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

连接年龄——生命历程中不做/做年龄的物质话语实践

• 批准号: 466044673
• 负责人: Dr. Anna Wanka, Ph.D.
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: The University of York
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Independent Junior Research Groups
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/466044673?language=en
• 关键词: Linking; Ages; Material; Discursive; Practices

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.

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。从社会学的角度来看，年龄界限可以被理解为实际成就--不是人们正在做的或正在做的事情，而是通过物质论述的边界确定做法所做的事情。最先进的研究研究了年龄的(物质)身体、空间和事物以及相关的(话语)表征--或性情--但面临着两个关键限制：首先，它缺乏对以下事实的全面理论：与性别不同，年龄是社会差异的连续、过程和动态标志；其次，儿童、青年、成年和年龄研究之间缺乏对话，导致难以创造超出年龄界限的知识，并有可能重新确定年龄类别，而不是解构它们。为了缩小这些研究差距，这些项目旨在开发一种迫切需要的关于年龄的元视角，将其作为“联系年龄”框架中表现出来的一种社会差异，将儿童、青年、成人和年龄研究的理论、方法和结果纳入对话。作为一种反身性的后结构主义方法，这种实践--理论框架的目的不是比较生命阶段是什么，而是它们是如何形成的--以及研究本身在这一过程中扮演的角色--问道：在不同的生命阶段，年龄是如何被取消/完成的？哪些材料论述实践在整个人生过程中划出了年龄界限？将从七个经验性研究项目(一个博士后、四个博士项目、两个硕士项目)归纳地建立“联系年龄”框架。所有涉及的项目都询问年龄是如何构成的，而不是为什么，在这样做的过程中，重点放在做法的选定材料要素--身体、物体或空间--以及相关的论述要素及其在条例和表述中的具体化。在这样做的过程中，项目侧重于至少两个生命阶段，从第一个群体的童年和后来的生活开始，并将成年期纳入第二个群体的分析。所有项目都采用了实践-理论多方法研究设计，既考虑了材料也考虑了论述因素，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。小组组长的项目位于元水平，通过显性和隐性的知识实践，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调查结果，使用情况分析绘制了它们的地图，并在此基础上构成了实践-理论“联系时代”的框架。