Abstract
This paper explores how the materiality of dress mediates and shapes practices of care in the context of dementia. Earlier research called for an approach to conceptualising care that recognised the role played by everyday artefacts. We extend this to a consideration of dress and dressing the body in relation to people with dementia that involves the direct manipulation of material objects, as well as the materiality of bodies. The paper draws on an ESRC funded study Dementia and Dress, which examined experiences of dress for people with dementia, families and care‐workers using ethnographic and qualitative methods. Our analysis explores the process of dressing the body, the physicality of guiding and manipulating bodies into clothing, dealing with fabrics and bodies which ‘act back’ and are resistant to the process of dressing. We consider how the materiality of clothing can constrain or enable practices of care, exploring tensions between garments that support ease of dressing and those that sustain identity. Examining negotiations around dress also reveals tensions between competing ‘logics’ of care (Mol 2008).
Highlights
Sociological research has increasingly addressed the active role played by everyday artefacts in mediating practices of care (Mol 2008, Mol et al 2010, Pink et al 2014, Schillmeier and Domenech 2009)
We present a detailed analysis of the act of dressing in the context of care, drawing on data from the Dementia and Dress study
We have argued for the importance of greater dialogue between literature in dress studies, and sociological research on health, illness and care
Summary
Sociological research has increasingly addressed the active role played by everyday artefacts in mediating practices of care (Mol 2008, Mol et al 2010, Pink et al 2014, Schillmeier and Domenech 2009). In this article we aim to create dialogue between these two areas of literature, arguing that attending to dress practice can shed light on practices and experiences of care. The study aimed to assess the significance of dress in the day-to-day lives of people with dementia, and those who support them. It aimed to go beyond a simple focus on service delivery, to explore everyday embodied experiences of care, drawing on the wider literature of embodiment in order to shed new light on experiences of dementia (Kontos 2004, Martin and Kontos 2013). We focus on the accounts of careworkers, and the active role of dress in care practice
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