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New book on the capabilkity of the elderly.
Book about capable elderly
“Capability” is a key concept within UGOT AgeCap, the Centre for Ageing and Health. But what does it really mean? A recent anthology shows that the answers can vary quite a lot depending on your discipline and scientific perspective.
As many as 60 authors have contributed to the book, which was already downloaded 4,800 times in the week following publication.
Work on the anthology, A multidisciplinary approach to capability in age and ageing began in 2017 during one of AgeCap's steering group meetings. – We discussed how the term “capability” is sometimes used quite carelessly, and to achieve a more precise definition, we wanted to get the centre's researchers to think about how they define and apply the term in their research. During the discussions that followed, it emerged that different disciplines define capability in different ways. This led to the idea of an anthology, and we canvassed widely throughout AgeCap to get as many perspectives as possible, Hanna Falk Erhag tells us. Together with Ulrika Lagerlöf Nilsson, Ingmar Skoog and Therese Rydberg Sterner, she is one of the editors of the anthology. – The more we examined the concept of “capability”, the more interesting it became, Ulrika Lagerlöf Nilsson continues. And for me, it was something of a revelation when I realized that “capability” is exactly what we historians have always dealt with, examining how people during different periods of history handled opportunities and limitations.
The book is like a kaleidoscope of how different disciplines view the concept, says Ingmar Skoog.
– It provides a picture both of the multidisciplinary diversity that characterizes AgeCap, and of what a university with a broad scope can achieve when researchers from different fields work together.
The anthology also goes against the publishing tradition that exists in research to some extent, where interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary researchers have a difficult time finding a place, says Ulrika Lagerlöf Nilsson. – Even in the humanities, short articles in niche journals have become increasingly common. But with this publication, we have struck a blow for the book, which is a much older way of publishing. In order to make the book widely available, it can be downloaded for free from the website of the publisher, Springer.
The book consists of 16 chapters and as many as 60 researchers contributed. The topics covered include health, cognition and well-being, functional ability,
the pension system, political participation, design, the degree of exposure the elderly receive in the media, and questions about Alzheimer's disease.
– We have spent a lot of time reading and constructively criticizing each other's texts, Hanna Falk Erhag explains. The differences in the different publishing traditions in different fields of science became very apparent during our work. At first, we thought we should agree on a common style of writing, but we decided pretty early on that we should acknowledge the differences instead. This is the reason why, for example, the article on cognition and well-being has as many as 16 authors, while Dimitrios Kokkinakis is the sole author of his text on the Swedish language.
One important insight is that the world can be perceived in a number of different ways and that it is not dangerous to disagree, Ingmar Skoog points out. – In today's atmosphere of polarized
INGMAR SKOOG discourse, this is perhaps particularly important to emphasize. Universities are expected to produce both knowledge and qualified students as quickly as possible. This means that unconditional and scientific discourse is increasingly overshadowed. It is especially noticeable in the articles published within medicine; in the past, they often began with a comprehensive discussion or a background description, but there is rarely room for that today. We therefore hope that this multidisciplinary anthology will be of interest to both researchers and students within a broad field. But we also believe that the wider public can benefit from it.
Text: Eva Lundgren Photo: Johan Wingborg
Facts
The anthology, A multidisciplinary approach to capability in age and ageing is based on research at the Centre for Ageing and Health (AgeCap) and is part of Springer Publishing's series on international perspectives on ageing. The book comprises 16 chapters including, neuropsychiatric epidemiology, psychology, sociology, health and care sciences, history, law, journalism, political science and neurochemistry. The editors are Hanna Falk Erhag, Associate Professor of Health and Care Sciences, Ulrika Lagerlöf Nilsson, Senior Lecturer in History and Associate Professor of Church History, Therese Rydberg Sterner, Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychiatric Epidemiology (parental leave), and Ingmar Skoog, Professor of Psychiatry and Director of AgeCap. You can download the book here: https:// www.academia.edu/68304436/Book_ AMultidisciplinaryApproachToCa. The concept of "capability" refers to a person's ability to achieve the goals that he or she considers important. At the micro level, it could be one's own health; at the intermediary level, it could involve the conditions for continuing to live at home, and at the macro level, it could be legislation and the media's depiction of the elderly, for example.
