Re-municipalising sociospatial infrastructure: A journeying ethnography of Greater Manchester's dementia (un)friendly buses.

Transport can pose substantial challenges for people with dementia. Dementia-friendly approaches seek to encourage public transport use by enhancing people and places through educational initiatives and architectural augmentation respectively. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority is implementing dementia-friendliness within a major re-municipalisation of public transport.

Transport digitalisation: Navigating futures of hypercognitive disablement.

People living with cognitive impairments face new forms of disablement in the context of transport digitalisation, an issue recently catalysed by controversies regarding rail ticket office closures. Transport can dramatically impact the lives of people diagnosed with dementia, who often find their mobility suddenly and dramatically impaired. Unfortunately, sociological analysis of cognitive disability has traditionally been undermined by under-theorisation.

Cognitivism ageing: The Alzheimer conundrum as switched ontology & the potential for a new materialist dementia.

Following recent regulatory approvals for anti-Alzheimer's monoclonal antibodies, this paper considers the contemporary role of cognitivism in defining the ontological commitments of dementia research, as well as movements away from cognitivism under the umbrella of 4E cognitive science. 4E cognitive theories, extending cognition into bodies, their environs, and active relations between the two, share potentially fruitful affinities with new materialisms which focus on the co-constitution of matter in intra-action. These semi-overlapping conceptual positions furnish some opportunity for an ontological alternative to longstanding cognitivist commitments, particularly to the isolated brain as a material catalyst for commercial interventions.

Regulating the disenfranchised: Reciprocity & resistance under the Mental Capacity Act.

This paper interrogates the legitimacy of formal ethical regulation regarding people with dementia under the Mental Capacity Act, 2005 in England and Wales. Under the Act, research among people diagnosed with dementia must be approved by Health Research Authority committees, irrespective of whether that research engages with health organisations or service users. As examples, I discuss two ethnographic dementia studies that do not engage with healthcare services, but which nonetheless require HRA approval.

The art of friendliness: Organiser perspectives on curating dementia friendly cultural events.

Over recent decades, the arts have become a popular response to dementia. Amidst wider concerns with accessibility, widening participation and audience diversity, coupled with greater attention to creativity across dementia studies, many arts organisations are now offering dementia friendly initiatives. While dementia friendliness has been well-established for almost a decade, the meaning of friendliness remains vague.

Age-associations in British politics: Implications for the sociology of aging.

Debates regarding the status of age in social analysis are foundational to the sociology of aging, with scholars continually questioning the role of age as a social force. The contemporary politicization of age in British politics sheds useful light on this debate. During the past decade, age has emerged as a potent predictor of political preference in the United Kingdom, encompassing numerous intertwined political economic developments.

Situational expectations and surveillance in families affected by dementia: organising uncertainties of ageing and cognition.

Recent political processes have rendered people with dementia an increasingly surveilled population. Surveillance is a contentious issue within dementia research, spanning technological monitoring, biomarker research and epidemiological data gathering. This paper explores surveillance in the relationships of people affected by dementia, how older relatives both with and without diagnoses are surveilled in everyday interactions, and the importance of expectations in guiding surveillance.

Anti-aging technoscience & the biologization of cumulative inequality: Affinities in the biopolitics of successful aging.

This paper charts the emergence of under-remarked affinities between contemporary anti-aging technoscience and some social scientific work on biological aging. Both have recently sought to develop increasingly sophisticated operationalizations of age, aging and agedness as biological phenomena, in response to traditional notions of normal and chronological aging. Rather than being an interesting coincidence, these affinities indicate the influence of a biopolitics of successful aging on government, industry and social science.

Structuring unequal relations: role trajectories in informal dementia care.

Transitions into informal care roles are associated with various characteristics, for example gender and geographic proximity, but such associations are insufficient to explain role delegation, overlooking the interpersonal structure-agency nexuses that constitute role trajectories. This paper explores unequal role delegation within 7 families affected by dementia, presenting data from interviews with 7 people with dementia and 26 carers living in the community in the United Kingdom. Two key care roles are identified: the relatively un-involved role of peripheral actors and the lynchpin role of main carers who take on most of the care tasks.

Understanding Health and Social Challenges for Aging and Long-Term Care in China.

The second King's College London Symposium on Ageing and Long-term Care in China was convened from 4 to 5th July 2019 at King's College London in London. The aim of the Symposium was to have a better understanding of health and social challenges for aging and long-term care in China. This symposium draws research insights from a wide range of disciplines, including economics, public policy, demography, gerontology, public health and sociology.

Positioning ethnicity in dementia awareness research: does the use of senility risk ascribing racialised knowledge deficits to minority groups?

Over recent decades, the importance of increasing dementia awareness has been promoted by charities, researchers and governments. In response, a large body of research has emerged that evaluates the awareness of different populations. One such population are minority ethnic communities.

Destigmatising dementia: The dangers of felt stigma and benevolent othering.

The destigmatisation of dementia through awareness raising campaigns and associated activities has become a key pillar of dementia studies and related activism. This anti-stigma agenda is undermined by a poor evidence base and inadequate operationalisations of stigma. Scambler's distinction between felt stigma and enacted stigma provides a conceptual basis for improvement.

Circularity, psychiatry & biomarkers: The operationalisation of Alzheimer's & stress in research.

This paper analyses the use of biomarkers in contemporary psychiatric research, arguing that this research has problems of circularity. Focusing on the specific cases of Alzheimer's disease and stress research, we show how these fields have a circular usage of two biomarkers - amyloid-beta and cortisol respectively. We argue that the resulting circularity can be understood as a case of ontological gestalt switching, wherein one object (e.

Discovering deviance: The visibility mechanisms through which one becomes a person with dementia in interaction.

Objectives: This paper explores the emergence of dementia within interpersonal interactions as a matter of deviance and visibility. The sociology of deviance suggests that we rely on assumptions of normal behaviour to help us develop interpretations of other people when interacting with them. When a person acts within expectation, we deem them normal.

Negotiating Tensions between Methodology and Procedural Ethics.

In this commentary, I consider what can go wrong in research when tensions arise between methodology and procedural ethics. I recount difficulties negotiating and implementing a participant recruitment strategy during my doctoral research project, which aimed to explore the experiences of people affected by dementia in the United Kingdom who were disengaged from services. To access this hard-to-reach population, I intended to adopt an informal recruitment strategy, snowball sampling from personal contacts and striking up conversations in public places.