Mapping Age: Spaces, Places and Environments of Aging

This session focuses on all spatial matters in ageing research. Spaces have long played a crucial role in (environmental) gerontology. Research topics often circle around the maintenance of autonomy and wellbeing in a familiar place / aging in place, and have addressed the prosthetic and compensatory functions of spaces on the one and spaces as barriers on the other hand. In the wider field of sociology, however, such 'container models' of space have long been neglected in favour of a more relatinal understanding of materialities, spatialities and human action. From such perspectives, ageing and place(s) are co-constitutive, hence places shape images of aging, aging identities, aging bodies and the agency of older adults as much as vice versa. Against this backdrop, this session invites contributions that follow relational understandings in the study of aging and place.