La création d’un blogue alimentaire par un groupe d’aîné·e·s : la collectivisation de processus individualisants liés au “bien vieillir”

Abstract

In assuming a critical perspective, this article explores how injunctions encouraging “successful ageing” (Katz, 2013) are negotiated when they are intersected with those related to “eating well” (Vigneault, 2012). This “ageing well” happens inter alia through the adoption of “healthy dietary habits” and in the need to remain involved and active in society. This article follows the line of works in the field of cultural studies and critical gerontology which have questioned the injunction to “age well” in con­nection with communication and culture (i.e., Sawchuk, 2013 ; Grenier/Valois-Nadeau, 2013). It proposes an analysis of the ways in which mediatization (Hepp, 2012) informs the activist practices of a community agency through the creation of a food blog. The analysis presented here is the fruit of research work carried out between May 2016 and May 2017, at which time the project for a blog was developed. It analyses how policy assumed form from there in three dimensions : an inclusion in digital culture through the acquisition of technological proficiencies, an increase in the group’s visibility, as well as its mission, and a collective engagement generated by the socialization of its members, via the entire blog project. Food and the contemporary injunction to “age well” thus find themselves configured in a particular way, participating in collectivizing a normativity which otherwise tends to individualize the ageing process.

Keywords

• successful ageing
• blog
• mediatisation
• food
• ageism
• activism