‘All the world’s a stage’: Accounting for the dementia experience – insights from the IDEAL study

Hillman, Alexandra ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1859-1075, Jones, Ian Rees ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1682-9134, Quinn, Catherine, Nelis, Sharon M, Lamont, Ruth A and Clare, Linda 2020. ‘All the world’s a stage’: Accounting for the dementia experience – insights from the IDEAL study. Qualitative Research 20 , pp. 703-720. 10.1177/1468794119893607

Preview

PDF - Accepted Post-Print Version Download (310kB) | Preview

Abstract

Qualitative dementia research emphasises the importance of recognising the voice of the person with dementia. However, research imbued with a politics of selfhood, whereby individuals are called upon to give coherence to experience and emotion, jars with representations of dementia as a gradual decline in capacity. Moreover, it reinforces an assumption that there is an essential experience that can be accessed through different methods. Drawing on Atkinson and Silverman, we view the interview not as confessional but rather as an outcome of social interaction. This paper draws on qualitative interviews from the Improving the Experince of Dementia and Enhancing Active Life (IDEAL) study, to focus specifically on the forms of accounting and storytelling of people living with dementia and how these are produced through the course of the interview encounter. Extracts from our interviews highlight key aspects of this interactional process: (a) social conventions and temporality, (b) self presentation and identity work, (c) accounts and wider cultural meanings. To conclude, we suggest that qualitative research with people with dementia requires a reframing of both the interview encounter and interpretive practices.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education) Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data & Methods (WISERD)
Publisher:	SAGE
ISSN:	1468-7941
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	13 January 2020
Date of Acceptance:	11 November 2019
Last Modified:	21 Nov 2024 18:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/128453

Citation Data

Cited 3 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item