1st Edition

A Critical History of Dementia Studies

Edited By James Rupert Fletcher, Andrea Capstick Copyright 2024
214 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

214 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

214 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book offers the first ever critical history of dementia studies. Focusing on the emergence of dementia studies as a discrete area of academic interest in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it draws on critical theory to interrogate the very notion of dementia studies as an entity, shedding light on the affinities and contradictions that characterise the field. Drawing together a... Read more

List of illustrations

List of contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction

ANDREA CAPSTICK AND JAMES RUPERT FLETCHER

PART I

Paradigms

1 Pathologisation, (bio)medicalisation and biopolitics

JAMES RUPERT FLETCHER

2 The century without a war: Kitwood’s concept of malignant social psychology and the need for historicization in dementia studies

ANDREA CAPSTICK

PART II

Discourses

3 Language about people with dementia

CLARE MASON, MICHAEL ANDREWS, RONALD FERGUSON (AKA RONALD AMANZE), JACQUI BINGHAM, ALLISON BATCHELOR, GERALD KING, TERESA DAVIES (AKA DORY), JULIE HAYDEN, AND WENDY MITCHELL

4 A semiotic analysis of meanings of dementia around the world

ANA KONCUL, ELIZABETH GEORGE ONYEDIKACHI, AND RUTH B ARTLETT

5 Literary dementia studies: From managing estrangement to imaginatively reconceptualising forgetfulness

HEIKE HARTUNG

PART III

Intersectionalities

6 Gender awareness and feminist approaches in dementia studies

ANN THERESE LOTHERINGTON

7 ‘On my good days, I can […] almost pass for a normal person’: Reading The film Still Alice using the conceptual lens of heteronormativity

KATHERINE LUDWIN

8 Race, ethnicity and culture: Problematic application in dementia and old age

MOÏSE ROCHE, MARIA ZUBAIR, AND JAMES RUPERT FLETCHER

PART IV

Methodologies

9 ‘Whose story is it and what is it for?’: Life story as critical discourse in dementia studies

JACKIE KINDELL, AAGJE SWINNEN, AND JOHN KEADY

10 From symptoms to citizenship: A critical reading of the perceived value of arts and culture in a dementia context

ROBYN DOWLEN AND REBECKA FLEETWOOD-SMITH

PART V

Politics

11 Human rights and dementia: A ‘socratic dialogue’

TOBY WILLIAMSON AND NICK JENKINS

12 Experts by experience: ‘I don’t want to be shaken, I want to be a shaker’

AGNES HOUSTON, NANCY MCADAM, JAMES MCKILLOP, AND MARTIN ROBERTSON FACILITATED BY PAULA BROWN

Conclusion: Multi-Disciplinary, multi-historied, multi-critical

JAMES RUPERT FLETCHER AND ANDREA CAPSTICK

Index

Biography

James Rupert Fletcher is a Wellcome fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester, UK. His research covers several areas of the dementia economy, with an emphasis on using social theory and methods to understand dementia as a political entity. He has published on subjects including informal dementia care networks, mental capacity legislation and its influence on research governance, the anti-ageing technoscience market, anti-stigma and awareness raising campaigns regarding psychiatric disorder, the operationalisation of ethnicity and age in research, the biomarker discovery economy, the curation of dementia-friendly cultural events, dementia prevention public health strategies and environmental effects on cognition in urban settings. His lecturing spans medical sociology, the sociology of ageing, social research methods and ethical governance.

Andrea Capstick is an associate professor at the University of Bradford School of Dementia Studies. She originally worked alongside the late Professor Tom Kitwood to develop the first distance learning programme in dementia studies. Since then, she has at different times led both the BSc (Hons) and the MSc programmes in dementia studies at the University of Bradford. She holds a Doctorate in Education (EdD) for her work on the use of film and narrative biography in teaching dementia studies, and has published on a variety of subjects including participatory visual methods, arts-based approaches to teaching and learning, the representation of people with dementia in the popular media and dementia as a human rights issue. She has undertaken research funded by the NIHR (2012–15) on the impact of participatory filmmaking on social inclusion and well-being for people with dementia in long-term care, and more recently on the study ‘What works in dementia education and training?’ (2015–18) where she led the Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) work.