Full Description
What does later life look like when it is lived in the companionship of other species? Similarly, how do other species age (or not) with humans, and what sort of (a)symmetries, if any, are brought to light around how we understand and think about aging? So far, aging has been investigated in the social sciences in purely human terms. This is the first collection of original work that considers aging as taking place in relation to other species. This volume aims to start a conversation about aging by taking its more-than-human participants seriously-that is, not only as a support for or context of human aging but also, more symmetrically, as agents and subjects in the process of aging. The contributors draw upon richly descriptive ethnographic accounts, including moments of connection between seniors and dogs in a long-term care facility, human care for aging laboratory animals, and robotic companionship in later life. The ethnographies in this volume not only enrich our understanding of more-than-human companionship during the human aging process but also challenge and urge us to rethink what it means to live later in life in ecologically entangled social and moral worlds.
Contents
Foreword: A Book to Think and Become With
JAY SOKOLOVSKY
Introduction: Aging in More-Than-Human Companionship
CRISTINA DOUGLAS AND ANDREW WHITEHOUSE
Part I Humans Aging in More-Than-Human Companionship
1 Caring Canines: Images of "Home" in Continuing Care
ARDRA COLE AND SUSAN MACLEOD
2 Becoming Old with a Dog: Human-Animal Entanglements in Later-Life Transitions
NETE SCHWENNESEN AND DANIEL LÓPEZ GÓMEZ
3 Of Dogs, Humans, and Lives Worth Living: Thinking with Dogs about Later Life, Living with Dementia, and More-Than-Human Companionship
CRISTINA DOUGL AS
4 Aging with Companion Animals: More-Than-Human Agency, Digital and Sensory Intimacies, and Care
INGRID RICHARDSON AND LARISSA HJORTH
5 Baby Seals and Armless Robots: Is This What Care in Later Life Is Made Of?
CATHRINE DEGNEN AND KATIE BRITTAIN
6 How to Be a Good Robot? Human-Nonhuman Play in Dementia Care
RUUD HENDRIKS AND IKE KAMPHOF
Part II Other-Than-Humans Aging in Human Companionship
7 The Invisibility of the Aging Laboratory Animal
LESLEY A . SHARP
8 Then There Were 3, 2, 1, 0: Grieving with and for a Murine Family
SAMANTHA HURN
9 Posthuman Professionalism: Interspecies Entanglements and Clinical End of Life Care
VANESSA ASHALL, JOANNA L AT IMER, AND CARRIE FRIESE
Afterword: On Old Human and Other Animal Characters
SUSAN McHUGH
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Index
