects on the transformations of what is expected, desired and predicted in different stages of life, and what is not. We invite papers that, from a broad spectra of empirical angles, address and problematize narratives, norms, practices, power relations, embodiments and materialisations of age in a transforming world. How are different ages done, perceived, categorized and valued through time and space, in different environments and situations. Hereby the panel wishes to elaborate a perspective on age that is both politically and scholarly significant, as well as to strengthen the internationally growing theoretical field of critical age studies.
Accepted papers
Session 1 Wednesday 17 April, 2019, -Paper short abstract
This paper highlights children as co-creators of their urban environment and explores what happens if children participate in actions actually meant for adults using the concept of childism (Wall 2012). Questions about age and civiv engagement in the field of urban planning can then be addressed.
Paper long abstract
This paper highlights what happens if young people are invited to participate in democratic processes and test democratic tools aimed mainly to adults. Democracy itself is a problematic concept, regarding on who defines it, but it still holds the power of being a strong analytical instrument, especially in relation to age. Through examples from a research project aimed to build connections between city planners, researchers and a suburban school, this paper addresses issues about power relations, agency and governmental practices. The choice of the concept childism is a way to challenge norms about non-adults, to transform understandings and practices of all humans, and thereby acknowledge children's experience (Wall 2012). Children's exclusion from democratic processes can thereby be regarded as a lack in the democratic system, rather than a lack of matureness in children themselves, and this relates to questions of what is expected, desired and predicted in different stages of life. Despite the fact that there are tools intended to include children's perspective in planning processes, tools for participations in these processes are mainly aimed at adults. The research addresses this problem in several ways. If children´s participation in planning is a desirable goal, could planning be included in the educational curricula and/or should city planners make room for children in all processes of civic participation that precede planning?
Literature:
Wall, J. (2012). Can democracy represent children? Toward a politics of difference. Childhood, 19(1), 86-100.
Paper short abstract
What is being said about youth and youths in a Swedish girls' magazine in pre-internet time? In my presentation I'll discuss what desires and norms are made visible in material written by adults as well as texts submitted by the young readers themselves.
Paper long abstract
Starlet was a Swedish youth magazine - or perhaps rather a girls' magazine that also a number of boys read - published between 1966 and 1996. The magazine consisted of material written by the editorial staff; comics; and also texts submitted by the readers themselves, and therefor became a sort of printed youth forum where they could turn to and communicate with other readers.
In my paper I intend to discuss the image(s) of youth and youths which are being presented by, on the one hand, the adult editorial staff, and on the other hand the youths themselves. What is being emphasized and made visible as desired, regarding both character traits and material desires? Based on different types of text, published parallel and within one and the same place, Starlet, I will examine what was being told about youth on a forum like a Swedish youth magazine from 1966 to 1996.
What norms related to age can be uncovered in this material, regarding ideals related to behavior as well as desired characteristics? The topic of desire will be expanded further, as well as what is expected of the youths it will also become a point of departure regarding what youths wanted - or was expected to covet - in a pre-internet era. To summarize: What do they want, what do they want to be, and who claims they want it?
Paper short abstract
Although commonly associated with childhood, in Sweden summer camps for seniors are arranged to promote health among older people. What are the implications of participating in an activity targeting seniors that is organized in a similar way to activities for children?
Paper long abstract
With an ageing population initiatives to engage older people in health promoting activities are established. One growing phenomenon in Sweden is Senior Summer Camps, arranged in beautiful natural environments close to water. Their purpose is to enable older people to partake in outdoor activities in an institutionalized setting. Otherwise summer camps are associated with childhood. Historically summer camps were mainly offered socio-economically vulnerable children in the growing cities, or children with special health needs. The premise of this paper is that summer camps for seniors must be viewed in the context of summer camps for children. Recurrent narratives both in the media and by organizers of senior summer camps of participants "turning into children" at camp is one expression of this. Drawing from participant observations at two different senior camps, the objective is to analyse the implications of participating in a health promoting activity targeting "seniors" that is situated in a context with strong connotations to childhood, and organized in a similar way to summer camps for children. The aim is to study how age is done by participants at senior camp. In what way is age, and the ideals, norms, and hierarchies associated with different ages, activated in the relations and practices that take place at senior summer camps?
Paper short abstract
The paper investigates the meanings, practices and experiences with grandchildhood. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with grandchildren, it illuminates how the grandchildhood is performed in the daily intergenerational contact and how it is understood by the grandchildren themselves.
Paper long abstract
Given the demographic changes in western countries (increasing life span), grandparents have emerged as potentially significant figures in the lives of people around the world. The roles of grandparents and grandchildren become more important as the long-lasting intergenerational relationships across four or three generations are more common. While the research on grandparenthood is booming, the researchers still pay little attention to the meanings, experiences, and practices of grandchildhood seen from the perspective of grandchildren. How do the grandchildren make sense of grandchildhood? How do they reflect upon their relationship with grandparents? What does it mean to them to be grandchildren? The paper answers these questions while drawing upon the in-depth interviews with grandchildren living in three-generation households. The paper illuminates how the grandchildhood is performed in the daily intergenerational contact and how it is understood by the grandchildren themselves.
Paper short abstract
I will explore how age coding through specific discourses, practises and norms concerning who is creditworthy come to play a decisive role in people's life. How does being labelled 'too old' or 'too young' create certain sociocultural positions connected to credit, debt and everyday finance?
Paper long abstract
How is age being done - narrated, embodied and performed - in advertising, media, and social policy concerning the credit market? In this paper I want to explore how age coding through specific discourses, practises and norms concerning who is considered creditworthy come to play a decisive role in people's lives. Being labelled 'too old' or 'too young' can for example restrict the possibilities of lending money in a bank and thus limit a person's financial space, create certain power relations, and effect living conditions. If you have need of money, and are being denied a loan in a bank, you might be forced to use short-term credit, like payday loans. This market entices some of their customers with promises to fulfil stereotypical dreams often linked to a specific age group. If you are 65+ you are offered a loan so that you can play golf or travel with your grandchildren. The "young adult" is tempted with exotic travels and smart consumer goods. In this way the individual is formatted according to specific normative assumptions about an ideal lifestyle at a specific stage in life. Age (along with other intersectional categorizations) is used as a tool for inclusion and exclusion in the credit market and thus enables or limits the individual. It plays a role in deciding who should get debt reconstruction and who is considered belonging to a "vulnerable group". This makes the issue of creditworthiness and/or credit default an individual and private matter rather than social in origin.
Paper short abstract
How do constructions of age and material conditions affect perceptions of risk and safeness in relation to illegal drug use? In this paper, I analyse interviews with women of various ages using illegal drugs to discuss questions about substance use as an age related risk taking and health signifier.
Paper long abstract
During my dissertation work, based on interviews with women using illegal drugs in Sweden, ageing has come across as being constructed in complicated and sometimes paradoxical ways in relation to safeness and health, as well as in relation to danger and decadence.
The time line for a drug user in Sweden is, through institutional and political discources on drug use, staked out from beginning to end. From the first experience of drugs to dependency, decline, loss of control and eventually kicking the habit, or death. This is not a time line that my informants wants to be associated with and age is sometimes used as evidence of being located at a different timeline, opposed to the expected timeline of a weakening, ageing drug user.
In my overall study, the interviewees are located on different places on continuums between recreational use and problematic use, between integration in work life and unemployement etcetera. But in this paper I focus the group of women who reinforce a normative timeline as they actively dissacociate themselves from the timeline of a drug user.
Instead they construct themselves as proven healthy by how they have not only survived to their age but also fulfilled normative arrangements in terms of career and social status, and that their continued drug use can be framed as a responsible, age-suitable practice for those with physical and psychological abilities to handle the substances of their choice. They demonstrate a perception of a personal and temporal safe zone for illegal drug use.
Paper short abstract
Is it important to know how to ride a bicycle? When is it a problem if one can't, why and for whom? The paper focus the role bicycling plays in different stages of people's lives and how it is related to age, a central factor both for how the cyclist is perceived by others and how she sees herself.
Paper long abstract
Is it important to know how to ride a bicycle? What consequences does someone face who do not acquire this skill? When is it a problem, why, at what age, and for whom? This presentation focus on the role bicycling plays in different stages of people's lives and how it is linked to age. Based on material from two studies - life histories collected by the Folklife Archives within a documentation project, and fieldwork from an ongoing research study of bicycle classes for adults (mainly women with immigrant backgrounds) - it centres around norms and notions of who should, and should not, ride a bike, in what situations and for what purposes, as well as assumptions of when and why it is expected to learn how to ride. In Sweden, as in other Scandinavian and northern European countries, the bicycle is an everyday vehicle and has been so for a long time. In other parts of the world the situation is very different. By combining life history material with interviews and observations from the fieldwork it is possible to see similarities and parallels, as well as changes and variations, both from an individual and from a cultural and social perspective. A central factor here is age, both for how the bicyclist is perceived by others and how she sees herself. Age is discussed in relation to when and why bicycling and the ability to ride or not ride a bike is taken for granted or seen as problematic.