Movement, care and mediation: ageing families and translocal relatedness

A seminar presented by Maruska Svasek, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Poitics, Queen's University, Belfast

Abstract

This paper discusses some of the more pressing issues of the 21st century: the impact of rapidly developing communication technologies on affective relatedness; kinship dynamics in contexts of human mobility and, the challenge of care in ageing societies. It explores the ways in which dispersed family members create (or fail to create), a sense of long-distance family life. It draws on theories of affect, space, sociality, materiality and kinship and builds on Janet Carsten's conceptualisation of kinship as relatedness.

The analysis will employ the perspectives of "translocal relatedness" and "affective practice" to understand how kin in different settings use communication technologies and mutual visits to experience and imagine kin sociality. Their entanglements are understood as mediated movements, not only across time and space, but also within and between ageing bodies. The chapter will also argue that, when exploring processes of relatedness in worlds of movement, we need to both acknowledge individual, transitory aspects of the world-making and pay attention to universal exestential features of the human condition.

Refreshments provided.