Paper Short Abstract:

Ageing and how it is lived in sparsely populated regions is affected by the tight more-than-human entanglements, which we have been studying with videorecorded sensory ethnography. In my presentation I will reflect on the method and the knowledge produced together with seniors.

Paper Abstract:

The loneliness of the elderly is a problem in Finland. In social discourses this loneliness is taking place in urban apartments. However, approximately 21 % of people over 65 years old live in the countryside, either in population centres or in sparsely inhabited areas. People living in remote areas might live without the everyday company of other humans, but they have other companionship. In our research, we think of ageing as entanglements of more-than-human lifelines because humans always live with nonhumans, with animals, plants and trees, waters, ground and built environments (Tsing 2015). Thus, on contrary to the previous anthropological studies on ageing, our aim is to scrutinize ageing as not primarily socio-cultural but sensual, embodied, and co-constitutive between humans and nonhumans. To understand these entanglements as an essential part of the everyday lives of seniors, we are generating embodied sensory knowledge with ethnographic being-with and moving-with both human participants and nonhuman elements (see Murawska 2020). We follow seniors for instance to ice fishing, berry picking and daily walks. And we have been recording these walks with GoPro cameras. We think that this approach will enable us to analyse the embodied knowledge of the more-than-human co-becoming (Pink 2011). In this presentation I will reflect on my own ongoing fieldwork in Kainuu region. What does it mean to do fieldwork which require sensing together? What kind of knowledge we are generating with aging through this method? And what does the seniors think about the approach?