Agencements of Reanimation: Facilitating an Active Old Age through Danish Co-Creation Initiatives

Aske Juul Lassen

doi:10.5195/aa.2019.166

Abstract

Contemporary healthy and active aging policies coincide with new forms of governance in European welfare states promoting active citizenship, which in Denmark has been termed “co-creation.” As active aging and co-creation policies go hand in hand, new forms of health promotion programs and public-private collaborations emerge. This article centers on two initiatives that target older people in two Danish municipalities: a local COPD-choir in Vordingborg and the local department in Ishøj of the (inter)national Cycling without Age association. The municipalities take on the assignment of reanimating old age through such initiatives, by challenging the institutional barriers of the municipality. The article describes how co-creation is a redistribution of agency in the European welfare states and how older volunteers are called upon to participate in the organization of municipal initiatives, while at the same time these initiatives come with pre-fixed definitions of “good” old age. The article explores the co-creation initiatives as indicative of the agencements (Çalışkan and Callon 2010) of reanimation that endeavor to revive old age and subjectivise older people as active citizens. While such agencement involves health promotion, this article argues that the aim of initiatives is instead to engage older citizens, and hence to facilitate an active old age.

Highlights

This article centers on two initiatives in two Danish municipalities: a local choir for people suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in Vordingborg and the local department in Ishøj of thenational Cycling without Age (CwA).i This article explores how the municipalities aim at reanimating old age through such initiatives, and how they attempt to distribute this reanimating endeavor
The ideals of old age that are enacted in the initiatives come about through a merging of active aging and co-creation policies, which has become more widespread in recent years (see (Scheele, Vrangbæk, and Kriegbaum 2019)
As I have argued elsewhere (Lassen and Moreira 2014), active aging constitutes an unmaking of old age through its ambition to transgress thresholds that constitute old age—such as retirement and increasing frailty—through pension reforms and health promotion programs

Summary

Introduction

Through co-creation policies, municipalities aim to reanimate old age by relying on the energy and free spirit of civil society organizations that engage volunteers to create social gatherings and outings at nursing homes—so-called visiting friends for lonely older persons with reduced mobility who are living at home, or the like. The interlocutors in this study (municipal employees and older people engaged in the initiatives) often talk about energy when referring to the aging process and co-creation initiatives.

Results

Conclusion