Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Touch is constant in elderly care, but it can be easily overlooked because it occurs in seemingly insignificant activities like changing one’s clothes or washing food around one’s mouth. Through phenomenological analysis I argue that these moments are not devoid of value, but are events of non-verbal communication that have the potential to provide a person with a sense of ease and support. Soon, however, these instants of meaningful human contact will be replaced by human-machine contact. Relationships of touch are complex, and there are cases where the touch of a robot may be preferable to that of a human’s— people can be so biased, messy, and even abusive. However, the potential effects of drastic decrease in human touch in care work must not be overlooked. My paper investigates the possible social and ethical implications of using assistive robotics in long-term elderly care where touch is inevitable and routine, and urges technology developers and healthcare planners to further research the role of human-to-human physical contact in healing.