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Pleasure and Dementia

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Annelieke Driessen
Annelieke Driessen
Annelieke Driessen
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Abstract

What can pleasure in the nursing home teach us about dementia and subjectivity? In this article I seek to challenge the assumption that the ‘fourth age’ involves the loss of subjectivity. In presenting dementia as a single pathway towards loss and decline, alternative pathways that provide more hopeful imaginaries become obscured. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in residential dementia care, I show how care professionals craft conditions that invite residents to take pleasure in, for example, dancing and bathing, and thus to become what I call ‘appreciating subjects’. Although residents do not craft these conditions themselves, they are active in accepting the invitations offered and enacting their appreciations. I argue that pleasure is a relational achievement, one that is contagious for those who let themselves be affected.
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Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject
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Abstract

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Keywords%

Pleasure in dementia care
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 9
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;*++2/ 
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
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 @
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 ,
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!
$ 
 6
A
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,#!

$&  B*++-/!

#&*+,+/
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
*>>
 
$$ @
 
!
A
;
A
! 
The emergence of appreciating subjects
!"!
 !!#
"!!!!

 C

%!!
!
!6
!&*++=%837/>
&/
$!$& / 
9
#
&6*+,,%-,./ <

A5 @
"#
!
*
!
 (


Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
 !!
!
 7
0)1!
&,333/
!!
&/ !
!
!& %**-/ 6
>
$ D!
 
6!>!4
4!)
1!<
&,333%**=4**8/ ;& %**7/
!!
!"
!
! !
& %***/ 
 ;!!4
!!
>
& %**,/< 
;!

E'
7;& D!
*++3/
9

#FF
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
# '!
!#
!!&*++=5  / 
;'
<
 B! '
4
4G!
H&'  / 
;#
!!
 
1)'
!!!!
!
 @!*+,.*+,=#.
I!=""!!
! 
!J&!!
!<!!
/' 8
.K#!&
G<HA
/&/
! 1
!

=
8!!
J! ;!
0B99?
C "!!
BC
A0GH
 !&/"
!!!#"
!! L
%MM  MM! 
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
L"!"!
<!!

 !
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4
! 
!
! !
!<
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!!
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-!!A!#"
>K( !
!
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
Dancing: an invitation to pleasure
"!<!!!
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E 9!
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$ NDE
$
 9
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!
;!;6I
> 6?!!!
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 "
4!
$!#
4 
!$
!!
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! D!<#!
J E
$
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
6I<EI! 
1!!<!
<#D'

 !
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GHP
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 6I!<!
,3.+,3=+!!! 
!6I
>%

1P;!!!GH
!K!G,3.=H!
0!!
!
!0! 

;!%
! 3 1
!
 ;
2;
&/ ; 


3$!
&?<@*+,./!!
!A L
!B*+,- !

!
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
; 9 
D 0<
 1$ @!
K!!4
!>!4
 9ED
!!
! 
I!!
!"
!%!
! ;
!
 9!5! ;
!! ;
! 
 
A
9DE
;$$!
!%!E6
: 1"D
!6? !6?
E!" 

 ;69!
! @!
!
!J 6?!
69!!!
 @ ;! 69
!!
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
! 6?
!PGPHA
 6E
">! 9
Q! 
6E
5! 
'!$)1
!
 @
A
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;!4
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D Q!
 @GH
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M ;
!!!!G
H !!!
!

Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
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 ;$!
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J ?
<!)1
 #!
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$
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D#
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
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5
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Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
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 '#
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A
 
Bathing: surrendering to crafted conditions

# 1!$
;
'!<<
$
!!@!!
9A
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
K,3-+
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@"#
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,+@!!!!
#$ N<<
!!A 
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
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# ,,
N6@
6( 1
!6( 
"!! 9
! @%;
6E! @
! 6(!!
! 
N 9!
 
1!;!
! 9!
! !
 ;! ;
 P
 9 9@
!
 K!! @!
!! 9!
#! @
!44!
 ;#
 ;>
&*++.51*+,*/!!
A$ 6
(@
,,9! '!
!!&*++8%37/5(6
!!&*+,./5
@
&*+,.%,,84,78/
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
% 1
$%!
$
$ 
@!!!%
;!
 ;!!! %
1!!!
#;!
4!>5
! 
N#@
6:%1 1! N
#P ;
@#6:
! 1
! 
!< ;
#$!
> ;!
!!6? @
!
#! 9
!! @J
!!!%
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
O!,*O
O!!
 O9GH @!
 # 9!5
! 9G
H 9O
 @
G#H % O
R
6?!!
 L
 
! 
9
$ !!6?!
 @!!
! 6?!!
!!$ 9
!!
@ 
9 @
%! O
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Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
Pleasure in daily care
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!!& *+,-/ ;$>
!!$%
1!

 '!
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
 D
!
GH! 6
!!!@
!!! 96
@!"#
@!"!
"! 6'
!$!
 !D
6!!>
 
!6(
 !
!

Conclusion
'!#%
 ,7;!
"%
E
4!P4
!
$
,7;
!<!
 !
!
!
!$! ?!!
 '
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Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
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 
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
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!!!

Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
#
!
 !#A
"4
4!
!!
!!!

Acknowledgements
"!!"4
 D
 E;
A!!
B'*+,8!
 E'
::<6;0(9
EDL@10B
!! 6
"'6:;
I!!

References
9 *+,+ !"# KB%C'
@!B  '@ ' NB1 B? @ 
*++- ' B @! B&/!$
%&'' @%NC'
,-74,2-
@@ *+,. %(''
N#%@@
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
BK *+,- 16NE66&0@/
;;:%N00' '*,6 
%MM M8.72M<<<<<<<!<
<<<<<<<<<M*+,*2*.3=3+3+<
7-8=--
B6 *++- @11L%9(A
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)*7%=248, %,+ ,+,8M A *++8 ,, ++,
( *++. ;@BL%L<I<) +
*,,+&*47/%,,,4,7. %,+ ,,--M,7=-+7.S+.+.*372
 *+,- 9<%
B E @L :&/'#%&-
!" D%'6,,,4,77
)0  1 ,333 9%6
C !,&.-&,/%**+4*.- %,+ ,,,,M ,.8-<
3=.S ,333 +7.3+ #
)E L E  1 *++7 ;0(@
B  L&/+%../ 
BB%6'*+=4**-
)A<) 0 6<D E *+,7 
D@B'!DB1
@"B%'9 ,*&=/%=*74=7= 
%,+ ,,--M,.-,7+,*,,.*3-=7
16 *++2 %' 
01"*.&*/%*+-4*,* %,+ ,++*M *,-8
1? *+,* ;$%B!
9@ 27,&8/%.=34.-8 
%,+ ,+2+M+,.=3-.+ *+,* 8-.33,
1 *++, 6D%;' !3'*
,,2&=/%,4** %,+ ,,--M+*87*-8+,**+=,3.+
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
1 *++- ;;;1C;%;9 
',,&,/%3-4,,. %,+ ,,--M,-.33-==+-+-73*7
1 *+,- Q9O1!BB
0N?) 0'.,+&,/%,,*4,*, 
%,+ ,+2+M,-=7+7=+ *+,8 ,*8+8*3
1' B ) *+,= &4%!5
D%'6
:!; ,337 '' 0
1"2%=.,4=.= %,+ ,++*M 37++2+-+*
:!; ,33- &%!"'5 6%
NC'
:' *++. 0?J90
A ,*.&8/%2*342.3 
%,+ ,+,-M9+,..828S+.++*7-=
D!E *++3 K!;69 @ ;& /
!6+',! 66%<@!
,.,4,=2
6) 9 ' : *+,7 %L
9$:!478 0# ?
%MM   MM# MMM!LM.,M
6 *++= N@%;6
6N; ',,3&8/%
88-4-++ %,+ ,+2+M+3=+*72+=++78=8.2
6 *++2 6A6%0
'K 173%324,,+ 
%,+ ,+,8M  *++8 ,* ++-
6 *+,, DD%9
9;9'B ,3!*
#978&=/%-+.4-** %,+ ,,--M+,8**.73,+7387.3
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
K6 ; ?' 0 ? *++* ;!6(
B'? ,&*/%,374
*,, %,+ ,,--M,.-,7+,*+*++,++*+8
'E   &1(%./9,
' C
'E *++= 0%@'' #
',7&7/%*+74**, %,+ ,++-M,+-*2<++=<8..2<8
'E *++8 BA%BBA
61B '323"7+&,/%--4,+. 
%,+ ,++-M,,+,7<++8<3++3<A 
?<@6 & / *+,.  '6 
;E *++2 N?B 2
:**&./%7,7477= ?%MM ! M,+ ,,,,M ,=.2<
,72- *++2 +++78 #
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3=88 ,*,,8
Published as Annelieke Driessen ‘Pleasure and Dementia: On Becoming an Appreciating Subject’
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 78&,/ *7<*3 '
... In this process, she included the perspectives of residents with dementia, care workers, care managers and health-care professionals. In the previous five years until 2021, the scholar based at research institutions in the Netherlands and Britain published three articles on the topic, either alone or with co-authors (see Driessen et al, 2017;Driessen, 2018;Driessen and Ibáñez Martín, 2020). These articles focus on different facets of care. ...
... These articles focus on different facets of care. In an article from 2018, Driessen (2018) shows the 'good' side of care. Driessen examines how patients with dementia engage in such activities as dancing and bathing with their caregivers. ...
... While, as outlined earlier, Driessen (2018) observed the pleasurable side of dementia care, Annette Leibing (2019) deals with the 'fallacies of care' for people with dementia. Leibing, a medical anthropologist working at a university in Canada, conducted her fieldwork in an outpatient clinic in Brazil, where her interlocutors included geriatricians, among others. ...
The good, the bad and the grey areas of care: a review of the anthropology of care in health care
Article
  • Aug 2023
Current societal transformations in health care and other fields of care have led to an enormous increase in the number of publications in the anthropology of care. Yet, the field turns out to be fragmented and complex. To provide some orientation, we present results of a scoping review on empirical research on paid care work in health-care settings. We structure our findings according to whether the authors tend to focus on ‘good’, ‘bad’ or ‘grey’ areas of care. Anthropology might contribute to the field of care studies by making aspects of care visible that often remain concealed otherwise.
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... Meanwhile, qualitative studies into living well with dementia rarely address these aspects (33). One notable exception is Driessen's work on the enactment of pleasure, daily wants, and preferences in dementia nursing homes (34)(35)(36). ...
In constant search of the good: a qualitative study into insiders’ perspectives on living well with dementia
Article
Full-text available
  • Feb 2024
Introduction The new concept of ‘living well with dementia’ is currently gaining traction in practice, policy, and research. However, people with dementia and their carers’ own understanding of this concept has not received much scholarly attention. This is because empirical studies into living well with dementia are predominantly quantitative; there are only a few qualitative studies on this topic. This study therefore sets out to investigate what living well means for ‘insiders’ in an everyday context. Methods To explore insiders’ own perspectives on living well with dementia, we conducted interviews and focus group discussions with 21 dementia stakeholders. The study included ten individuals with mild-to-moderate dementia living at home, five family carers who are or have been involved in the care for a person with dementia, and six health and social care professionals. Results Living well with dementia, for our study participants, revolves around shaping their daily lives according to their values. In this sense, living well with dementia is no different than without. As it involves the values of the person with dementia and those of their social network, living well is both an individual and a collective concern. Having dementia undermines people with dementia's ability to substantiate their values, but it is still possible to live well. As they attempt to shape living well with dementia, respondents encounter tensions within the social network and within the person with dementia. To handle these tensions, they work for mutual attunement by using sensitivity and switching between leading and following in social interactions. Discussion Living well with dementia in a daily context is a dynamic process in which people with dementia, family carers, and professionals constantly seek the good together. This insight contributes to a better understanding of stakeholders’ ongoing, invisible efforts to mutually attune. It may also help bypass dichotomizing approaches to dementia. Finally, it opens up new venues for research into reciprocity in the care collective. The article closes with recommendations to improve dementia care and support in light of these findings.
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... In so doing, they build on the work of Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp, who argue that anthropologists should focus on "disability worlds" because such worlds illuminate the life-changing and life-expanding work of having a disabled family member or other proximity to disability (Ginsburg & Rapp, 2013). This expansive analytical work includes attending to the ways that pleasure becomes a means of intersubjective enjoyment when personhood is difficult to parse (Driessen, 2018), and how alternative pathways of development disrupt normative ideas about childhood, parenting, and social belonging (Sargent, 2020). In all this work, families, caregivers, and kin commit-sometimes ambivalently-to the needs and preferences of family members with disabilities, and they do the work of discerning intention through atypical forms of communication (Wolf-Meyer, 2020). ...
Becoming malleable: How orienting to disability, communication, and the senses further commits anthropology to its moral project
Article
Full-text available
  • Dec 2023
Drawing on anthropological scholarship on the senses, embodiment, and communication, we argue for a capacity‐based anthropology that takes account of human variation in all domains of everyday life, including “the field” and “the anthropology seminar.” Such an approach allows us to consider the ways that humans are differently malleable, and we stress that enacting malleability, when possible, is a kind of ethical engagement. Attending to malleability—and its limits—allows us to imagine and produce a more sensitive anthropology. A more sensitive anthropology would expand the discipline's understanding of who counts as an anthropologist and what counts as anthropological praxis.
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... Joining "the personhood movement" as laid out by Tom Kitwood's (1997) notion of person-centered care, several studies criticize how cognitive abilities have come to define what it means to be human. Such studies argue that personhood is also indexed by social interaction (Leibing 2006), can be embodied (Kontos 2006) and that even people with severe dementia can display with their bodies which activities they (dis)like (Driessen 2018). In a pioneering essay about her mother's dementia, Janelle Taylor (2008) draws on Paul Ricoeur's theory of recognition as fundamentally a social and political matter. ...
Questions of (non)Disclosure among People Living with Alzheimer’s Disease in Denmark
Article
Full-text available
  • Dec 2023
This article explores questions of (non)disclosure among people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, arguing that whether to reveal one’s diagnosis to family and friends is not a straightforward choice. I use the term (non)disclosure to emphasize the fluidity of that choice, as participants often toggle between revelation and concealment. Common to various strategies is an aim to avoid the strong associations with dementia as social death. By following the aftermaths of disclosure, the article shows that people with Alzheimer’s disease living in Denmark do not experience social death. Rather, they experience marginalization and estrangement but also continuing care. The article reveals that while social death is commonly ascribed to Alzheimer’s, this ascription does not account for the manifold social implications of the diagnosis. The continuing care that people with Alzheimer’s disease receive is often overlooked. To challenge commonplace mischaracterizations of dementia as social death, we must take seriously the experiences of people living with the disease and contribute to redefining common understandings of dementia in ways that include the continuity of social recognition and the possibility of living a good life.
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... For this project, we build on Annelieke's doctoral research, an ethnography situated in Dutch nursing homes, in which she foregrounds such alternatives to the negative imaginary of dementia. By telling stories about care practices in which people with dementia can be desiring, appreciating subjects, Annelieke challenges the idea that a life with dementia is a fate characterised by loss and decline (Driessen 2017(Driessen , 2018). We furthermore build on Hannah's Utopia Now! project, in which young people living in South London engaged with their hopes and fears about the future through arts-based workshops. ...
Writing our Futures Possible: Inspirations from the Dementia Letter Project
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2023
Life with dementia urgently needs to be reimagined. The dominant social imaginary of dementia perpetuates a story in which people with dementia cannot have a life that is ‘good’. In this Position Piece we draw from eight letters written for the Dementia Letter project, in which the letters’ authors address their potential future self with dementia. We found that using the creative method of letter writing opened up possibilities for writers to fill uncertain futures with dementia with new experiences and relations, as well as opportunities for exploring multiple temporalities and versions of themselves. We highlight five inspirations from the letters: living with what is, the future as a space of possibility, populating the everyday, folding time, and cultivating multiple selves. Through these, we argue, alternative futures, and a present, with dementia can be reimagined, and made differently.
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... The present moment has intrinsic value regardless of its imminent erasure from memory. The importance of the present moment is also highlighted in the literature on dementia, where the exclusive orientation to the present may even heighten the experience of well-being (Chatterji 2006;Driessen 2018;Gjødsbøl and Svendsen 2019). However, under a logic in which time is something to be rationed, activities are not seen as an integral part of everyday life, but an optional extra that can be excised. ...
Temporalities of Aged Care: Time Scarcity, Care Time and Well-Being in Danish Nursing Homes
Article
Full-text available
  • Jul 2023
  • MED ANTHROPOL
Aged care staff in Danish nursing homes feel the pressures of time scarcity acutely. But what does this mean for the well-being of residents? Using the concept "care time" we consider subjective experiences of time to make sense of the multiplicity of temporal experiences in nursing home care. We will show how the temporal structures of a neoliberal institutional care logic is at odds with what residents expect from care time. Finally, drawing on a phenomenological understanding of well-being, we explore how residents' temporal orientation to the present and the past can be drawn on to enhance well-being.
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Discerning personhood through lena‐dena : Disability professionals, ethics, and communication
Article
  • Oct 2024
This article looks at practices of discernment in disability spaces in India by analyzing (hierarchical) relational contexts in which disability professionals and disabled people in India interact. We argue that discernment, which we explore through lena‐dena (giving and taking), allows us to analyze the ethical stakes of processes of communication, interpreting, and facilitation. Vaidya analyzes how special educators make broad discernments about intellectually disabled people by interpreting their unconventional and nonlinguistic communicative cues. In contrast, Friedner examines how speech and language therapists that work with deaf children make narrow discernments regarding what counts as language and perform the labor of training deaf children to communicate in the normatively correct way—that is, using speech. While disability professionals produce specific kinds of personhood for disabled people through their practices of discernment, they also end up discerning themselves in the process as professionals with difficult yet rewarding jobs. We conclude by discussing a program for individuals with intellectual disabilities where both authors conducted ethnographic research wherein disability professionals discerned disabled people as having social needs and desires on par with nondisabled people and created enabling environments, scaffolded activities, and facilitated conversations to produce and enable complex personhood for them.
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Rispetto dell'autonomia, rispetto dell'umanità. L'etica di fronte alle demenze
Article
  • Jul 2024
Rispettare le persone significa, prima di tutto, rispettare la loro autonomia, non solo nell'ambito dell'etica medica che ha abbandonato l'antico paradigma paternalistico. È proprio l'autonomia a essere progressivamente erosa nelle diverse forme di demenza: il paziente diventa incapace non solo di far fronte alle normali esigenze della vita quotidiana, ma anche di prendere le decisioni che riguardano la sua salute. Una delle questioni più controverse è quella del peso da attribuire alle disposizioni anticipate di trattamento: alla tesi secondo la quale a esse va riconosciuto un valore fortemente vincolante, proprio perché espressione dell'autonomia che c'era e adesso è perduta, si contrappone quella di un bilanciamento che prenda in considerazione anche i desideri e le preferenze che il paziente continua a esprimere e dai quali dipende il suo benessere. Ci sono altre dimensioni dell'umanità che, insieme all'autonomia, hanno valore e meritano rispetto? Una risposta positiva a questa domanda impone una riflessione più articolata su temi come la dimensione preriflessiva dell'esistenza, il ruolo delle relazioni, il principio di eguaglianza, le responsabilità di cura che corrispondono ai diversi stadi della progressione della malattia.
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Hungers that Need Feeding: On the Normativity of Mindful Nourishment
Article
Full-text available
  • May 2017
Drawing on participant observation in a ‘mindful weight loss’ course offered in the Netherlands, this paper explores the normative register through which mindfulness techniques cast people in relation to concerns with overeating and body weight. The women seeking out mindfulness use eating to cope with troubles in their lives and are hindered by a preoccupation with the size of their bodies. Mindfulness coaches aim to help them let go of this ‘struggle with eating’ by posing as the central question: ‘what do I really hunger after?’ The self's hungers include ‘belly hunger’ but also stem from mouths, hearts, heads, noses and eyes. They cannot all be fed by food. The techniques detailed in this paper focus on recognizing and disentangling one's hungers; developing self-knowledge of and a sensitivity to what ‘feeds’ one's life; and the way one positions oneself in relation to oneself and the world. While introducing new norms, the course configures ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ in different ways altogether, shaping the worlds people come to inhabit through engaging in self-care. In particular, the hungering body is foregrounded as the medium through which life is lived. Taking a material semiotic approach, this paper makes an intervention by articulating the normative register of nourishment in contrast to normalization. Thus, it highlights anthropologists’ potential strengthening of different ways of doing normativity.
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Attachments, you say? … How a concept collectively emerges in one research group
Article
Full-text available
  • Jan 2017
Can we interrogate a concept in a manner that is compatible with what conecpt itself conveys, while also remaining connected with the specific site in which concept is being used? This essay undertake such an exercice with the notion of attachment, as it emerged at the Center for the Sociology of Innovation (CSI) in France, starting in the 1990s. Having played a role in the history I am going to narrate, I will use self-analysis as a resource, even if a somewhat equivocal one. I will explore the virtues that we have collectively lent to the term attchment over the years. To do this, I will contrast three moments when we used it with different orientations at the CSI: to examin economic performativity (Callon); in the critique of emancipation (Latour); and in questionning amateurs' and caregivers' activity (myself). I will then briefly address how this relates to sociologists' necessary commitment in worlds "still in process of making" (W. James).
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Enjoy Your Food: On Losing Weight and Taking Pleasure
Article
Full-text available
  • Feb 2014
  • SOCIOL HEALTH ILL
Does healthy eating require people to control themselves and abstain from pleasure? This idea is dominant, but in our studies of dieting in The Netherlands we encountered professionals who work in other ways. They encourage their clients to enjoy their food, as only such joy provides satisfaction and the sense that one has eaten enough. Enjoying one's food is not easy. It depends on being sensitive. This does not come naturally but needs training. And while one kind of hunger may be difficult to distinguish from another, feeling pleasure may open the doors to feeling pain. What is more, sensitivity is not enough: enjoying one's food also depends on the food being enjoyable. A lot of care is required for that. But while engaging in such care is hard work, along the way clients are encouraged to no longer ask 'Am I being good?' but to wonder instead 'Is this good for me?' Both these questions are normative and focus on the person rather than on her socio-material context. However, in the situations related here the difference is worth making. For it entails a shift from externally controlling your behaviour to self-caringly enjoying your food.
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The Body We Care For: Figures of Anthropo-zoo-genesis
Article
Full-text available
  • Jun 2004
Clever Hans, the famous horse who was believed to be able to count, is generally cited as the paradigm of the influence of the observer. Psychologist Rosenthal has illustrated this phenomenon with his well-known experiment about ‘bright’ and ‘dull’ maze rats. Hans, however, achieved something much more interesting. Hecould not only read human minds through their bodies: he could also influence his questioners to produce gestures he could read as cues for finding the answer. Hans could make human bodies be moved and be affected, and move and affect other beings and perform things without their owners’ knowledge. The question of ‘influence’ when we read this case becomes therefore far more complicated and interesting. It involves the question of the way bodies can attune, affect and transformeach other. We may follow carefully how scientists of ethological practices create access to the creatures they study, how they are moved by their subjects of interest, and how they give them a chance to be interesting andto articulate other responses. Doing so, we notice that the signs that define subject and object, what talks and what is talked about, subjectivity and objectivity, are redistributed in a new manner. These practices offer a new and pragmatic definition of the body, close to James’s theory of emotions: to have a body is to learn how to feel.
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UNFORGOTTEN
Book
  • Jul 2014
As life expectancy increases in India, the number of people living with dementia will also rise. Yet little is known about how people in India cope with dementia, how relationships and identities change through illness and loss. In addressing this question, this book offers a rich ethnographic account of how middle-class families in urban India care for their relatives with dementia. From the husband who wakes up at 3 am to feed his wife ice-cream to the daughters who gave up employment for seven years to care for their mother with dementia, this book illuminates the local idioms on dementia and aging, the personal experience of care-giving, the functioning of stigma in daily life, and the social and cultural barriers in accessing support.
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Introducing a Latin ballroom dance class to people with dementia living in care homes, benefits and concerns: A pilot study
Article
  • Sep 2013
The objective of the study was to investigate the effect of introducing a dance-based psychomotor intervention using Danzón (Latin ballroom) for people with dementia in care homes. This was a grounded theory qualitative study. Thirteen of the 22 participants had dementia and were care-home residents. The remaining participants were care staff and facilitators of the dance sessions. Interviews were undertaken with seven people with dementia and nine staff, resulting in two separate sets of grounded theory methodologies. Two conceptual models, outlining positive outcomes and negative concerns of the use of Danzón were developed, depicting the experiences of people with dementia and care staff respectively. Danzón psychomotor intervention was found to enhance positive emotional states and general levels of satisfaction for both people with dementia and care staff. The details of these findings have been used to design a quantitative study.
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Those Things That Hold Us Together: Taste and Sociology
Article
  • Mar 2007
The idea of reflexivity has much to offer to the analysis of taste - but reflexivity in its ancient sense, a form neither active nor passive, pointing to an originary state where things, persons, and events have just arrived, with no action, subject or objects yet decided. Objects of taste are not present, inert, available and at our service.They give themselves up, they shy away, they impose themselves. ‘Amateurs’ do not believe things have taste. On the contrary, they make themselves detect them, through a continuous elaboration of procedures that put taste to the test. Understood as reflexive work performed on one’s own attachments, the amateur’s taste is no longer considered (as with so-called ‘critical’ sociology) an arbitrary election which has to be explained by hidden social causes. Rather, it is a collective technique, whose analysis helps us to understand the ways we make ourselves sensitized, to things, to ourselves, to situations and to moments, while simultaneously controlling how those feelings might be shared and discussed with others.
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Towards a More Inclusive Vision of Dementia Care Practice and Research
Article
  • Jun 2002
  • Dementia
Drawing on recent literature this article explores the development of research with family carers and people with dementia and identifies a number of themes that have emerged over time. It raises fundamental questions about the nature and purpose of research and the balance of power between researchers, family carers and people with dementia. Existing notions of expertise and knowledge are called into question and the article concludes with a call for a more empowering and inclusive model of research and practice based upon a relationship-centred approach to care.
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