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CEDER RESEARCH PROGRAM: DEMENTIA, AGENCY, PERSONHOOD AND EVERYDAY LIFE
Our vision is that CEDER will become internationally recognized for research on dementia in everyday life; and that it will have an impact both in terms of scientific achievements and in the education of social and health care professionals. The problems addressed by the research program also have a direct bearing on questions of urgent and important public interest, namely care and social policy concerning people with AD. The program and the research group aims at:
- introducing and establishing new theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of dementia in everyday life;
- being a source for inspiration, reference, research and debate around dementia in everyday life;
- making contributions that be used by persons with dementia, their relatives and policy makers;
- to create an internationally renowned and productive environment for promising research.
CEDER is a platform and organizational infrastructure that allows researchers to jointly and collaboratively pursue and develop common research questions over time. In this sense CEDER will function as a base for projects in progress and for the development of both new research questions and projects.
The program: The conceptual foundation
The research program is multidisciplinary and points out and defines a number of theoretical, empirical and methodological challenges that will be central for a cutting edge social scientific and humanistic research on age related dementia, especially AD, in the coming years. The program will be organized around three sub-programs: (1) personhood, citizenship and dementia, (2) identity, communication and dementia, and (3) everyday life with dementia.
The program will have a conceptual focus on individuals (with AD) acting together with other individuals (with and without AD) in various contexts/settings (institutional/everyday). Four concepts are central:
Agency: The abilities of individuals with AD to act individually and together with other persons, and to cope with changes in these abilities.
Communication and interaction: the coordination and negotiation of joint, collaborative action like conversations and storytelling.
Personhood: conceptions and definitions attributed to an individual about his/her social, political and legal standing, rights and commitments.
Identity: changes of individuals’ uniqueness and sameness over time (especially in relation to changes brought about by AD) as conceived by him/her self and by others.
These concepts are all partially overlapping in a double sense: one concept may help to describe and understand phenomena mainly covered by the other concepts; as well as changes associated with one concept may have consequences for phenomenon described and explained by other concepts.
The research will predominantly be based on the use of ethnographic methods, primarily observations and recordings as well as interviews. The program will however also contain a philosophical and ethical analysis. It is our aim to establish a joint data bank for the research shared by the participating researchers.
Page responsible:
anna.schenell@liu.se
Last updated: 2011-02-08
