The Department of Social Anthropology and History, University of the Aegean, has the pleasure to invite you to the International Conference “Aging in the pandemic era”, that will take place on October 14th and 15th in Mytilene, Greece. The conference will have a hybrid format with the possibility of either physical or digital attendance. The conference is organized by the Lab of Family and Kinship Studies under the research program “BIO-AGE”, “The biosocial experience of aging during the COVID-19 pandemic”, funded by the Hellenic Foundation of Research and Innovation (https://bio-age.weebly.com/).
The pandemic has led to worldwide reconfigurations causing multiple, immediate, and long-term effects in everyday and institutional life. The lives of the elderly have often been at the centre of attention, mostly framed via biomedicalised risk discourses, while their own experiences and understandings of life in the pandemic era has yet to be elucidated. The conference seeks to contribute to the understanding of the societal consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to the elderly (age 65 and over) and to elucidate the (g)local configurations of the ways the dominant biomedical mobilization following the pandemic conjuncture is morphed into a biopolitical project.
We invite contributions from different ethnographic settings that unravel what we see as a multiplicity of experiences and conceptualisations regarding risk, responsibility, (dis)continuities in care relations, inter- and intra-generational tensions, through the prism of the elderly experience of the pandemic. We aim at discussing the emergence of biovulnerability, bioresponsibility, and biocare as central pillars of securing societal cohesion in life with/after COVID-19, through the prism of the elderly experience of the pandemic. Contributions may be based on elderly discourses, on caregiver’s discourses, on formal expert’s and governmental discourses. More specifically, we invite scholars from all fields of social sciences to present their work on topics such as:
- The study of the biosocial constructions of aging.
- Emerging conceptualisations of age-related vulnerabilities and related practices.
- Continuities and discontinuities in forms of care, from kincare to biocare.
- The identification of key challenges and potential interventions in relation to elderly mobility and accessibility.
- Digital communication and emerging forms of digital intimacy.
- Formal state and biomedical discourses and practices as they construct life with/after COVID-19 for elderly life.
All interested scholars are invited to send a title along with an abstract of 200 words, their full name, email, and institutional affiliation by September the 18th 2022 to the following email: achatjouli@aegean.gr. Candidates will be informed via e-mail regarding the acceptance of their papers by September the 25th 2022.