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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Materialising memories
— exploring the stories of people with dementia through dress | | Author(s) | Christina Buse, Julia Twigg |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 36, no 6, July 2016 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, July 2016 |
| Pages | pp 1115-1135 |
| Source | journals.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Dementia ; Memory and Reminiscence ; Clothing ; Biographies ; Qualitative Studies. |
| Annotation | In this article, the authors use clothes as a tool for exploring the life stories and narratives of people with dementia, eliciting memories through the sensory and material dimensions of dress. The article draws on an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded study, 'Dementia and Dress' (RES 062-23-3195), which explored everyday experiences of clothing for carers, care workers and people with dementia. The study used qualitative and ethnographic methods including 'wardrobe interviews', observations, and visual and sensory approaches. The analysis used three dimensions of dress as a device for exploring the experiences of people with dementia: kept clothes, as a way of retaining connections to memories and identity; discarded clothes, and their implications for understanding change and loss in relation to the 'dementia journey'; and absent clothes, invoked through the sensory imagination, recalling images of former selves, and carrying identity forward into the context of care. The article contributes to understandings of narrative, identity and dementia; it draws attention to the potential of material objects for evoking narratives and maintaining biographical continuity for both men and women. The paper has larger implications for understandings of ageing and care practice. As well as contributing to the wider Material Turn in gerontology, it shows how cultural analyses can be applied even to frail older groups who are often excluded from such approaches. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-160617200 A |
| Classmark | EA: DB: YW7: 67: 3DP |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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