veranstalter: Anna Lindström (University of Uppsala)
ansprechpartner: David Tomás Monteiro
email: davidtomas.monteiro@unibas.ch
web:
institution: HPSL
language: Englisch
location institution: Basel
date_raw: 15.-16. Oktober
date_sort: 15.10.2015, 00:00:00

HPSL Workshop with Professor Anna Lindström
(University of Uppsala, Sweden)
Age, Clienthood And Citizenship In Institutional Interaction
University of Basel

15-16 October 2015

* * *

Presentation of the workshop:
The relationship between participants’ invocation of categories and their accomplishment of locally relevant conversational actions is a central issue for studying the enactment of identities in social interaction (Sacks 1992; Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998; Pomerantz & Mandelbaum 2005).
 
This workshop addresses more specifically the category of age in institutional settings as well as interactions with institutional actors. In a wide range of social activities, the orientation towards a participant as being an „elderly“ person is constitutive of the ongoing activity – such as offering help, providing services, engaging in care activities, as well as integrating the person in specific programs for elderly people.

In these interactions with elderly citizens within institutions providing health or social care, the issue of ’age’ is oriented to by participants as being central. Focused on the provision of care, or on the discussion of their pre-conditions, such interactions become loci of ’identity work’ by the interactants (whether elderly citizens, their relatives, their caregivers, or the ’professionals of care’ such as nurses, home helpers or social workers). In such encounters, matters concerning the citizens’ agency, autonomy and abledness – or, on the contrary, dependency and disabledness – are often negotiated. Moreover, in some settings, as citizens and institutions orient to age and age-related conditions as pre-requisites for clienthood, the categorization of elderly citizens as such becomes consequential for the institutional practice of clientelizing. Within a variety of settings, participants engage in interactional practices involving the display of the elderly’s entitlement, as well as the personnel’s professional knowledge and subjective experience in order to negotiate and secure the provision of service and care.

Within a conversation analytic perspective, this workshop has an analytical focus on the local organization of face-to-face interactions, aiming to explore and discuss practices whereby participants’ categorizations of ’age’ are observably relevant to the enactment of personal and institutional identities, right and obligations of the participants, and to the organization of social interaction.

About the keynote speaker:
Anna Lindström is a Professor of Language and Social Interaction at the Uppsala University (Sweden). Using Conversation Analysis and audio and video recordings in everyday and institutional settings, she develops research on language and ageing.
http://www.lingfil.uu.se/staff/anna_lindstrom/?languageId=1

Aims of the workshop:
This workshop aims at discussing different types of interactions organized around the provision of care or services to elderly citizens, which can offer interesting insights to current work done in Basel by myself (on service encounters in social and health care settings for the elderly) and by other PhD students and post-docs working on institutional settings.

Program:
The program is conceived in a way that gives time to the invited speaker to present and discuss her work (in the morning) and that offers the opportunity to Basel scholars to present their work (in the afternoon) in the form of presentations and data sessions.

15.10.2015 (Day #1):

9h30-12h (Maiengasse 51, room 104):
Professor Anna Lindström: “From the Cradle to the Grave: Experiences from my Research on Language and Ageing“

This presentation focusses on interactional research on language and ageing; the following issues will be discussed:

1. contextualizing research on older people

2. challenges and opportunities in collecting data with older participants

3. themes in research on older people

14h-15h30 (Maiengasse 51, room 104):
David Monteiro (HPSL): “Managing resistance to transfer to a geriatric residential care facility”.

16h-17h30 (Maiengasse 51, room 104):
Hanna Svensson and Nynke van Schepen (HPSL): “Representing elderly citizens in participatory democracy meetings” (data session).

16.10.2015 (Day #2):

9h30-12h (Maiengasse 51, room 204):
Professor Anna Lindström: “Language as Social Action: Requesting in the Home Help Service“

This presentation discusses and problematizes the analysis of senior citizen initiated requests in the Swedish home help service.

14h-15h30 (Maiengasse 51, room 104):
David Monteiro (HPSL): “Resisting institutionalization in a communitary social work setting” (data session).

16h-17h30 (Maiengasse 51, room 104):
Burak Tekin (HPSL): “Age and participation in motion-based videogaming” (data session)