Age assemblages : Sociotechnical innovations and successful age(ing) from the perspective of material gerontology

Abstract

Individual-centered approaches have for a long time defined the gerontological involvement with technology. Despite an approach that expands in terms of space (e.g., neighborhood approaches) or social networks (e.g., caring communities), these approaches are characterized by centering on people as working alone. Material gerontological approaches attempt to theoretically and empirically address this entanglement of humans and technology by decentralizing the human and conceptualizing agency as being distributed among human and nonhuman agents. Drawing on ongoing debates in material gerontology aconcept of age assemblages is developed with which age(ing) can be understood as aprocess distributed between older people, objects, technologies and spaces. At the same time this involves how such theoretical concepts can be applied in the practice of sociotechnical innovations in order to promote successful ageing. Based on various empirical research studies, the article exemplifies amaterial gerontological perspective. It is shown how an expansion of gerontology towards more than human worlds of age(ing) can be conceived. The focus is on (1)adecentralization of age(ing) towards "age assemblages", (2)a broadening of the individual human to a distributed more than human agency and, as aresult, (3)ashift in the boundaries of research phenomena in gerontology. The article closes with reflections on what the developed concept of age assemblages means for gerontological research and practice.