Rethinking sociability in long-term care: An embodied dimension of selfhood

Abstract

Sociability, interaction through which solitariness becomes togetherness or a union with others, has largely been explored without reference to the importance of bodily sources of agency. Encapsulated in the theoretical notion of embodied selfhood is the pre-reflective nature of selfhood deriving from the body's pre-reflective capacity for engaging with the world and the socio-cultural significance of the body. This paper argues for an expansion of the discourse on sociability in dementia to include embodied selfhood as a source of interactive practices. An 8-month ethnographic study of selfhood in dementia was conducted in a Canadian long-term care facility. The findings suggest that social and cultural habits, movements and other physical cues serve important communicative functions in the course of social interaction. This underscores how sociability is an embodied dimension of selfhood, which not only broadens the discourse on sociability in dementia but also offers important insights to inform person-centred dementia care.