Abstract
Abstract. Promising independence in old age, smart home technologies are increasingly being mobilized as a solution to the care crisis in western industrialized societies. A widely accepted concept, “ageing in place” promotes ageing and care at home, with technologies ensuring implementation and reducing healthcare costs. However, images of ageing that promote active ageing and problematize old age are inscribed in the development process of smart home technologies. Based on an ethnographic investigation of technically mediated promises and use cases and interviews with technology developers and exhibitors, we show how smart home technologies construct images of self-responsible, active age on the one hand, and dependent old age on the other. Drawing on a social constructivist notion of ageing and extending feminist STS influenced conceptions of the co-construction of technology and ageing, we show that images of ageing are also spatial constructions that idealize the home as a place of the “third age” and devalue the nursing home as a place of the “fourth age”.
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