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Call for Papers: Between Detachment, Control and Retake: New Perspectives on the AgingManifestation Internationale et Pluridisciplinaire 2014 : « Entre Déprise, Reprise et Emprise : Nouveaux Regards sur le Vieillir »Université de Toulouse II – Le MirailWorkshop : 7, 8, 9 avril 2014Symposium : 10, 11, 12 avril 2014This international symposium inaugurates the APROVICO research (Analyse du PROcessus de VIeillissement par la méthode des COhortes)included in the « Structuration des Mondes Sociaux » (SMS) project supported by the LAboratory of EXcellence (LABEX). Created as part of an interdisciplinary project involving sociologists, anthropologists, geographers, physicians, linguists, historians and philosophers, this conference aims to develop and enrich the thinking on experiences of ageing and its modes of expression. It is addressed to both researchers of human and social sciences, physicians, professionals and institutions specialized in the field of ageing. Starting point of the symposiumThe starting point of this conference and, more specifically, of the research program underlying it, could be described as follows: given the increased life expectancy and the mass arrival at old age of the baby boomers during the coming years, it is important to improve knowledge about the dynamics of ageing. Longitudinal studies, like the one at the origin of this symposium, should help, especially by taking into account the different steps of ageing and its transformations, in particular according to social classes and gender. If the existing data (both quantitative and qualitative) give a view of people from different age groups at a given time (Clement and Lavoie, 2005; Membrado et al, 2005. Membrado, 2009; Membrado and Salord, 2009; Membrado 2010; Meidani and Membrado, 2010), we still know little about their situation when they were 60 years old: their living and health conditions, their networks or their ways of living.Scientific contextA biomedical conception of ageing, associated with economic and political concerns, has ended up by giving a negative image of ageing which has been frequently criticized by sociologists over the past twenty years (Charpentier et al., 2010, Clement et al. 1995, Lalive d'Epinay, 2000; Caradec, 2004). Indeed since the mid-twentieth century, ageing has oscillated betweentwo poles that oppose and complement each other: “young old” seniors and “dependents”. The most optimistic interpretation of ageing, based on the gain in years of life, highlights a hegemonic model of “ageing well”. Using increase in life expectancy as a measure, this model shows the limits of a technocratic approach and reveals the shortcomings and the denial implicit in ideas about ageing, characterized by reductionist, sexist and ageist approaches which only help to mask the complexity and the diversity of experiences of ageing.However, the study of ageing involves the introduction of a discrepancy into the panorama of the hegemonic socioeconomic and political normative consensus. It means giving back to seniors values rejected by the dictates of market productivity and performance, reconsidering the arrangement of space and time arrangement, rethinking seniors' social networks and questioning the notion of autonomy and the “losses” implied in it.In their proposition of the concept of detachment in 1988 Barthe, Clement and Drulhe attempted to address the theories of old age marked by the concept of disengagement which emerged in the USA during the 1960's. Next, Clement et al. in 1996, in 1999 with Mantovani (1999) or later with Membrado (2010), and Meidani and Membrado in 2010 continued to supply the concept with data from sociological studies that would refine these ideas. Aside from these Toulouse-based researchers, the concept would be enthusiastically welcomed and picked up on by other French researchers (Caradec, 2008). `But how can we characterize what goes by the name of detachment? It is a way of reorganising and managing not only a life story but sometimes even the person living it - who, from time to time, will attempt a series of substitutions in their activities or relationships. These occur after various experiences of rupture (retirement, widowhood, bereavement) and disabilities (following an accident for example) which increase the feeling of fragility and loss of control over the world and induce a feeling of being unable to accomplish what was possible when the strength and will were there. This negotiation with and reconstruction of oneself, others and the environment works through selection, economy of forces and reorientation: throughout, people try to pace themselves, experimenting with what can still be done through trial and error. Such conversion strategies aim at ensuring a certain economization of energy as a means of preserving integrity faced with the irreversibility of time.The concept of detachment particularly highlights the lack of linearity in these life trajectories where detachment and retake work together. In other words, the more or less important transitions that characterize the ageing process are affected by negotiations which reveal detachment. This process is not perfectly clear, however: while ageing can be characterized by ruptures, it also involves re-engagement and, sometimes, even exercise of control. Characterized by their heterogeneity, the life trajectories of seniors are cause for concern: even if life expectancy without disability is increasing in the higher age groups, social and gender inequalities persist (Clement et al 2000.).We noted other, more anxious, kinds of detachment (Clement and Mantovani, 1999), where the proximity of death has become distressing. In these scenarios, the relationship to the family environment is frequently difficult and people's feeling of no longer having control over their own life choices leads to attitudes of withdrawal. Sidelined, the person feels they no longer belong to society and has a sense of insecurity - situations that are frequently accompanied by a feeling of uselessness. This leads to a very negative perception of the world which expresses itself as complaint, a characteristic of detachment processes which are not being coped with. Where old age implies disease, the detachment process is frequently definitive. Among the detachment indicators, we note signs of alteration in the relationship to time and space, as well as a strong tendency to disorientation (neurological impairments). It is not rare that these forms of detachment (worried, uncontrolled, definitive) go hand in hand with forms of depression.It should be stressed here that while losses can be noted, satisfactions also occur. This process is especially present in the beginning of the twenty-first century, which is marked by increased longevity in Western societies. In this context, detachment leads to reconstructions that resemble an exercise of control (or even an overinvestment) based on a selection process of activities and links, especially when we consider some “young old” people who have the physical, material or even financial (inherited) resources for it. Consequently, we observe more and more frequently older people's desire to conserve their physical strength in order to maintain what they consider as the huge task of freeing themselves from some activities so they can remain fully involved in others, considered as more important, when professional constraints are gone and children are no longer at home etc. Consequently, the attempt to understand ageing experiences gains in relevance when the ageing process is incorporated into a wider social environment, where ageing is not reduced to a series of health problems but is an integral part of the individual social trajectory, including interactions with others and with the environment. Note that the process of exercise of control (like the detachment process) is generally expressed with serenity and a feeling of continuity, a strong reminder that forms of ageing depend on present living conditions and past life trajectories.Using the concepts of detachment and control, the intention here is thus to describe a “normal” and normalizing process, highly heterogeneous, that might make the ordinary forms of ageing understandable. According to the life courses and the socio-demographic profiles, these figures sometimes involve strong relationships to the family circle, or sometimes a desire for independence, dating often from a long time back. Subsequently, detachment and control are the result of strategies of adjustment to all kinds of physiological, social and relation constraints, whose specificities and probability of occurrence are combined differently according to the individual. Consequently, the experience of ageing can be described both as a tension between the sense of physical and cognitive limits and the struggle to ensure a continuity in the construction of one's identity, and as a desire to affirm a different presence in the world.Topics of the symposiumIn accordance with the research carried out in Toulouse, the conference aims to question the notion of detachment, considered here as a descriptive tool of ageing experiences, test its relevance for younger seniors and find indicators that could be used to measure its different configurations: forms of detachment, re-engagement and exercise of control. According to these observations, our approach analyses ageing as a process, a series of biographical and relational transitions (Caradec, 2000). Inspired by the American work on life course analysis, we propose an analysis of these transitions without focusing on any particular age category (senior, third age, fourth age, etc.). Taking account of the analytical perspectives outlined below, three axes were selected for this conference: 1st Axis – Residential trajectories and temporalities: habitat and time markers;2nd Axis – Health trajectories: between autonomy and dependence, fragility and vulnerability;3rd Axis – Networks and sociability: around configurations of help;4th Axis transverse – The place of political, methodological and multidisciplinary issues in the study of ageing and social inequalitiesThese dimensions form a resultant which is expressed in the identification of different forms of ageing and of the mechanisms of detachment, re-engagement and exercise of control that constitute them.How can we understand and report on these singular experiences of ageing? On the one hand, through the words of seniors themselves, especially through their stories, and on the other, through study of their relationships to the body, health, space, time and to the other – relationships which are told, described, measured or observed. - Axis 1 - residential trajectories and temporalities: habitat and time markersResidential trajectories, motilities, perception of “home”, appropriating or avoiding spaces, structuring a typical day and social rhythms are all striking markers of ageing. In France, the valuing of “homecare”, as promoted by public policies and by the gerontological position underlying it has promoted a “static” representation of “older populations”. This “static” perception, both literally and figuratively, goes against the residential trajectories reflected by the pathways taken by ageing people. The analysis of these trajectories shows the need to take into account socio-technical changes as well as complex forms of migration and mobility and the secondary forms resulting from them, without forgetting new practices of habitation, more or less transformed, or the conditions of availability of space. If the citizenship of older people commonly manifests itself as user's rights or rights to access and movement, “gerontophobic” pubic space is now a point of confrontation of oneself with the other, accompanying the adjustment of social identity and of individual practices. All this indicates that the fabrication of geometry-variable citizenship illustrates the different configurations of “home” and reveals the proliferation of territorial frameworks which composes it.Whilst relationship to the environment changes, relationships with time become more complex. These diversified relations reveal diverse generational cleavages and disparities between different ages and social groups, putting strain on intergenerational solidarity. These changes, more or less brutal, subtle or insidious, which interfere with the relationship to time, have a direct impact on the reconfiguration of the social rhythms of everyday life. The re-composition of daily life is becomes thus the sign of time passing and taking us closer to the experience of death. As an institution of memory, an object subject to the real or perceived erosion of capacities and an incarnation of the metamorphosis of social links, ageing is subjected to the test of time, both in its material and symbolic dimensions. The increasing complexity and diversification of relationships to housing, time and real estate are constant reminders of these issues that challenge us today to question the notion of control that can sometimes accompany the ageing process.- Axis 2 – Trajectories of health: between autonomy and dependence, fragility and vulnerability.If time constructed, managed and punctuated by relatives’ and professionals’ interventions informs us about the social and political faces of ageing, these processes of the restructuring of identity which characterize the fact of getting older find a singularly appropriate expression in health and the relationship to the body. From this point of view, the body is a medium of the reflective experience of ageing. Besides having been put into words in interviews, the health difficulties that have affected someone's life (cancerous pathologies, Alzheimer's etc.) along with problems linked with biographical events (retirement, widowhood, etc.) find their expression in a number of ethnographic details observed in all the little arrangements people make with bodies that are gradually wearing out. However, these ethnographic data cannot be reduced to an exclusive mapping of trajectories of illness, dependency or fragility and of the resulting paths of accommodation. Beyond the detachment and exercise of control that mark the ageing process, these narratives and portrayals of oneself reveal the dimension occupied by identity in the ageing process.The ageing process thus puts into question the notion of autonomy, conditioned in part but not exclusively by the various trajectories of health. If introducing of the question of autonomy puts health, disability and/or chronic illness (Alzheimer, cancer etc.) at the heart of the ageing process and the decision-making mechanisms operating within it, it also involves the question of resources. Born of social disparities and gendered inequalities, these realities mediate the relation to the body and call for further consideration of the social representations that drive them. Consequently, the perspective changes and we are encouraged to explore the configurations of care and cure and the tensions that run through them, especially those which place help provided to our seniors in the fragile balance between cure and care. In addition, we should note that these configurations may sometimes encounter an ever-expanding commercial logic concerning the more or less “out-of-date” bodies affected by age.Beyond any disparaging assessment of ageing, a person's construction of their identity is less likely to relate to a projection into the future than to a revival of the past. However, these relationships of “old men and women” to health and to their bodies are very rarely the only result of the materiality of these subjects and their life stories. These relationships to the body and to health additionally reflect the importance of the social element that pervades any subject. They consequently invite us to further question the context of relationships operating the co-production of health, old age, fragility, dependence and autonomy for which the different figures of the ageing subject - individual and collective - never completely come together. Any body weakened by age, disease or disability still remains marked by links with others that should be accurately reported when it comes to studying ageing.- Axis 3 - Networks and sociability: configurations of careIt is clear that the image of enfeebled old age, combining invisibility with immobility, remains particularly significant. In this perspective, advance in age is synonymous with the gradual narrowing of relationships to others, to space and to time for oneself, ending with confinement within the private domain (home, nursing home, etc.). In contrast to these simplistic representations, examining the social networks of older people reveals more complex and diverse figures of a plurality of individual and collective ageing. Far from the external elaborations made concerning old age, we encourage communicators to consider the plurality of experience reflected by old people's own stories, endeavoring to show how, not exclusively the time and place, but the others, too, are mediators of the ageing experiences.To this we have to add the accomplishing of ordinary or extra-ordinary activities, in which the terms of sociability, the relationship between self and the world, and care and cure configurations are implemented. In other words, what these activities reveal most clearly are the ageing people’s social bases. Looked at in terms of social networks, these activities involve sociability issues specific to the ageing process. Researches on detachment show that, as singular as it may be, the ageing experience remains a common one, marked by transitions which encourage people to reorganize the activities and the relational universe that support them. Thus the ageing process continuously links with the self-experience of ageing and the viewpoint of others, and this intersection determines the relational space, materializing a singular experience. As a matter of fact, the relation to others, operating within the course of ageing, is one of the most relevant means of analysing the multi-dimensionality of the ageing experience.From this point of view detachment involves a mix of redevelopments, shifts and reconfigurations of the relation to oneself and to the relational, symbolic and material environment. Trying to preserve what is important, the old person prefers to free themselves from some of his/her activities, remaining fully involved in others that he/she considers as essential. This process is composed of multiple, sometimes contradictory, areas of tension. Some of them relate to this to-and-fro between distancing and attachment to the world, others oscillate between choices and constraints. Whatever the area of tension, the social environment can strengthen or even legitimize stigma and thereby participate in a form of exclusion.- Axis 4 (transversal) – The place of political, methodological and multidisciplinary issues in the study of ageing and social inequalitiesPolitical Issues: This quick overview highlights the need to consider context in the analysis of the ageing process, trying to take into account the French specificity with its socio-cultural and political anchoring, and examining the public policies involved in the field of ageing. In other words, beyond the dimensions mentioned above, the experience of ageing also shows how societies consider the diversity of life trajectories and fit the relation to finitude into both their material and symbolic organization. From this point of view, one of the aims of this symposium is to break with the ethnocentric viewpoint that is still altering the experiences of ageing.Methodological and multidisciplinary issues: Communications within any particular axis will focus on the putting into words and form of the ageing process, in other words on the stories of our elders as they are mobilized not only in interviews but also through the media. The objective is to show the methods of presentation and depiction of the ageing person which structure the issues and outcomes of identity. In addition, these communications will examine the trend which encloses the life stories of ageing people within the production of “socially” recommended “autobiographical discourses” and nostalgic inventories of past events. The phenomena of “normative charges” in the discursive production or depiction of oneself will be also examined. Technical, biomedical, scientific or secular discourse, implied in the genesis of identity (narrative or otherwise) will also be considered. From this point of view, we must be attentive to the “effects” that various “media” of observation or explanation of data have on our thinking about ageing. Life stories, questionnaires administered face-to-face or by mail, snapshots or longitudinal approaches do not have the same methodological and epistemological requirements. Studying the context of the production of oneself remains a capital issue of research in the social sciences. This study invites us to think with a renewed acuity about the ways in which different disciplines take over an object such as old age to build their empirical basis. This point also provides the foundation for multidisciplinary thinking and the methodological challenges that it poses.Social inequalities: The experience of ageing is plural. It is as diverse as the different life trajectories of men and women, framed by multiple social positions and equally varied affective, representational and existential universes. From this point of view, experiences of ageing are affected by social inequalities. Communicators should pay particular attention to issues of social inequalities as they may appear in the field of ageing and people's life stories. Where inequalities are concerned, we encourage speakers to develop their thinking with gender in mind to show to what extent, whereupon and how the experiences of ageing are affected by gender relations.Through these three dimensions of the experience of ageing (spatiotemporal markers, autonomy, and networks), we want to submit to collective reflection the experience of ageing revisited in terms of the notion of detachment, control and/or retake. From detachment to retake via control, the communications to come should question the surprises that analytical thinking brings up when it comes to understanding what age means. If ageing is an opportunity to accommodate the transformations induced by the passage of time at the heart of the accommodations that come with advancing age, the “will to” sometimes comes unstuck from the “power to”. But this experience, far from being disqualifying, signals a “distance” from things that develop. Communicators should make sense of these paths of accommodation, with an emphasis on the strategies for action put into place to overcome these “losses” and preserve what is essential. In this context the aim is to account for these “arts of doing”, by questioning their development in time and space, as well as in relation to oneself and to others. By distancing ourselves from disabling and/or exogenous figures of ageing, we shall pay attention to gendered disparities considered as a method of differentiation and prioritization operating within the societal.Proposals for papers should therefore take place within one of the axes described above, while reserving a place in their reflection for the deployment of questions around issues of contextualization, methodology and/or multidisciplinarity. Proposals for papers must enroll in either of these axes→ Papers proposals should be post to by :7 mars 2014, 12hPapers proposals should be send to : ameidani@univ-tlse2.fr et pierre.dufour651@orange.frTélécharger la lettre d'invitation :Invitation_Congress_9_12 Avril_ Toulouse_Detachment_Aging_English