Shaping old age: Innovation partnerships, senior centres and billiards tables as active ageing technologies

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During the past decade active ageing has been positioned as a solution to the problem of global ageing. While the scientific, economic and even moral arguments for pursuing a more active old age has been many, the integration of active ageing in everyday practices face challenges. This chapter explores the ways that active ageing policies become part of everyday practices, by proposing the concept of active ageing technologies. Active ageing technologies are material and immaterial condensations of knowledge that form old age in specific ways. Through the cases of an innovation partnership, two activity centres and a billiards table, the author explores how active ageing policies are transformed in practice. The chapter draws on an ethnographic study of active ageing conducted at the two activity centres, as well as the author’s participation in the innovation partnership. The author uses this constellation to explore how technologies bridge policy and practice, and concludes that active ageing is transformed in everyday practices, and that the good old age is formed through a negotiation between ambiguous and contrasting practices and ideologies.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationFraming Age: Contested Knowledge in Science and Politics
EditorsIris Loffeier, Benoit Majerus, Thibauld Moulaert
PublisherRoutledge
Publication date2017
Pages222-236
Chapter12
ISBN (Print)9781138683839
Publication statusPublished - 2017

ID: 144204892