Against the backdrop of demographic ageing, ageing research itself is transforming. While widely used concepts such as models of disengagement and active ageing have been heavily critizied for their “cryptonormativity” (Kolland & Amann, 2014), more recent approaches within a ‘cultural gerontology’ put emphasis on the subjective experience, identity construction and consumption in later life. Theoretically, such studies might approach later life from a practice-theoretical perspective, defining ‘age’ not as something that we are, but that we do. In analogy to ‘doing gender’ (West & Zimmermann, 1987; Butler, 1991), the concept of ‘doing age’ (Laz, 1998; Schroeter, 2012) perceives age neither as a biological state nor as an individual trait, a social role or a discursive formation, but as a continual flow of socio-material practices. Other than human behaviour, social practices are concerned embedded, decentralised, incorporated, sub-conscious and routinized qualities of “temporally and spatially dispersed nexus[es] of doings and sayings” (Schatzki, 1996: 89). Empirically, practice-theoretical approaches to later life have been concerned with the routinized practices of ageing in everyday life, doing health and tele-medicine, ethnographic studies in institutions as well as the materialities of age and ageing.
In 2018 (November 1-3, 2018), Marie Jahoda Winter School of Sociology invites young scholars working on topics surrounding age and ageing from a practice-theoretical perspective. The aim of the winter school is to establish an environment for intellectually open debate and exchange of research projects and theoretical frameworks used to empirically investigate the socio-material practices of growing old. The winter school offers seminars and lectures with researchers and experts in the field of ageing studies: Prof. Clary Krekula (Karlstadt Universitet), Prof. Julia Twigg (University of Kent) and Dr. Rosie Day (University of Birmingham).
The Marie Jahoda Winter School is open to 15 young scholars, advanced master students, PhD-candidates and early stage researchers from humanities and social sciences. The participating PhD students are required to present their research (PhD) projects. Applicants shall submit a description of their research/dissertation project (max. 1 page) and a CV in one document by June 30 2018 to: mariejahoda.summerschool@univie.ac.at.
For more details and the CfP, see: https://www.soz.univie.ac.at/index.php?id=210137