9. Aging with other-than-humans: STS and age studies beyond technological solutions
In recent years, Science and Technology studies have paid increasing attention to ageing and elderly care. At the cross-road with critical age studies, new areas and theoretical developments such as socio-gerontechnology or material gerontology are making important contributions. Informed by material-semiotics, post-humanism, and affect theory these developments are shedding light on the critical role of materiality and other-than-human beings in the constitution of old age as a social construct and bio-political device. They show how notions of ageing well (such as active ageing or successful ageing) are materialised in technological and biomedical innovations and how these configure modes of doing age in older’s people daily-life. Drawing on the more-than-human turn in STS and age studies, this panel is an invitation to extend the reach of these developments beyond their traditional focus on innovative digital and biomedical “solutions” for the ageing society. We invite papers that consider more-than-human entanglements with animal, plants, buildings, landscapes, etc. in critical studies of age and elderly care. We also look for contributions that delve into the politics of relations in these more-than-human entanglements in later life. The panel is an invitation to consider questions such as: How elderly care is reconfigured when care is not considered from anthropocentric visions? What does ageing and old age become when ageing is seen as a stage of becoming-with other-than-humans? How do other-than-human ageing and elderly care matter in these entanglements? What notions of ageing well and good elderly care emerge as a result of this?
