Portals to the world: technological extensions to the boundaries of the home

This article examines the ways that technological objects inside the home are viewed and productively used by a group of older people to extend their access to environments beyond the home. Beginning with a discussion of types of domestic object, we highlight appliances and gadgets, and focus our attentions on the latter. The changes in life brought on by ageing, in particular a reduction in mobility, provide the context for our study, in which access to the outside world becomes increasingly difficult. Recognising their changing circumstances led our participants to actively and selectively engage with these objects, mitigating the shrinking of their accessible environment by using them as a gateway to the many virtual worlds now available. We coin the term ‘portal objects’ to describe the potential that this type of technological object provides, and suggest that the investigation of interiors can be enriched by recognising and including the worlds outside that become integral to occupation inside

Conserving habitus: Home, couplehood and dementia

Compared to research on home in circumstances of aging, place and care, our knowledge about home in relation to couplehood is limited despite increases in the percentage of married and cohabiting older people in UK. Specifically, our understanding of experience and meaning of home for couples where one partner has dementia remains under-explored. This article presents a scoping review of published empirical literature to examine older couples’ experiences of home in dementia. The literature identified and reviewed through searching academic databases and Google Scholar is interdisciplinary and a thematic analysis suggests interactions of couplehood, home and dementia. To discuss these interactions, we use Bourdieu’s framework of field, capital, practice and habitus. We observe that habitus may gradually alter and fracture. But, in locating and supporting performance of (adapted) everyday relationship and domestic practices, home has a distinct role in contributing to conserving habitus and in turn continuity of relationship and home. Gradual fracturing of habitus with progression of dementia however also suggests that continuity of relationship and home remain contingent, but this needs further investigation. It is an element of home futures that cannot remain invisible