1st Edition
Critical Dementia Studies An Introduction
This book puts the critical into dementia studies. It makes a timely and novel contribution to the field, offering a thought-provoking critique of current thinking and debate on dementia. Collectively the contributions gathered together in this text make a powerful case for a more politically engaged and critical treatment of dementia and the systems and structures that currently govern and frame it.
The book is inter-disciplinary and draws together leading dementia scholars alongside dementia activists from around the world. It frames dementia as first and foremost a political category. The book advances both theoretical and methodological thinking in the field as well as sharing learning from empirical research. Outlining the limits to existing efforts to frame and theorise the condition, it proposes a new critical movement for the field of dementia studies and practice.
The book will be of direct interest to researchers and scholars in the field of dementia studies and wider fields of health, disability and care. It will provide a novel resource for students and practitioners in the fields of dementia, health care and social care. The book also has implications for dementia policymaking, commissioning and community development.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Introduction: Why critical dementia studies and why now?
Linn J. Sandberg and Richard Ward
Part I: Reclaiming and recasting
1. I want to be the orchestrator of my entire fabulous life
Dáithí Clayton
2. Small quantities at a time: On music, poetry and social media
Ronald Amanze
3. Who knew a pothole could bring it all back?
Patrick Ettenes
4. Nobody is allowed to offend us – not by language, nor by attitude
Helga Rohra
5. Recognizing Birkby: Living and caring with dementia
Wendy Hulko, Marsha Griffith and Birkby Griffith
Part II: Re/framing
6. ‘Lost in time like tears in rain’: Critical Perspectives on Personhood and Dementia
Stephen Katz and Annette Leibing
7. Multi-Species Dementia Studies: How moving beyond human exceptionalism can advance dementia's more critical turn
Nick Jenkins
8. Reframing 'ethnicity' in dementia research: Reflections on current whiteness of research and the need for an anti-racist approach
Maria Zubair
9. Frames of Dementia, grieving otherwise in The Father, Relic and Supernova: Representing dementia in recent film
Sadie Wearing
Part III: Care and control
10. Precarity and Dementia
Amanda Grenier and Chris Phillipson
11. An Emerging Necropolitics of the Dementias
Hamish Robertson and Joanne Travaglia
12. Segregation and Incarceration of People Living with Dementia in Care Homes: Critical Disability and Human Rights Approaches
Linda Steele, Lyn Phillipson, Kate Swaffer and Richard Fleming
13. The carnival is not over: cultural resistance in dementia care environments
Andrea Capstick and John Chatwin
Part IV: Forging alliances
14. Convergences, Collaborations, and Co-conspirators: The Radical Potentiality of Critical Disability Studies and Critical Dementia Studies
Hailee M. Yoshizaki-Gibbons
15. Thinking dementia differently: Dialogues between feminist scholarship and dementia studies
Linn J. Sandberg
16. Revolutionising dementia policy and practice: Guidance from ‘the memory girl’, an accomplice
Wendy Hulko
17. Taking a Queer Turn – the significance of Queer Theory for Critical Dementia Studies
Andrew King
18. Neurodiversity and dementia: Pitfalls, possibilities and some personal notes
Linda Örulv
19. Thinking back and looking ahead: Co-ordinates for critical methodologies in dementia studies
Richard Ward and Linn J. Sandberg
Biography
Richard Ward is Senior Lecturer in Dementia Studies at the University of Stirling and Head of Division for Ageing and Dementia. He is a registered social worker who specialised in working with older people living with dementia. Richard’s research interests include social care practice, the experience of living with dementia and how place-based experience can influence the lives of people with chronic and progressive conditions. Richard is part of a network of academics with a shared interest in studying the international development of dementia friendly communities. He is also the co-founder of the Critical Dementia Studies Network. His recently published book is Ward R, Clark A & Phillipson L (eds.) (2021) Dementia and Place: Practices, Experiences and Connections.
Linn J. Sandberg is Associate Professor in Gender Studies and Senior Lecturer in the School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University, Sweden. Sandberg’s research interests are in the field of ageing, gender, sexuality, embodiment and dementia. Some of her most recent research interests include a qualitative interview study on sexual and intimate couple relationship after the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Currently she is the Principal Investigator of a project on LGBTQ people with dementia and Swedish dementia care, funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working life and Welfare (FORTE). Sandberg is the co-founder of the Critical Dementia Studies Network, (https://memoryfriendly.org.uk/programmes/critical-dementia-network/) together with Richard Ward, and a co-managing editor of the book series Dementia in Critical Dialogue.
