Doing it my way: old women, technology and wellbeing.
This article focuses on women in their nineties (nonagenarians) who are ageing in place - or ageing at home - in upstate New York. I analyse these old women's use of everyday technological tools to care for themselves and construct meaning. I argue that despite what we may expect, nonagenarian women can be and are technogenarians in their active and creative uses of everyday technologies. Old women utilise lifelong care work repertoires to identify, adjust, use and reject old and new technologies for their own everyday mobility, communication, nourishment, and physiological health. Perhaps most importantly techno-savvy elders can maintain and achieve health and wellbeing, associated here with bodily comfort, social networks, self-efficacy and intellectual life, in and beyond their homes. In these ways, nonagenarians can teach us how household technologies can be health and ageing technologies; instruments of continuity and control; or just the opposite.
Department of Sociology and Anthropology and Women's Studies Program, Colgate University, Hamilton NY, USA. mloe@colgate.edu
Meika
M
Loe
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000367:Age Factors; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging; D000884:Anthropology, Cultural; D001292:Attitude to Computers; D003258:Consumer Behavior; D003625:Data Collection; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D013672:Technology; D016387:Women's Health