Haapio-Kirk, Laura;
(2022)
Ageing with Smartphones in Japan: Reimagining care in a visual digital age.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
Abstract
Based on sixteen months’ ethnographic research primarily in Kyoto City and rural Southwest Japan, this thesis examines how experiences of later life are changing in the context of an ageing society, internal migration, the uptake of the smartphone, and the rise of visual digital communication. The research considers how older women and men negotiate oppressive structures within society, looking at how the smartphone at once challenges and perpetuates gender-based norms around care. The research was conducted at a moment of transition, as older adults adopted the smartphone, and thus considers the implications of both the adoption and rejection of the smartphone, and of visual communication in particular. The changes to later life that are documented in the thesis include shifts away from established categories of age and the life course, a more fluid interpretation of life purpose (ikigai), reciprocity (yui), and retirement, and the development of new forms of care, especially care at a distance. The smartphone is implicated in how it mitigates the burden of care, facilitating both closeness and distance at small and large scales. The wider context of the crisis of care predominantly facing women is examined with regard to the creative ways that women manage the numerous care expectations placed upon them as they age. Attending reflexively to visual methods, the thesis experiments with graphic forms of research and dissemination. These graphic experiments in anthropological practice are demanded by the nature of the study which concerns the rise of visual forms of daily communication among older smartphone users. The research reveals the digitalisation and visualisation of forms of Japanese sociality that value form above content (the way communication unfolds can often be more important than the communication itself), thus engaging with a body of scholarship on care and sociality in Japan. This thesis not only delves ethnographically into visual modes of communication but also explores how anthropologists might appropriate illustrated forms of research and dissemination to make the discipline more collaborative and open.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Ageing with Smartphones in Japan: Reimagining care in a visual digital age |
| Language: | English |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Anthropology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10148981 |
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