The Age and Generation Network (AGENET) of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) organised AGENET 2024 conference:
Kinning, Moving, and Growing in Later Life
Conference took place at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, 14-15 March 2024
jointly organized by AGENET and Dr. Piera Rossetto from the Uni’s Department of Asian and North African Studies.
Climate change, ageing populations, trans/national mobility, violent conflicts, shrinking welfare spending, digitalization, pandemic(s) and the growing need for care are profoundly transforming the way people live in the world and interact with each other. While far-reaching and global in their dimensions, these challenges intersect in multiple ways and are experienced differently depending on geographical location, social context and position in the life course. Across the globe, people are working on different ways of addressing these challenges and imagining alternative futures locally as well as globally.
This conference focuses on processes, imaginaries and activities surrounding older age, ageing and generations in light of contemporary challenges. Situating these categories in the current moment, we would like to examine what happens to them on a discursive level, on an imaginative level as well as on the ground and in daily practices. We ask, how older age, ageing and generations, understood as life course stages, temporal processes, relations and activities, come to play and how are they reworked in contemporary contexts. As well as what role particular social spaces, geographic localities and cultures play. Departing from these questions, this conference conceptualizes ageing and generations through the lens of kinning, moving, and growing in later life.