Abstract

RESENDE, José Manuel  and  GUERRA, Maria Rosália. THE UNSUSTAINABLE LIGHTNESS OF A BEING: IN THE DAILY DILEMMAS OF LIVING WITH DEMENTIA. SOCIOLOGIA ON LINE [online]. 2024, n.34, pp.63-83.  Epub Sep 30, 2024. ISSN 1647-3337.  https://doi.org/10.30553/sociologiaonline.2024.34.3.

The research framing this article aims to understand how humans, in a continuous process of dementia, develop personal commitments based on their dependence on the environment they are made of, with special attention to the home space and its materialities. Methodologically, we propose to follow eight cases of people who, due to the illness, experience moments of discontinuity of being, loss of abilities, in a kind of fluctuating alteration of the boundaries of the self. Through an ethnographic approach and an emic perspective, which tries to see phenomena through the eyes of the affected people, we observed their daily lives in a participatory manner. Specifically, we seek to: understand the engagement regimes in action triggered by beings in situations of great vulnerability; recognize how objects and environments participate in action; pay attention to how these can be mobilized for the possible commitment of the actors. The results indicate that the personality of people with dementia extends through the objects of life. Their living environments, where they experience situations of hospitality and care, are part of a sensitive ecology that, through the comfort it provides, becomes an existential anchor that allows humanity to move forward.

Keywords : dementia; environments; materialities; capacity..

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