Material Gerontology

• Applicant: Dr. Anna Wanka, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Sociological Theory
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 427930883

With the material turn entered a new perspective into the social sciences and humanities – a perspective that emphasizes how not only human, but also non-human actors take part in the social construction of realities (cf. e.g. Barad 2003; Latour 2005). However, such new materialist perspectives have not yet spread across the study of age and ageing. The interdisciplinary and international research network “Material Gerontology” aims to develop a new materialist conception of age(ing) to close this theoretical gap. Such a conception is concerned with how the complex social phenomena age and ageing processes are constructed and ‘done’ in and through social practices and interactions between human and non-human actors, materialities and discourses, throughout the everyday lives of older people (cf. Höppner/Urban 2018). With this, the network aims to develop both sociological gerontological theories further. To theorize age and ageing from a new materialist perspective, the network will a) engage with different concepts of materiality to develop a joint, age-specific understanding of it. Based on this the network will focus on four related topics, namely b) practices of age(ing), c) ageing bodies, d) things of age(Ing) and e) spatial aspects of age(ing). These topics will be discussed in four respective workshops and critically reflected upon in a final network meeting (f). The main outcome – besides journal papers, book chapters and joint symposia – will be an edited volume on “Material Gerontology”, in which the developed theoretical conceptions of a material gerontology will be elaborated.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks