Ageing and the Transportal Home
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2023.420Keywords:
Ageing, Downsizing, Smartphone, Transportal Home, Ireland, ChinaAbstract
Taking a comparative approach to two field sites – Shanghai in China and Dublin in Ireland – this paper explores the relationship between ageing, home, and the impact of the smartphone on domestic space. Although Shanghai and Dublin are extremely diverse contexts, both have seen rapid social shifts in recent decades, and domestic life seems to reflect these changes. Here, we outline how older people reconfigure their lives through the manipulation of their homes, variously upsizing, downsizing, and rightsizing – but also through sifting through their possessions, decluttering, and adopting or adapting to new domestic spaces in different ways. However, whereas these material practices may be found in cities worldwide, we examine the smartphone in domestic environments and consider how the digital expands, create, blurs, or traverses conventional views of the home in each field site. A central concept here is the ‘transportal home’ (Miller et al. 2021). Weaving perspectives from material and digital approaches in anthropology, we explore and expand the notion of the transportal home, as outlined in the comparative book, The Global Smartphone (Miller et al., 2021) and reiterated in brief here. We adopt this concept but take it further by asking how the transportal home differs in both fieldwork sites. This leads us to question the role of the transportal home in Shanghai and Dublin in terms of mediating, blurring, or traversing domestic boundaries, or expanding or shrinking social and architectural environments. Through these practices, conventional notions of home itself are challenged.
References
Baym, Nancy. 2010. Personal Connection in the Digital Age. Cambridge: Polity.
Birdwell-Pheasant, Donna, and Denise Lawrence-Züniga, eds. 2020. House Life: Space, Place and Family in Europe. Routledge.
Blunt, Alison, and Robyn Dowling. 2006. Home. London: Routledge.
Boellstorff, Tom. 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Cieraad, Irene. ed. 2006. At Home: An Anthropology of Domestic Space. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
Collins, Liam 2018. “Iron out a few details and Ross’s ‘granny flat’ grant is actually a pretty good idea.” The Irish Independent, October 3, 2018. Accessed May 25, 2020. www.independent.ie/business/budget/iron-ou-a-few-details-androsss-granny-flat-grant-is-actually-a-pretty-good-idea-37379363.html.
Costa, Elisabetta, and Xinyuan Wang. 2019. “Being at Home on Social Media: Online Place-Making among the Kurds in Turkey and Rural Migrants in China.” In The Sage Handbook of Media and Migration, edited by Kevin Smets, Koen Leurs, Myria Georgiou, Saskia Witteborn, and Radhika Gajjala. 515-525. London: Sage.
Daniels, Inge. 2015. ”Feeling at Home in Contemporary Japan: Space, Atmosphere and Intimacy." Emotion, Space and Society 15: 47-55.
Das, Veena, Jonathan M. Ellen, and Lori Leonard. 2008. ”On the Modalities of the Domestic.” Home Cultures 5 (9): 349-372.
Douglas, Mary. 1991. “The Idea of Home: A Kind of Space.” Social Research 58 (1): 287-307.
Empson, Rebecca. 2011. Harnessing Fortune. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ewart, Ian. and Rachel Luck. 2013. “Living from Home: Older People Looking beyond the House.” Home Cultures 10 (1): 25–42.
Fang, Kai, Xinpeng Wang, Lin Chen, Zhehan Zhang, and Nobuaki Furuya. 2019. “Research on the Correlation between Pedestrian Density and Street Spatial Characteristics of Commercial Blocks in Downtown Area: A Case Study on Shanghai Tianzifang.” Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering. 18 (3): 233-246.
Garvey, Pauline. 2001. “Organized Disorder: Moving Furniture in Norwegian Homes." In Home Possessions: Material Culture Behind Closed Doors, edited by Daniel Miller, 47-68. London: Berg.
Garvey, Pauline. 2018. Unpacking Ikea: Swedish Design for the Purchasing Masses. Oxon, New York: Routledge.
Garvey, Pauline, and Daniel Miller. 2021. Ageing with Smartphones in Ireland: When Life Becomes Craft. London: UCL Press.
Government of Ireland. 2019. Housing Options for Our Ageing Population – Policy Statement. Last updated June 2, 2022. Accessed March 24, 2023. https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/83781d-housing-options-for-our-ageing-population-policy-statement/#.
Guan, Qian. 1996. “Lilong Housing: A Traditional Settlement Form.” Master’s thesis, McGill University.
Gray, Jane, Ruth Geraghty, and David Ralph. 2016. Family Rhythms: The Changing Textures of Family Life in Ireland. Manchester: University Press.
Greschke, Heike Mónika. 2012. Is there a Home in Cyberspace?: The Internet in Migrants' Everyday Life and the Emergence of Global Communities. New York, London: Routledge.
Grønseth Anne Sigfrid and Ragne Øwre Thorshaug. 2022. “Struggling for Home where Home is not Meant to Be: A Study of Asylum Seekers in Reception Centers in Norway.” Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 92: 15–30
Hutton, Brian 2020. “‘Tidy Towns Cancellation: 'The town is the worse for It.’” The Irish Times, October 30, 2020. Accessed March 24, 2023. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/tidy-towns-cancellation-the-town-is-the-worse-for-it-1.4395487.
Inglis, Tom. 2007. Global Ireland: Same Difference. New York: Routledge.
Jackson, Michael. 2000. At Home in the World. Durham: Duke University Press.
Kraemer, Jordan. 2017. “Locating Emerging Media.” In The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography, edited by Larissa Hjorth, Heather A. Horst, Anne Galloway, and Genevieve Bell, 179–190. New York: Routledge.
Leahy, Pat, Fiach Kelly, Jennifer Bray. 2019. “Elections 2019: Greens the Big Winners while Sinn Féin Slumps.” The Irish Times, May 26, 2019. Accessed March 24, 2023. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/elections-2019-greens-the-big-winners-while-sinn-fein-slumps-1.3905248.
Lü, Junhua, Lu Junhua, Peter G. Rowe, and Jie Zhang, eds. 2001. Modern Urban Housing in China, 1840-2000. Munich: Prestel Publications.
Mallet, Shelley. 2004. “Understanding Home: A Critical Review of the Literature.” The Sociological Review 52: 62–89.
Marcoux, Jean Sebastian. 2001. “The 'Casser Maison’ Ritual: Constructing the Self by Emptying the Home.” Journal of Material Culture 6 (2): 213–235.
McGee, Harry. 2020. “Election 2020: Exit Poll Confirms Health, Housing, Homelessness of Most Concern to Voters.” The Irish Times, September 2, 2020. Accessed August 22, 2023. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/election-2020-exit-poll-confirms-health-housing-homelessness-of-most-concern-to-voters-1.4167030.
Miller, Daniel, ed. 2001. Home Possessions: Material Culture Behind Closed Doors. London: Berg.
Miller, Daniel, Laila Abed Rabho, Patrick Awondo, Maya de Vries, Marília Duque, Pauline Garvey, and Laura Haapio-Kirk. 2021. The Global Smartphone: Beyond a Youth Technology. London: UCL Press.
Morley, David. 2000. Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity. London: Routledge.
Rainie, Lee. and Wellman, Barry. 2012. The New Social Operating System of Networked Individualism. MIT Press.
Siapera, Eugenia. 2014. “Diasporas and New Media: Connections, Identities, Politics and Affect.” Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture 5 (1): 173–178.
Spitulnik, Debra. 1996. “The Social Circulation of Media Discourses and the Mediation of Communities.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 6 (2): 161–187.
Stafford, Charles. 2000. Separation and Reunion in Modern China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thin, Neil. 2016. “Home and Away: Place Appreciation and Purposeful Relocation in Later Life.” Anthropology in Action 23 (3): 6–16.
Trandafoiu, Ruxandra. 2013. Diaspora Online: Identity Politics and Romanian Migrants. Brooklyn, New York: Berghahn Books.
Vom Bruck, Gabriele. 1997. “A House Turned Inside Out: Inhabiting Space in a Yemeni City." Journal of Material Culture 2 (2): 139-172.
Wang, Xinyuan. 2016. Social Media in Industrial China. London: UCL Press.
Wang, Xinyuan. 2021. “The Digital Dasein of Chinese Rural Migrants.” Sociologia & Antropologia 10: 807-830.
Wang, Xinyuan. 2023. Ageing with Smartphones in Urban China: From the Cultural to the Digital Revolution in Shanghai. London: UCL Press.
Wu, Nelson. 1968. Chinese and Indian Architecture: The City of Man, the Mountain of God, and the realm of the Immortals. London: Studio Vista London.
Witteborn, Saskia. 2014. “Forced Migrants, Emotive Practice and Digital Heterotopia.” Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture 5 (1): 73–85.
Young, Diana 2004. “The Material Value of Colour: The Estate Agent's Tale.” Home Cultures 1 (1): 5-22.
Zhang, Wei, Quishi Feng, Joy Lacanienta, and Zhihong Zhen. 2017. “Leisure Participation and Subjective Well-being: Exploring Gender Differences among Elderly in Shanghai, China.” Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics 69: 45-54.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Pauline Garvey, Xinyuan Wang
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
- Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
- The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
- Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
- The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
- Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
- The Author represents and warrants that:
- the Work is the Author’s original work;
- the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
- the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
- the Work has not previously been published;
- the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
- the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
- The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.
Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.
