Ageing in the Anthropocene
This is a series of 6 articles based on presentations included in the panel
Ageing in the Anthropocene: doing and undoing the anthropology of ageing in an era of planetary changes
Convened by Cristina Douglas (University of Aberdeen) and Cathrine Degnen (Newcastle University, UK) at the EASA 2024 Conference.
Dr. Cristina Douglas (University of Edinburgh) and Professor Cathrine Degnen (Newcastle University)
The term Anthropocene – ‘the Human Epoch’; from Greek anthropos, human, + Greek cene, recent or new as originally formulated in geoscience and then widely embraced in social sciences, designates a new era in the life of Earth. This new era is considered to be dominated by human actions and the damaging effects they have at a planetary level. Anthropocene follows the Holocene, and is mostly hallmarked by the loss of biodiversity, mass extinction, and climate change. Feminist scholar of science and technology studies Donna Haraway (2015) has proposed a change away from the term ‘Anthropocene’ to the more accurate name of ‘Capitalocene’. As some anthropologists have highlighted, not all human groups have or continue to damage the Earth equally, although those most affected are, ironically, those who have made the least contribution to the collective climate issues the planet now faces. Most social scientists and humanities scholars, including anthropologists, argue that the Anthropocene is directly linked to colonialism and capital extraction during imperialist expansion both in the past and in the current day.
In 2024, the International Commission on Stratigraphy and the International Union of Geological Sciences have not approved the Anthropocene to be officially recognised as a geological era. From a geological standpoint, it seems, the effects that humans have at a planetary level are not considered enough to be categorised into a new era. Yet, for anthropological thinking (and other social sciences and humanities), the term Anthropocene and its implications bear deep theoretical, ethical, political and practical implications for understanding how life on Earth unfolds in socially and culturally different (and unequal) ways across the globe. Thus, the Anthropocene, regardless of its geological recognition, continues to carry strong significance in understanding what it means to be, live and be responsible as a human on this Earth, but also how being a human in different parts of the world is entangled in both care and harm in ecological worlding as well as in longstanding power hierarchies, inequality, and exploitation. All these align with long-lasting preoccupations of anthropology as a discipline and its politico-moral orientation.
But why ageing in the Anthropocene, as the title of our panel proposed? What can such association bring new to the table of the anthropological thinking – of what it means to be human in an era of planetary damage? Ageing as a life course, social, and cultural category is something that has changed dramatically over the last centuries. Better sanitation, better healthcare, and new medical treatments and technologies have contributed to longevity never seen before. Some of these very same changes have also brought harm and contributed to damages to more-than-human beings and to the environment. At the same time, this has also resulted in inequalities and asymmetries across the globe, with new movements of population coming from mostly Global South to care for those living longer lives in the Global North: a cultural and political division that more recently has deepened and accelerated through the effects of the Anthropocene and unchecked neoliberal capitalism. Not coincidentally, care workers immigrate from regions affected mostly by climate change to look after older people living in regions that have contributed through industrialisation, colonialism and capitalism to global warming, instability and poverty to these immigrants’ home countries.
When we proposed this panel, we invited prospective presenters to ponder with a few questions: what can an approach that is not limited to the humanistic alone bring to our understanding of how forms of ageing, care, and harm – both human and other-than-human – are enacted as ways of being in the world? How is ageing experienced, as more- and less-than-human, across borders when anthropocenic and humanitarian issues are of concern and people are on the move? How are technological imaginaries shaping ageing processes, both human and other-than-human, at local and planetary levels? What moralities and imaginaries of ageing are mobilised in narratives of a ‘grey tsunami’ (an imaginary suggesting the uncontrollable natural forces that now we associate with climate change) and baby boomer generation, seen as entangled with planetary harm? How is ageing imagined and understood otherwise across the global South and North, in more-than-human practices and forms? How can these contribute to efforts of decolonising anthropology in general and anthropology of ageing in particular, and add to a critique of the Anthropocene?
To these questions, the presentations in this panel invited us to think about and question even more the entanglement between ageing and the Anthropocene:
- How do matters of global health crises, such as COVID-19 pandemic and its anthropocenic underlying, requires new ways of imagining care for older people, labelled at the time the most at-risk population? How can technology provide and is imagined as providing care in such situations, when human care can be a source of harm and infection?
- How do visions of techno-futures reinforce inequalities, silence older people’s own voices, and rely on imaginaries of ageing that flatten cultural and social diversity?
- How does technology become complementary in familial care practices, where people age alone, with families who migrate transnationally?
- How does technology can both create solutions for social needs for older expatriates while at the same time adding waste, a harmful practice for the earth when technology becomes obsolete? How does a consumption society, which offers newer technology by the minute, ages and is advertised as old?
- How can age itself be a fluid concept, determined not by biological, as commonly assumed, but by relations – both with humans and more-than-humans?
- How do people living in regions affected by climate change age – and do these changes shape the process of ageing, both in terms of human and more-than-human vulnerability and resilience?
The presentations in this panel took us across the globe, from Greece to Australia, from India to Spain, from Namibia to Indonesia. This diverse geographical spread shows how the Anthropocene not only unfolds differently across space and cultures, but also across the life course. While the presentations unravel an incontestable harm that affects the whole planet, they also highlight how people in later life find ways of resisting and caring locally despite constraints that are out of their control. Ageing in the Anthropocene, then, reveals not only increased vulnerability in later in life in an era of planetary change, but also local resilience, as a way of “living in a mode of despite”: “living [with resilience] in a world characterized by crisis, uncertainty, and a profound sense of not-knowing” (Raghavan, Schultz and Vorhölter, 2024).
References
Haraway, Donna. 2015. ‘Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: making kin’, Environmental Humanities 6, 159-65.
Raghavan, Rishabh, Mascha Schulz, and Julia Vorhölter. 2024. “Living in a Mode of Despite”. In “Living in a Mode of Despite”, edited by Rishabh Raghavan, Mascha Schulz, and Julia Vorhölter, American Ethnologist website, 3 October 2024. [https://americanethnologist.org/online-content/collections/living-in-a-mode-of-despite/living-in-a-mode-of-despiteby-rishabh-raghavan-mascha-schulz-and-julia-vorholter/]
Technology and Market as Other-than-human Agents Shaping and Re-shaping Ageing and Care Practices in Transnational Indian Families
Shivangi Patel (Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi)
The proposed paper examines the shifting contours and experience of ageing in the light of increased usage of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and rising digital market for old age care in India. The paper is contextualized within the framework of the intergenerational care circulation in transnational Indian families. On the one hand increased life longevity and decreasing fertility rates are resulting in a rising proportion of aging populations (Census of India 2011; LASI 2020). On the other hand, post liberalization and globalization of the Indian economy, transnational migration for work has seen a phenomenal rise (Ugargol et al., 2016; Visaria 2001). In a country where elderly care was largely embedded in the patriarchal joint family (Jadhav. et al., 2013), these developments are complicating family based care arrangements for elderly.
In the face of state dispossession of the elderly, market and private institutions are increasingly becoming critical players in the care economy for older persons. More recently, technologically mediated gigified care platforms for elderly care have also emerged to fill the rising care demands of the elderly. Situated within this context, this paper illuminates the experiences of aging in absence of physical care for older persons living alone whose adult children have migrated transnationally. It illustrates the idea of ‘co-presence’ (Baldassar et al. 2016), powered by digital technologies like ICTs and webcams (Ahlin, 2020) and new digital platforms providing care services.
Digital technologies have become potent strategies of fostering interconnectivity and sustaining familial bonds and it becomes more relevant to study this when we look at the kinship relations being maintained across long distances. Scholars working on migration are increasingly challenging the idea that migration signals a break of the past ties and are examining sending and receiving destinations as ‘transnational social fields’ (Levitt and Glick Schiller, 2004). It points to the ability of those who live outside their countries of birth to sustain relationships with their kin and communities in their homeland, even as they develop new networks in their host society (Anthias,2008; Faist, 1998). Given this, the patterns of maintaining kin relations and caring become important aspects to be studied.
Existing literature shows that transnational caregiving differs from caring while living together in a significant way. While living together may create multiple possibilities for ‘caring for’ in terms of hands-on provision of physical care, in transnational caring, this aspect of ‘caring for’ is largely absent due to vast distances. In this context, ‘caring about, which includes emotions and intentions of care, becomes much more pronounced (Miyawaki & Hooyman, 2021). Usually, this ‘caring about’ gets manifested in the migrant person’s micromanagement of the day-to-day needs of those who stay put (Parrenas, 2001), the flow of remittances and gifts (Aneesh, 2000; Faini, 2007; Mani, 2009; Niimi, Ozden & Schiff, 2007; Singh, Robertson & Cabraal 2012); being available over phone/internet for those who ‘stay put’ (Pols, 2012) or as Ahlin (2020) puts it ‘frequent calling as care’ or periodic visits (Bailey, Hallad & James, 2018) producing intense affective bonds under the process of transnationalism. Singh, Robertson & Cabraal (2012) describe how remittances and gifts from abroad function as ‘care-at-a distance’ and play their part in maintaining ‘family hood’ across the borders
In this order, this paper tries to understand how intergenerational care practices within Indian transnational families have been driven by technological advances. The reason behind situating the context in this backdrop is the rapid urbanization and employment-related migration, both skilled and unskilled, of young people to bigger Indian cities and internationally (Bailey, Hallad & James, 2018; Deshingkar & Akter, 2009; Ugargol et al., 2016; Visaria 2001). Due to these increasing intranational and international migratory flows, the family residential structures are getting altered, and many of the older persons are increasingly living alone or with aged spouses/partners (Maity, Sinha & Nag, 2022). The Longitudinal ageing Survey of India (LASI, 2020) report notes that about 5.7 percent of the country’s ‘senior citizens’ live on their own without the support of family or friends. The rising proportion of aged persons living alone in India is clubbed with the shifting demographic composition of the Indian population as the trends in population ageing and life longevity in India show a steep rise (Bhagat 2015; Chanana & Talwar 1987; Panigrahi, 2009; Visaria 2001). Census of India (2011) notes that the number of senior citizens (>60 years of age) increased to 8 percent in 2011 and is expected to increase by another 12.6 percent in 2026. These shifting demographic and residential familial arrangements complicate questions of caregiving and receiving for older persons (Jadhav. et al., 2013).
Scholars working on migration and transnationalism have hailed Information Communication Technologies (henceforth ICTs) as the ‘social glue of transnationalism’ (Vertovec, 2004) that ‘enabled death of distance’ (Vertovec, 2004). Increasingly there is growing recognition that ICTs are becoming a key entity in the care-circulation process (Ahlin & Li, 2019; Anderson, 2019; Baldassar et al., 2016; Horst et al., 2019; Madianou & Miller, 2012b; Nedelcu, 2012; Wilding, 2006). Based on my ethnographic field data where I interviewed members (globally migrated adult children and their ageing parents living alone or with spouses in India) of 25 Indian transnational families as part of my doctoral research; I investigated their perspectives on how technology transforms the nature of intergenerational ties in their families. Empirical evidence from my field observations and interviews with older adults and migrated adult children shows that the majority of transnational Indian families see technology as indispensable in shriveling geographical distances and holding together family members across borders. ICTs play a pivotal role in bridging the gap across borders by enhancing connectivity, fostering emotional support within kin and deep sense of belonging within these families.
ICTs’ role in transnational families’ care provision is referred to by scholars as having enabled ‘care collectives’ (Ahlin, 2017,2020), ‘care at a distance (Pols, 2012; Singh, Robertson & Cabraal, 2012) and ‘co-presence’ (Baldassar et al. 2016). They have also been dubbed as ‘technologies of care’ (Wilding 2006) as they generate new possibilities of caring (Hromadzic & Palmberger, 2018), providing advice, sharing stories, and sustaining cultural identities (Hamel, 2009; Nedelcu & Wyss, 2016; Wilding, 2006), expressing emotions across distances (Leurs & Prabhakar 2018) and ‘co-creating’ intergenerational virtual spaces (Ahlin & Li, 2019). My respondents have also used ICTs to alter the dynamics of the intergenerational care circulation, enabling older adults and distant adult children to maintain care circulation despite the physical distance.
Senior citizens interviewed, expressed their profound appreciation for how convenient and effective ICTs are when it comes to communicating with children living abroad. The onset of digital platforms has brought about a radical shift on how older people relate to their extended family by enabling them to bridge physical gaps hence becoming actively involved in their loved ones’ lives. Older adults can share experiences, give advice through video calls, messaging apps or social media platforms, which keep them close to their migrated adult children despite distance between them.
Several scholars have examined ways of ‘doing’ family across borders (Kaur & Shruti, 2016; Nedelcu & Wyss, 2016; Sarkisian, 2006). Studies have focussed on ways of maintaining family and intimate relations across transnational spaces through the ideas of transnational caregiving to ageing parents (Ahlin, 2017, 2020; George, 2005; Wilding & Baldassar, 2018; Krzyzowski & Mucha, 2014), to young children through transnational mothering (Cabalquinto, 2020b; Madianou, 2012; Parrenas, 2001; Platt et al., 2016), and on transnational grandparenting (Nedelcu & Wyss, 2019; Parrenas, 2005). The central idea behind this emerging field of study is the recognition that the ideational concept of family and kin relations is maintained by choice and negotiated across time and space rather than determined by nation-state borders (Baldassar, 2007b; 2011).
Writings, mentioned above, have followed the material-semiotic approach, which emphasizes the agency of material entities like technologies within social relations (Ahlin, 2020; Ahlin & Li, 2019; Brodbent, 2012; Horst & Miller, 2012; Law, 2009; Mol, 2002; Pols, 2012). Based on primary data from field observations and interviews, technological advances have revolutionized how essential kinship practices are carried out in transnational families. Daily communication through digital platforms has become a cornerstone for maintaining familial bonds across geographical distances, allowing for instantaneous communication irrespective of time zones or physical locations. Family members can engage in regular conversations through messaging apps, video calls, and social media platforms; share updates about their lives; and offer one another emotional support.
Furthermore, there has been an increase in virtual celebrations on special occasions over the years within the context of digital family relationships. Special occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, and festivals are now celebrated online, with family members connecting through video calls. These virtual gatherings allow ‘doing family’ (Kaur & Shruti, 2016), regardless of where they live. Not only do they overcome geographical barriers, but they also create a strong sense of community and closeness. By taking part in these important family traditions through virtual means, these transnational family members strengthen their bonds and maintain their shared identity. Sending digital gifts has become a significant method for family members living far apart to convey love and care. Digital gifts, such as e-cards and online purchases, provide an easy and individualized way to show appreciation and commemorate special occasions. Exchanging digital gifts not only fosters emotional connections but also serves as a concrete representation of attention and consideration within digital family relationships.
In a country where elderly care was largely embedded in the patriarchal joint family (Jadhav. et al., 2013) and state-sponsored care facilities are negligible; developments like rising migration along with the rise in ageing population, are complicating family based care arrangements for elderly. To fill this vacuum, several market-driven mechanisms of elderly care ranging from Antara, Age Venture India, Avaza, Emoha, Epoch, Elcare, Goodfellows etc. have sprung up in India promising to offer ‘family like care’ or ‘home care’ facilitated by technological advancements. These advancements include 24*7 surveillance for older persons who are living alone and their children have migrated globally; regular updates of the ageing family member provided over whatsapp group with photos and videos; gigified platforms for nursing services; quick online transactions to provide financial care including remittances, gifts, delivery of daily care products and medicines; bookings for medical treatments etc.
My interviews with migrated adult children and their ageing parents in India have spilled the facts that technology has not just helped migrated children to look after their ageing parents but also the older persons to find new experiences of ageing which is different from being passive receivers of care and the traditional lethargic patterns of ageing. Now with the help of technology they are finding new connections with like minded people in their age groups, social media brings them new ways for living their life on fullest in their second innings and also learning new technologies give them confidence to keep a good pace with the modern world, with new generation specially with their grandchildren.
Age and Generation in Multiple Modernities: (Dis)Connecting People Through Time in North-Eastern Namibia
Joachim Knab, University of Cologne
Abstract
In this article I describe an ethnographic case of age, generation and kinship among people who identify as Masubiya in north-eastern Namibia. I describe how people relate to each other in kinship terms, and I show how age and generation matter in these kinship relationships. They matter in everyday arenas where power is negotiated, they matter in the distribution and sharing of goods and resources, they matter in the resolution of conflicts, and they matter in the joint organisation of caring for others. In addition, notions of age and generation reflect a ‘traditional’ cultural framework that not only connects people across time, even beyond death – thus transcending the finitude of the individual life – but also sets the direction of travel, namely to follow one’s ancestors into the future rather than leaving them behind in the past. Alongside this ‘traditional’ notion of generation, based on kinship structures, there is also a ‘modern’ notion of generation in the national context, which divides people into veterans who fought in the struggle for independence and those born after independence.
Ethnographic Research in New Home
New Home is a village about 50 km south-east of Katima Mulilo, the capital town of Namibia’s Zambezi region, at the banks of the Zambezi River, bordering Zambia. It is located within the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA), a large-scale transboundary conservation area. Most people living in New Home identify as Masubiya. Many people who live in New Home own cattle, and planting maize and fishing are other important practices constituting local livelihoods and economies. The area is subject to pronounced seasonal variation, the dry heat of imbumbi (summer)1 is replaced by the heavy rainfalls of litavula (rainy season), usually followed by the arrival of muuda (the flood), covering large strips of land with water, changing whole landscapes. Besides Subiya, the mother tongue of most people who identify as Masubiya, and Silozi, the mother tongue of the Zambian migrants and lingua franca of the region, most people speak English, and many people speak or understand some of the other Bantu languages of the region, and some people also speak Afrikaans or Portuguese. I spent in total about 14 months in New Home over three visits between 2018 and 2024 for ethnographic research in the context of the DFG-funded research project “Future Rural Africa”. The research on which this article is based was only possible because of the help of my research assistants Chaka Zulu and George, my welcoming hosts, the Kawana family, the many people in New Home who were willing to share time with me, talk to me and give me insights into their lives, the Masubiya Traditional Authority in Bukalo and in Mahundu to allow me to conduct ethnographic research as well as the people from the University of Namibia (UNAM) campus in Katima Mulilo.
1 The terms in italics are the local terms used by my interlocutors when speaking in their mother tongue Subiya. 1
Generational connections
In New Home, kinship extends beyond direct blood relations, incorporating quasi-family members based on shared experiences or close ties between older generations. This results in a close-knit social structure where reciprocity and support are common. Age and seniority are highly respected, with elders holding authority in a gerontocratic system. However, the determination of seniority is complex, involving negotiation based on age, generation, and status. Relationships between younger and older generations vary: for instance, grandfather-grandson relations often involve playful teasing, while father-son dynamics emphasize respect and even avoidance.
Marriage and childbearing are essential for achieving seniority. After the birth of a first child, parents receive new respectful names, reflecting their elevated status. Childless men traditionally sought advice from elders (bakulwana) and used medicinal remedies (misamu) to improve fertility. In cases of infertility, covert methods, like a brother secretly fathering a child or a relative gifting a baby, could be employed. These practices emphasize the value placed on continuity and lineage preservation.
Children are often named after their grandparents, symbolizing continuity. Additionally, the mayolo ritual passes on the name and possessions of a deceased man, with one son chosen to carry on his father’s name. This confers new seniority, though it doesn’t entirely erase pre-existing hierarchical roles. Mayolo, along with mafu, the mourning period, reinforces family unity and cultural values (chizo). The dead become ancestor-gods, known as bazimu, who coexist with the Christian God (muzimu). The bazimu remain influential, requiring respect through adherence to shared values. Misbehavior can invoke malweza (evil spirits), while respect toward elders may earn mbuyoti (blessings). Although Christian practices challenge traditional worship of the bazimu, they continue to play a significant role in the cultural and spiritual life of the people in New Home.
Generational contestations
Despite these practices that foster generational connection, there are also tensions and power struggles over resources and decision-making related to age and generation. Sons sometimes complain that fathers don’t share resources like land, money, or cars. Younger villagers often criticize elders (bakulwana) or elected leaders (ba induna) for misusing power, particularly in distributing resources like meat. Although there is a moral obligation to share, elders often assert their seniority to claim the largest portions, with juniors having limited ability to challenge them. However, if an elder’s behaviour is too harsh, higher generations can still intervene.
But there is also generational conflict on another level. Indeed, it is the national scale where there is perhaps the most pronounced generational conflict in the ‘modern’ sense of generation as an imagined community of age-mates constituted thought their common historical experience and collective consciousness as being marginalised through their “juniority” in the Namibian context. This “youth” or “middle generation” feels marginalized by the older generation, who monopolize government jobs, land, and power. The generational divide is here between those who participated in the struggle for independence for Namibia, and those who have been born after independence. This divide is highlighted by scandals such as the Fishrot scandal, where high-ranking officials were implicated in corruption, reinforcing the younger generation’s sense of exclusion from national resources and decision-making.
Conclusion: Ageing in multiple modernities
Age and Generation play a major role in the daily lives of the people living New Home and other places of north-eastern Namibia. On the one hand, there are many traditional institutions that connect people through time and set them in a particular relation to each other through notions of age and generation. These structural relations, however, are not fixed but usually subject to negotiation. Besides ‘traditional’ notions of age and generation, there are also generational contestations in the ‘modern’ sense, generations that are constituted through their shared historical experience. This shows that modernity is not a unilineal development from generational connection (sharing lives through time) to modern generational disconnection (the younger generating trying to overtake the older generation who clings to power), but that in many places we can observe practices of generational connection and disconnection, both in so-called traditional and modern frames, coexisting side by side.
Moving and falling in future homes as we age
Miguel Gomez-Hernandez, Monash University
The framing of future ageing as a crisis ─also termed the “ageing tsunami”─ is eliciting the development of smart home technologies marketed to ostensibly care for older adults. Within this crisis narrative, falls among older people are depicted as one of the main threats to the healthcare system, one that risks imposing high costs on taxpayers. In response, the industry is designing a suite of AgeTech (ageing technology) ─including screens, graphs, sensors, cloud systems, cameras, diet and sport apps, and companion robots─ intended to monitor the person’s activity and ensure an active lifestyle. These technologies rely on predictive models, often reducing the complexities of ageing to metrics and data points. Yet, these models starkly contrast with the ways older adults themselves envision a fall may feel and look like in the future.
This argument is rooted in my futures-oriented ethnographic fieldwork, exploring both industry and older adults’ visions of ageing lives with technologies. Such orientation to futures is recently motivating a turn in the social sciences to understand futures theoretically and methodologically, where futures anthropology and design anthropology are at the forefront (Pink et al., 2022; Pink and Salazar, 2020) ─inspired by previous Ingold’s work (2021). I conducted a review of 49 AgeTech industry reports examining and projecting “the future” for the older population and business opportunities. This led me to design comic scenarios that I used in interviews with 29 AgeTech industry experts spanning 11 countries. My research then needed a closer look into how older people envision their future lives to explore alternatives. These discussions then informed my design of a series of GenAI scenarios, which I used with 25 older people in their homes in Melbourne. The GenAI scenarios helped me engage with sensory and material prompts, grounding our conversations in possible, tangible future experiences. These household visits also involved video-ethnographic tours ─informed by anthropological filmmaking─ in which I asked the participant to take me to a meaningful place in their homes where they anticipated future concerns, redesigns as they age, expect challenges, or would re-enact examples that I could visually record. I include below two examples of comic and GenAI scenarios that I used in my fieldwork with industry and older people respectively.
Figure 1 and 2: GenAI and comic scenarios depicting future older people’s lives in their bedrooms surrounded by data-driven technology used during fieldwork. Created with Microsoft Bing and Storyboard That respectively.
My research (Gomez-Hernandez 2024a; 2024b) demonstrates that the discourses around these crises are rooted in economic and patronising considerations, aimed at easing burdens on insurers, carers, healthcare systems, and governments. While I do not suggest that industry actors lack care for people’s lives only pursuing economic goals, their approaches tend to instrumentalise future falls or ageing demographics as business opportunities ─often based on ageist assumptions. Using these instrumentalising approaches to older people’s lives, falls and people are then reduced to static and metrified data points which can be predicted and intervened upon in the future through surveillance technology. This technology, for instance, monitors the deterioration of people’s motion, diet, and mood portraying them as benchmarks to intervene upon. If motion, diet, and mood do not meet certain standards, they may result in future falls and ─almost irreversible─ onsets of disability and institutionalisation into aged care. The AgeTech industry believes this is a risky burden for the taxpayers and carers possible to mitigate. Yet this industry endeavour does not only involve private venture and start-ups, rather this industry strongly relies on government funding. Governments and the AgeTech industry mutually envision futures with technology caring for people in their homes and relieving the taxpayer.
Far from these metrifying approaches to futures, the older participants conceptualised falls through a broader lens. Future falls involve anxieties and fears about the future that are always in movement (not being synthetic or static metrics), as the consequences of falling are often pictured in the years to come. Falls include the need to change your home into accessible places, followed by the potential loss of independence as they envision themselves living with relatives or friends, selling the old house, or start renting a unit close to the city and other essential facilities. The fears and anxieties over futures are constrained by the financial capacity of people, since public pensions are very limited in Australia, especially among women who have traditionally been subject to remain outside the workforce. Future falls also involve fears of being institutionalised into residential aged care, whose sector in Australia has been scrutinised given the poor residents wellbeing, shortage of carers, low-pay conditions, and work mostly taken up by migrant women. Falls also prompt reflection on the sensory and emotional significance of the home, as some participants expressed reluctance to remove elements like carpets that contribute to their sense of comfort and identity. These aspects are not fixed categories necessarily meant to be designed, given they are always moving, changing, and being reconceptualised by people in their environments.
Should we create futures that prevent falls for people, we must go beyond reductive metrics to engage with the improvisatory nature of people, changing and moving values, hopes, fears, anxieties, gender, pension systems, and other priorities as the future is permanently about to come. We need to emerge in their future lives collaborating with them, rather than using distant, KPI-driven approaches.
References
Gomez-Hernandez, M. (2024). Industry visions of technology for older adults: A futures anthropology perspective. Journal of Aging Studies, 70, 101248.
Gomez-Hernandez, M. (2024). Doing Futures-Anthropology Research in Visions of Aging Technology. Anthropology & Aging, 45(2), 90-95.
Ingold, T. (2021) The perception of the environment: essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. Routledge.
Pink, S., Fors, V., Lanzeni, D., Duque, M., Sumartojo, S., & Strengers, Y. (2022). Design ethnography: Research, responsibilities, and futures. Routledge.
Pink, S., & Salazar, J. F. (2020). Anthropologies and futures: Setting the agenda. In Anthropologies and futures (pp. 3-22). Routledge.
Not Designed to Be Old: Ageing and Digital Devices for British Retirees in Spain
Dr. Emma Fàbrega Domènech (Universitat de Barcelona) and Dr. Xavier Garcia Curado (GammaUX and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)
This project explores how ageing and digital devices affect each other, particularly for British retirees living in Spain. It began when we noticed that older adults’ issues with technology were often blamed on their age instead of on design flaws. We wondered, what do these interactions tell us about the experience of ageing in Western society?
A Look into Ageing and Technology
The research is examines two main topics: how people age in Europe, and how technology shapes lives in today’s world. We focus on digital devices, which are a big part of how people communicate, connect, and organize their daily lives.
Ageing in a Changing Society
Ageing is more than just getting older; it’s a continuous process of change that affects both our physical body and our place in society. This process is often shaped by society, which builds an image of old age that can carry stereotypes and biases. These social ideas about ageing can affect a person’s experience as much as physical changes do.
In Western societies, “middle age” is often seen as the “normal” stage of life, one where people are productive, active, and healthy. This view leads to stereotypes of older age as something separate from normal life, creating a view where old age is seen as different and often less capable. Stereotypes like these can have a real impact on how people experience ageing and how they feel about themselves. The common Western idea that the “mind” is more valuable than the “body” adds another layer of difficulty. This mindset creates a gap between how people feel mentally and what they experience physically as they age. We often hear phrases like, “I’m young at heart,” which reflect this split between mind and body. This generates strong mixed feelings about ageing, that may add frustration to a life stage that should be dignified.
Technology’s Role in Society and Ageing
In this project, we don’t see technology as just a collection of tools people use. Instead, we view digital devices and technology as “actors” in people’s lives. Devices actively shape how we live, and in turn, they’re influenced by how society thinks and functions. This perspective helps us look deeper at how devices fit into our lives, showing how they’re connected with social biases, like those around age.
Why Do Devices Feel “Old” So Fast?
A big part of the digital world is what we call “planned obsolescence.” This term means that companies design products to have a limited lifespan so people need to replace them often. The result is a fast cycle where devices are seen as “new” only briefly before they’re considered “outdated.” This not only creates waste, which impacts the environment, but also affects how people feel about their own ageing.
British Retirees in Spain: A Unique Perspective on Ageing and Tech
British retirees living in Spain make an interesting group to study. Many in this group are white, retired, and relatively well-off, which has allowed them to move to Spain in search of a better life as they age. They often think of Spain as a place where they can have a more relaxed lifestyle in their later years. But even though they’re financially stable and familiar with technology, they still face challenges using digital devices. Their experiences offer valuable insights into how people feel about ageing and technology for several reasons. This is because these retirees:
- Are generally comfortable with technology from past jobs and personal use.
- Can afford various digital devices.
- Speak English, which is the main language used in most tech products.
- Use digital devices to keep in touch with family and friends both in Spain and back home.
Despite all these advantages, they still find that digital devices are not always designed with older users in mind. They rely heavily on their phones and other devices to stay connected, yet they often struggle to keep up with constant software updates or new features that weren’t designed with their needs in mind.
Anecdotes That Show Ageing and Technology Interacting
To illustrate these ideas, we use one specific example, or ethnographic “vignettes,” from our interviews. This anecdote is one of many other similar ones’ recorded throughout our research, showing what it looks like when ageing and digital technology come into contact, highlighting the ways technology can unintentionally make older people feel isolated or out of touch.
Story: “Old Devices and New Apps: Feeling ‘Outdated'”
In a vignette about Laura and Paige, two British retirees in Spain, we see how quickly changing technology can intensify feelings about ageing. After dinner, the two sit chatting; Laura, tech-savvy, mentions enjoying Facebook. Paige then admits that she stopped using Facebook Messenger because it no longer works on her older iPhone 7. Over the next half hour, Laura attempts to help Paige use the app, while Paige repeatedly remarks that she feels “outdated.” Yet it’s clear to an observer that it’s her phone, not Paige herself, that’s aged.
This device—an ordinary iPhone 7—plays an unexpected role, shaping Paige’s sense of ageing. Paige and Laura are roughly the same age, but because Laura uses a newer iPhone X, she easily navigates the app. For Paige, however, the outdated technology reinforces negative stereotypes of old age, despite her active social life and modern outlook.
The next day, Laura offers to help Paige again, but Paige avoids the interaction. This reluctance hints at deeper discomfort related to technology. This scene highlights how planned obsolescence—the intentional designing of devices to age quickly—pushes people, even those financially able like Paige, to feel left behind. The vignette reveals how digital devices in the Anthropocene don’t just age quickly themselves, but can impact people’s sense of adequacy, shaping the experience of ageing in a digital world.
Conclusion: Reflecting on Ageing and Technology
This project highlights the complex relationship between ageing and digital devices, showing how technology is often designed with younger users in mind. Older adults, even those with resources and experience, often feel that their devices are not truly meant for them. This disconnect not only affects their ability to use technology comfortably but also impacts their sense of self as they navigate later life.
By looking at ageing in this way, we see that it’s more than just getting older — it’s also about how society, through technology and social expectations, shapes what it means to be “old.” For British retirees in Spain, these interactions provide a unique window into how people adapt to technology and the fast-paced changes that come with it. This project invites us to think about how digital devices can be made more inclusive for people of all ages, valuing the experiences of older adults and recognizing the role that technology plays in shaping their lives.
Ageing, technology and care during the Covid-19 pandemic in Greece
Aigli Chatjouli, Panos Tigkas
Introduction
During the health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Greek state placed the elderly population at the center of novel globalised bio-digital care technologies –such as diagnostics, vaccinations, medical trackings, digital communications– along with policies and practices of prioritization, resulting in positive as well as negative experiences. Within this context, we wanted to explore how enhanced forms of care and various technologies shaped the experiences and daily lives of older adults during the pandemic. We wanted to know how such changes influenced ideas about ageing, ways of providing care –through relationships, across generations, and with the help of technology–, and to what extent they reflected local views of elderly life, all within the broader context of global change and exchange of risk governance practices, diagnostic and therapeutic technologies, and moralities of care. We examined these entanglements of care by considering how, during the pandemic, deep-rooted flaws in the Greece’s public healthcare system, already weakened by a series of recent overlapping crises (financial, refugee), influenced both the possibilities and the limitations of biomedical and digital care initiatives and innovations. These included vaccine prioritization, intensive care decisions, and digital approaches to daily life and caregiving, which in turn led to new forms of intimacy and/or exclusion.
Empirically, we drew from formal discourses regarding the public health measures taken to fight the pandemic, as well as from interviews with experts and care-givers, in an attempt to follow discourses, care practices, and relations in the public sphere regarding the vaccination, the social isolation measures and the tracking technologies, as well as in the clinical settings. Analytically, we examined the complex relations between care and technology and explored the diverse ways in which technology and ageing lives shape each other. In this respect, we move beyond simplistic understandings of technology: on the one hand, as an overly optimistic, technocratic “solution” to the problems of ageing and on the other hand, as “cold” and rationalistic, thus inherently opposed to care relations and practices.
Technology as central to care in governmental measures
We have already argued in previous works that the main cultural frame and base of acceptance of the key government measures to address the pandemic –such as the prioritization of the elderly in vaccinations, the technological monitoring of isolation/movement, infection and vaccination– had to do with two key factors: first, a focus on a biomedical vulnerability related to age, and second, a pre-existing kinship-based ethics of care for the elderly that emphasized a sense of obligation. In this presentation, we expanded this argument to further argue that these measures accentuated a local technologized bioethics as the key way forward in providing care, especially in contexts of crisis and urgency. In such a mindset, technologies were the answer vis a vis a more holistic care provision tactic towards the elderly which would address the plethora of vulnerabilities within a reality of evident gaps in top-down care.
The Greek National Vaccination Program, digitally organized with unprecedented speed and efficiency was framed as a remarkable national technological success which, as the former Minister of State and Digital Governance stated “reflects the country’s true potential to be at the digital forefront”. We argue that an emphasis on digitalized and biomedicalized care for the 65+ – e.g. by prioritizing vaccination– diminished a more holistic approach to caring for this population, highlighting a severe lack of non-medical, psychosocial approaches. In addition to the vaccination program, significant attention was given to the use of digital monitoring and tracking of movement, infections, and vaccination state. This reliance on technology for tracking and data management was presented as a key method of providing care. However, we argue that this emphasis on technology initially hid the absence of more comprehensive and personalized care. As the pandemic progressed, these shortcomings became clear and were experienced firsthand. They manifested in the health of older adults, leading to deaths and to various general health and mental problems. As a geriatrician working in Athens informed us: “We observed 40% fewer cancer and heart disease diagnoses in 2020 compared to 2019 in Greece [these cases existed but were simply never diagnosed]. Alongside this, the rise in issues related to mental distress and depression due to confinement and the lack of communication with children and grandchildren. Such an enormous problem!”
Technology and ambiguity in the clinical care context
In the clinical context during the Covid-19 pandemic we found that biomedical technologies such as patient monitors, ventilators, and ICUs were highly moralized and were selectively used often prioritizing the wellbeing of the younger patients. The shortcomings of the national health system and the state of emergency, especially after the second wave, brought the health personnel face to face with difficult decisions when, for example, having to choose who would receive priority for intensive care. The shortage of space, staff, and equipment meant, for example, that intubations sometimes had to happen outside of intensive care units. These intensive care areas became moral battlegrounds where decisions were made about who would live or die, primarily based on age and the assumption that older people are more biologically vulnerable, hence more difficult to successfully treat, and have lived their lives, hence should be left last in receiving care. For example, a medical doctor working during the pandemic at the University Hospital in Thessaloniki recalled: “We reached a point where thirty patients were outside the intensive care unit, essentially dying. They had monitors, but no one was watching them. […] With no available beds, it simply wasn’t possible to intubate them all. So, they died… It feels somewhat more acceptable when an 80- or 90-year-old passes away, but when it’s someone who’s 50 or 60, it doesn’t feel acceptable at all”.
From another angle, however, when taking into account other realms of technologically mediated care in the clinical context, we observed a different story. Medical staff witnessing the emotional impact of patients being separated from their families and the lack thereof of intimate kin support, left them feeling obliged to help older patients connect digitally with loved ones outside the hospital. Medical staff utilized various digitalized forms of care, support, and communication to help patients in need. In this way digital communication technologies in the clinical setting assisted medical staff to help the patients and ameliorated the gaps in care provision. Such initiatives reflected an ethics of care rooted in local kinship-related values and relationships. An intern who worked in a Covid-19 clinic in Thessaloniki recounted: “That was entirely our own initiative, during our working hours – either using our own smartphones or with the help of younger patients who willingly offered theirs. […] I remember an older lady well. As I was passing by, she asked, ‘Can I call my loved ones, please?’ I said, ‘Of course.’ The next morning, I heard she had passed away. I can’t imagine how terrible I would have felt if I hadn’t helped her. We, the doctors, became their family on top of being their caregivers… and they became ours.
