Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Dressing disrupted: negotiating care through the materiality of dress in the context of dementia

Buse, Christina, Twigg, Julia (2018) Dressing disrupted: negotiating care through the materiality of dress in the context of dementia. Sociology of Health and Illness, 40 (2). pp. 340-352. ISSN 0141-9889. E-ISSN 1467-9566. (doi:10.1111/1467-9566.12575) (KAR id:62897)

Abstract

This paper explores how the materiality of dress mediates and shapes practices of care in the context of dementia. Earlier research called for an approach to conceptualising care that recognised the role played by everyday artefacts. We extend this to a consideration of dress and dressing the body in relation to people with dementia that involves the direct manipulation of material objects, as well as the materiality of bodies. The paper draws on an ESRC funded study Dementia and Dress, which examined experiences of dress for people with dementia, families and care-workers using ethnographic and qualitative methods. Our analysis explores the process of dressing the body, the physicality of guiding and manipulating bodies into clothing, dealing with fabrics and bodies which ‘act back’ and are resistant to the process of dressing. We consider how the materiality of clothing can constrain or enable practices of care, exploring tensions between garments that support ease of dressing and those that sustain identity. Examining negotiations around dress also reveals tensions between competing ‘logics’ of care (Mol 2008).

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1111/1467-9566.12575
Uncontrolled keywords: dementia, clothing, embodiment, bodywork, material culture
Subjects: H Social Sciences
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research
Depositing User: Julia Twigg
Date Deposited: 21 Aug 2017 11:08 UTC
Last Modified: 04 Jul 2023 10:54 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/62897 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.