Interconnected Aging: An Ontological Turn Towards a Sustainability Perspective in Aging Research.

For the first time in history, a climate change case focusing on aging has been addressed to the European Court of Human Rights. The urgent effects of climate change and the need for a more sustainable future highlight the importance of creating not only age-friendly environments but also environmentally friendly and sustainable aging. In this presentation, we explore ways to move beyond the anthropocentric perspective in aging research. We demonstrate how aging research that is informed by the ontological turn holds the potential to significantly broaden our understanding of aging as an eco-social process and phenomena and how this may have important consequences for issues on increased sustainability. The ontological turn implies that the borders between nature/culture, human/non-human as well as time and place become blurred and even dissolved. The ontological turn means the end of human exceptionalism as we know it.

From our reading of important theoretical contributions to the ontological turn we introduce the concept of “interconnected aging,” Interconnected aging brings forwards questions that asks not only how climate changes are affecting aging humans but also how aging humans affect climate changes.