Theorizing emotional geographies of later-life care: Agamben, Marx, and Massey in the home

Abstract

This paper proposes two concepts, emotional alienation and spatialized emotion, to theorize the emotional geographies of later-life care. The concepts build on spatiality in Marx's alienation theory, Agamben's concept of bare life and Massey's politics of space. These new concepts are created and adopted in four steps: (1) a literature review on care, emotion, affect, eldercare, and Parkinson's disease patients' mental health in diverse disciplines; (2) theoretical analysis on the political economic status of ailing elderly and care workers; (3) spatial analysis interviews with a Parkinson's disease patient and caregiver as an application of the proposed theories; and (4) a discussion of the expanded theoretical frame centered on the micro-spatial scales of the interior spaces of home. Alienation theory and the concept of bare life have limitations in explaining daily lived experiences in micro-scaled places. Because lived experience, and its emotional dimensions, has a specific geography, this paper argues that a spatialized approach is needed to identify and effectively intervene in the problems of contemporary eldercare. This paper is part of a larger human geography study examining the daily emotions of people living with Parkinson's Disease and care workers in the home that aims to identify where interventions are needed to build a later-life care environment that offers sustainable and dignified later-life care.