Abstract
Ideas about self, person, and personhood are arguably at the center of a great part of research in gerontology, anthropology of aging and related fields. Underlying much of this work are certain ideals, such as autonomy, boundedness, humanistic ideas of care that are having a strong influence on how care practices for older, sometimes demented, persons are being conceived and implemented. However, the idea of personhood has been challenged in recent years by more critical scholars. Concepts like inter-embodiedness, the call for queering dementia, and locating the person within more-than-human assemblages are some of the suggested conceptual pathways built on the need of opening up too narrow and individualizing notions of personhood and related topics. The objective of this panel is to flesh out, in more detail, different argumentative pathways and implicit and explicit ideals that guide such discussions, by engaging critically with key texts and practices of “doing personhood”, but also by showing how personhood is situated – (g)locally - in concrete assemblages of care and, more generally, landscapes of aging. A combination of document analysis and ethnographic, situated studies is being privileged by the panelists. Becoming aware of underlying values in personhood studies, as well as the insight that contexts play an important role in the construction, as well as (care) practices should advance theoretical, but also applied aspects of personhood.
Presenters
Annette LeibingProfessor of Medical Anthropology, Nursing, Université de Montréal, Quebec, Canada Nete Schwennesen
Associate Professor, Copenhagen University, Denmark Christine Verbruggen
PhD Student, Social and Cultural Anthropology, KU Leuven, Vlaams Brabant (nl), Belgium Jessica Robbins
Associate Professor, Institute of Gerontology and Department of Anthropology, Wayne State University, Michigan, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
Social and Cultural Perspectives on Aging
KEYWORDS
Personhood, Dementia, Sociocultural context, Situatedness
