Linking Ages - The Material-Discursive Practices of Un/Doing Age across the Life Course

在我们的社会中，年龄是极大地影响一个人如何被对待的关键标志之一。从无/有年龄的社会学角度来看，年龄界限可以被理解为实际的成就——不是人们是什么或做什么，而是通过物质话语边界制定实践正在完成的事情。最先进的研究已经研究了（物质）身体、空间和事物，以及与年龄相关的（话语）表征或处置，但面临两个关键的局限性：首先，它缺乏对以下事实的全面理论化：与性别不同，年龄是社会差异的一个连续的、过程的和动态的标记；其次，儿童、青年、成年和年龄研究之间缺乏对话，导致创造超越年龄界限的知识的斗争，并冒着将年龄类别具体化而不是解构它们的风险。为了缩小这些研究差距，该项目旨在发展一种迫切需要的元视角，将年龄作为一种社会差异，在“连接年龄”的框架中表现出来，将童年、青年、成年和年龄研究的理论、方法和发现带入对话。作为一种反思性的后结构主义方法，这种实践-理论框架的目的不是比较什么是生命阶段，而是比较它们是如何形成的——以及研究本身在这一过程中扮演的角色——问：年龄是如何在不同的生命阶段中完成的？哪些物质话语实践在生命历程中划定了年龄界限？“连接时代”框架将从7个实证研究项目（1个博士后项目、4个博士项目、2个硕士项目）归纳建立。所有涉及的项目都询问年龄是如何构成的，而不是为什么构成的，这样做的重点是实践的选定物质元素——身体、事物或空间——以及相关的话语元素及其在规则和表现中的物质化。在这样做的过程中，项目重点关注至少两个生命阶段，从第一个队列的童年和晚年开始，并将成年期纳入第二个队列的分析。所有项目都采用实践-理论的多方法研究设计，考虑到材料和话语元素，从而将“材料”方法（如人种学、人工制品分析）与文本方法（如访谈、文件）结合起来。小组领导的项目位于元层面，通过显性和隐性知识实践来分析研究本身在时代行为中所起的作用。它汇集了所有子项目的研究成果，利用情境分析绘制了它们的地图，并在此基础上构成了实践-理论的“连接时代”框架。

Age is one of the key markers that greatly influence how a person is treated in our societies. From a sociological perspective of un/doing age, age boundaries can be understood as practical accomplishments – not something people are or do, but something that is being done through material-discursive boundary-making practices. State-of-the-art research has studied the (material) bodies, spaces and things as well as the associated (discoursive) representations - or dispositifs – that un/do age(ing), but faces two crucial limitations: first, it lacks comprehensive theorising of the fact that age, unlike gender, is a continuous, processual and dynamic marker of social difference; and second, the absence of dialogue between childhood, youth, adulthood and age studies causes a struggle to create knowledge that exceeds age boundaries and risks reifying age categories instead of deconstructing them. To close these research gaps, the projects aims to develop such an urgently needed meta-perspective towards age as a category of social difference manifested in a framework of ‘Linking Ages’ to bring theories, methodologies and findings from childhood, youth, adulthood and age studies into a dialogue. As a reflexive poststructuralist approach such a practice-theoretical framework does not aim to compare what life stages are, but how they come into being – and which role research itself plays in that process -, asking: How is age being un/done in different life stages? Which material-discursive practices draw age boundaries across the life course?The ‘Linking Ages’ framework will be inductively established from seven empirical research projects (one postdoctoral, four PhD projects, two MA projects). All involved projects ask how, not why, age is constituted, and in doing so focus on selected materiel elements of practices – bodies, things or spaces – as well as the associated discursive elements and their materialisations in regulations and representations. In doing so projects focus on at least two life stages, starting with childhood and later life in the first cohort and include adulthood into the analyses of the second cohort. All projects deploy practice-theoretical multi-method research designs that account for both material and discursive elements and thus combine ‘material’ methods (e.g. ethnography, artefact analysis) with textual methods (e.g. interviews, documents). Located at a meta-level, the group leader’s project analyses the role that research itself plays in the un/doings of age through explicit and implicit knowledge practices. It brings together findings from all sub-projects, maps them using situational analysis, and, on this basis, constitutes the practice-theoretical ‘Linking Ages’ framework.