Description

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Health programmes that offer help to self-help are meant to empower ageing adults to remain independent and self-sufficient at home for as long as possible. But what happens when the private home becomes a political realm in which state intervention and individual agency happen simultaneously? Based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a Danish municipality, Amy Clotworthy describes how both health professionals and elderly citizens negotiate the political discourses about health and ageing that frame their relational encounter. By elucidating some of the conflicts, paradoxes, and negotiations that occur, she provides important insights into the contemporary organisation of eldercare.

About the Author

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Amy Clotworthy holds a Ph.D. in ethnology and a Master's degree in applied cultural analysis, both from the University of Copenhagen. In her position at the interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Aging (CEHA), she teaches and conducts public outreach with a focus on how social policies targeting the elderly influence the sociocultural dynamics of later life. With an emphasis on everyday health practices, her research also investigates how ageing adults create relationships with new technologies and digital processes, and how computer-based methods can be used to generate insights into health and ageing.