Looking ‘out of place’: Analysing the spatial and symbolic meanings of dementia care settings through dress

TY - JOUR

T1 - Looking ‘out of place’

T2 - Analysing the spatial and symbolic meanings of dementia care settings through dress

AU - Buse, Christina

AU - Twigg, Julia

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - The article explores how clothing exposes - and troubles - the ambiguous location of care homes on the boundaries of public/private, home/ institutional space. It deploys a material analysis of the symbolic uses and meanings of dress, extending the remit of the new cultural gerontology to encompass the ‘‘fourth age,’’ and the lives of older people with dementia. The article draws on an ESRC-funded study ‘‘Dementia and Dress,’’ conducted in the United Kingdom (UK), which explored everyday experiences of clothing for people with dementia, carers and careworkers, using ethnographic and qualitative methods. Careworkers and managers were keen to emphasise the ‘‘homely’’ nature of care homes, yet this was sometimes at odds with the desire to maintain presentable and orderly bodies, and with institutional routines of bodywork. Residents’ use of clothing could disrupt boundaries of public/private space, materialising a sense of not being ‘‘at home,’’ and a desire to return there.

AB - The article explores how clothing exposes - and troubles - the ambiguous location of care homes on the boundaries of public/private, home/ institutional space. It deploys a material analysis of the symbolic uses and meanings of dress, extending the remit of the new cultural gerontology to encompass the ‘‘fourth age,’’ and the lives of older people with dementia. The article draws on an ESRC-funded study ‘‘Dementia and Dress,’’ conducted in the United Kingdom (UK), which explored everyday experiences of clothing for people with dementia, carers and careworkers, using ethnographic and qualitative methods. Careworkers and managers were keen to emphasise the ‘‘homely’’ nature of care homes, yet this was sometimes at odds with the desire to maintain presentable and orderly bodies, and with institutional routines of bodywork. Residents’ use of clothing could disrupt boundaries of public/private space, materialising a sense of not being ‘‘at home,’’ and a desire to return there.

KW - Care homes

KW - Dementia

KW - Dress

KW - Embodiment

KW - Place

KW - Public/private

KW - Space

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84924186967&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.20149169

DO - 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.20149169

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84924186967

SN - 1652-8670

VL - 9

SP - 69

EP - 95

JO - International Journal of Ageing and Later Life

JF - International Journal of Ageing and Later Life

IS - 1

ER -