Anna Wanka
Biographic Data
| ID | 912927 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anna Wanka |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anna |
| FAMILY NAME | Wanka |
| SIGNATURE | WANKA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Goethe University Frankfurt |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8450-3160 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 46 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Gewalt im Alter: ein schweigsam gemachtes Phänomen?: Empirische Befunde aus Gruppendiskussionen
Gewalt im höheren Lebensalter ist ein vielschichtiges, zugleich aber auch ein schweigsames Phänomen. Denn in der polizeilichen Kriminalstatistik sinkt das Risiko von Menschen im höheren Lebensalter, von Gewalt betroffen zu sein, zugleich heißt dies aber nicht, dass sie keine Gewalt erfahren. In Forschungen zu Gewalt im Alter überwiegen zudem Studien, die Gewalt in der Pflegebeziehung zwischen älteren Menschen und Pflegekräften erforschen, Studien…
La photographie comme support d’expression: Une expérimentation franco-allemande
Le micro-dispositif participatif faisant l’objet de ce retour d’expérience s’inscrit dans un projet de recherche interrogeant les relations entre espace et vieillissement. À partir d’une approche comparative franco-allemande mobilisant les méthodes du photovoice et du journal de bord, il propose une exploration de l’expérience spatiale propre aux participants âgés. L’hypothèse guidant l’expérimentation – à savoir l’existence de rapports à l’espac…
Who are student caregivers? Reconciling studying and caregiving in Germany
One word, one meaning? A Franco-German analysis of the circulation of spatial concepts across linguistic, disciplinary and national boundaries
This paper examines how scientific knowledge circulates, or fails to circulate, across disciplinary, linguistic, and national boundaries, using spatial research in French- and German-speaking contexts as a case. Based on qualitative interviews with geographers and spatial sociologists, we trace how certain spatial concepts and authors travel across contexts while others remain confined. We argue that circulation is shaped by practices of scientif…
Intersektionale Perspektiven auf Alter(n) und Geschlecht in der Sozialen Arbeit
In diesem Beitrag geht es um die Frage, welche Rolle Alter im Zusammenspiel mit anderen Differenzkategorien wie Gender oder sozialer Klasse spielt. Dafür stellen wir sowohl theoretische als auch empirische Überlegungen zur intersektionalen Verflechtung von ‚Alter‘ mit anderen Differenzkategorien an. Wir fokussieren auf konzeptionelle Grundlagen von un/doing difference und un/doing age und plädieren dafür, Praktiken der Humandifferenzierung nicht …
Multiple Concepts of Space in Sociology: On the Polysemy of “Space” in German Sociological Dictionaries
Cet article explore le développement discursif des concepts spatiaux en sociologie générale allemande, à travers une analyse systématique des définitions disponibles dans les dictionnaires sociologiques publiés au cours des huit dernières décennies en Allemagne. Ces dictionnaires disciplinaires se présentent comme des archives du savoir, donnant à voir de manière concise l’état des connaissances sur un sujet donné au sein de la communauté scienti…
Sociology of Age and Ageing: Theoretical and Empirical Challenges (Re‐)Visited
Demographic ageing and increasing life expectancy require sociology to recognize and address new but also persistent challenges. The sociology of age and ageing is essential for understanding contemporary societies because age is a fundamental marker of social difference that structures roles, rights, responsibilities, and life trajectories. Age profoundly shapes opportunities and constraints, often through ageism, which remains one of the most p…
Place-bereavement-trajectories: Life-course experiences of loss in rural Irish communities
Linked Transitions in Later Life – Retiring as Transitional Assemblage in the Covid-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic challenges expectations of retirement. In this paper, we ask: How is the retirement transition experienced in the everyday lives of older adults during pandemic as compared to pre-pandemic times? The paper draws on 15 semi-structured interviews with adults aged 60–75 years living in Germany within the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which were analyzed based on social constructivist Grounded Theory and Situational Analy…
Material gerontology – Central thematic intersections and blurring boundaries
Doing ageing research in pandemic times: A reflexive approach towards research ethics during the Covid-19 pandemic
The outbreak of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on societies and individual lives across the globe. In this paper, we address the impact of the pandemic and the protective measures on empirical social scientific ageing research through the lens of ‘ethically important moments’. One of the most crucial measures for preventing the spread of the virus includes social distancing; therefore, empirical research methods based on person-to-person d…
Transdisziplinarität in der Bildungsforschung: Perspektiven und Herausforderungen theoretischer, method(olog)ischer und empirischer Grenzgänge
Gesamtverzeichnis 2023 der besprochenen Bücher
My Home is My Castle/My Home is My Prison: The Relational Co-Constitution of Age and Home in the Transition from Work to Retirement
This article focuses on the co-constitution of the home and age(ing) in the retirement transition, that is, how the experiences of home change in the transition from work to retirement, and how the experiences of retiring change with transformations of the home. The article first outlines current literature on transitions in later life and the home. Subsequently, it presents data from the project ‘Doing Retiring’ along three lines of inquiry: mea…
Spacetimematter of aging – The material temporalities of later life
Material gerontology poses the question of how aging processes are co-constituted in relation to different forms of (human and non-human) materiality. This paper makes a novel contribution by asking when aging processes are co-constituted and how these temporalities of aging are entangled with different forms of materiality. In this paper, we explore the entanglements of temporality and materiality in shaping later life by framing them as spaceti…
Moving in together in later life: Making spaces into places as a joint endeavor
Using cross-cultural data, this novel study shows an unexpected diversity in housing and cohabitation trajectories among older adults. More research is needed to understand what "aging in the right place" with "the right person" really means and the role of life course trajectories and couple negotiations in such processes. Future research should focus on what comes before and after relocation rather than solely studying the decision-making proce…
Perceived Housing in Relation to Retirement and Relocation: A Qualitative Interview Study among Older Adults
As people age the home environment becomes increasingly important. Retirement commonly leads to spending more time in one's home, and relocating from your own home in older age could be associated with reduced health or wellbeing. The relationship between home and person is complex and perceived aspects of one's housing such as social, emotional and cognitive ties are considered important factors for health and wellbeing. However, little is known…
Resonant Retiring? Experiences of Resonance in the Transition to Retirement
In the process of life course transitions, relations between the self and the world transform, which can according to Hartmut Rosa be framed as resonance. This article focuses on the retirement transition and thus on the exit from gainful employment as one of the central spheres of our world relationship in late modernity. It raises the following questions: How do experiences of resonance change in the course of the retirement transition? Does th…
Un/Doing Age: Multiperspektivität als Potential einer intersektionalen Betrachtung von Differenz- und Ungleichheitsverhältnissen
In der aktuellen Soziologie werden Diskussionen über die Herstellung von sozialen Differenzkategorien, deren Wechselwirkungen und damit einhergehenden Produktionen sozialer Ungleichheitsverhältnisse insbesondere über intersektionale Ansätze geführt. Kritik an intersektionalen Ansätzen richtet sich auf ihre Fokussierung auf eine begrenzte Anzahl bereits gut erforschter Differenzkategorien und auf Konstruktionsprozesse ( doings ), wobei tendenziell…
Near Co-Laborations: The Versus Project as Relational Epistemic Practice to Analyse the Covid-19 Pandemic
The contribution discusses the formation and collaboration in the VERSUS project (Versorgung und Unterstützung in Zeiten von Corona/Provisioning and support in times of Corona) as a relational epistemic practice. VERSUS formed as research project to investigate how provisioning recon-figured during the pandemic in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The researchers involved come from different yet ‘near’ scholarly backgrounds: anthropology, sociol…
Familial Intimacy and the ‘Thing’ between Us: Cuddle Curtains and Desires for Detached Relationality in Germany, Austria and Switzerland
During the government-imposed contact restrictions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, older adults feared that they may no longer be able to experience physical contact with family members. They were, however, given hope by a ‘cuddle curtain’, a device that promised to enable familial intimacy while blocking the exposure of older bodies to the coronavirus. Our research team traced how one such artefact was used in nursing homes in Switzerland. …
Configuring the Older Non-User: Between Research, Policy and Practice of Digital Exclusion
Older adults face significant barriers when accessing the Internet. What can be done to address these barriers? This article analyses existing strategies to tackle the age-related digital divide on three different levels: research, policy and practice. It analyses (1) scientific conceptualisations that are used when studying Internet use and non-use in later life, (2) policies that address older adults’ Internet (non-)use in Austria and (3) chara…
No time to waste - How the social practices of temporal organisation change in the transition from work to retirement
In contemporary societies, chronological age is widely used as a temporal basis for regulating and organising social processes. A strong system of chrononormativity provides orientation on, for example, the appropriate time range to start working, have children, or to retire. This contribution explores the multiple temporal organisations of the life course by focussing on the transition from work to retirement as the beginning of 'old age'. It as…
Doing Transitions: Perspektiven und Ziele einer reflexiven Übergangsforschung
Grundzüge einer praxistheoretischen Übergangsforschung
Configuring the Older Non-User: Between Research, Policy and Practice of Digital Exclusion
Older adults face significant barriers when accessing the Internet. What can be done to address these barriers? This article analyses existing strategies to tackle the age-related digital divide on three different levels: research, policy and practice. It analyses (1) scientific conceptualisations that are used when studying Internet use and non-use in later life, (2) policies that address older adults’ Internet (non-)use in Austria and (3) chara…
Doing Age in a Digitized World—A Material Praxeology of Aging With Technology
Digital technologies have gained vast relevance in postmodern societies and digital infrastructures are substantially integrated into the everyday lives of older people. This digitization is reframing the norms and practices of later life as well as the social construct of age itself. Despite the increasing amount of studies in the field of aging and technologies, it still lacks theorizing. This paper addresses this deficit, suggesting that the s…
No time to waste - How the social practices of temporal organisation change in the transition from work to retirement
In contemporary societies, chronological age is widely used as a temporal basis for regulating and organising social processes. A strong system of chrononormativity provides orientation on, for example, the appropriate time range to start working, have children, or to retire. This contribution explores the multiple temporal organisations of the life course by focussing on the transition from work to retirement as the beginning of 'old age'. It as…
Resonant Retiring? Experiences of Resonance in the Transition to Retirement
In the process of life course transitions, relations between the self and the world transform, which can according to Hartmut Rosa be framed as resonance. This article focuses on the retirement transition and thus on the exit from gainful employment as one of the central spheres of our world relationship in late modernity. It raises the following questions: How do experiences of resonance change in the course of the retirement transition? Does th…
Change Ahead—Emerging Life-Course Transitions as Practical Accomplishments of Growing Old(er)
With the ageing of the ‘Baby Boomer’ cohort, more and more adults are transiting from work into retirement. In public discourse, this development is framed as one of the major challenges of today’s welfare societies. To develop social innovations that consider the everyday lives of older people requires a deeper theoretical understanding of the retiring process. In age studies, retiring has been approached from various theoretical perspectives, m…
Spacetimematter of aging – The material temporalities of later life
Material gerontology poses the question of how aging processes are co-constituted in relation to different forms of (human and non-human) materiality. This paper makes a novel contribution by asking when aging processes are co-constituted and how these temporalities of aging are entangled with different forms of materiality. In this paper, we explore the entanglements of temporality and materiality in shaping later life by framing them as spaceti…
Linked Transitions in Later Life – Retiring as Transitional Assemblage in the Covid-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic challenges expectations of retirement. In this paper, we ask: How is the retirement transition experienced in the everyday lives of older adults during pandemic as compared to pre-pandemic times? The paper draws on 15 semi-structured interviews with adults aged 60–75 years living in Germany within the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which were analyzed based on social constructivist Grounded Theory and Situational Analy…
Representing the ‘older end user’? Challenging the role of social scientists in the field of ‘active and assisted living’
As digital technologies have gained vast relevance in contemporary societies, technological assistance and support has also become an important topic in the field of care. Despite the fact that older adults are often framed as ‘laggards’ in the innovation process, they have become one major target group for technology development. This poses challenges to care recipients and infrastructures, but also to research in the field of gerontechnologies.…
Everyday discrimination in the neighbourhood: What a ‘doing’ perspective on age and ethnicity can offer
Despite the fact that urbanisation, population ageing and international migration constitute major societal developments of our time, little attention has been paid to studying them together in a comprehensive manner. In this paper, we argue that, when treating age and ethnicity as practical processes for addressing and identifying with social groups, it is necessary to do so from a ‘doing’ perspective. The question we ask focuses on which social…
Doing ageing research in pandemic times: A reflexive approach towards research ethics during the Covid-19 pandemic
The outbreak of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on societies and individual lives across the globe. In this paper, we address the impact of the pandemic and the protective measures on empirical social scientific ageing research through the lens of ‘ethically important moments’. One of the most crucial measures for preventing the spread of the virus includes social distancing; therefore, empirical research methods based on person-to-person d…
Un/Doing Age: Multiperspektivität als Potential einer intersektionalen Betrachtung von Differenz- und Ungleichheitsverhältnissen
In der aktuellen Soziologie werden Diskussionen über die Herstellung von sozialen Differenzkategorien, deren Wechselwirkungen und damit einhergehenden Produktionen sozialer Ungleichheitsverhältnisse insbesondere über intersektionale Ansätze geführt. Kritik an intersektionalen Ansätzen richtet sich auf ihre Fokussierung auf eine begrenzte Anzahl bereits gut erforschter Differenzkategorien und auf Konstruktionsprozesse ( doings ), wobei tendenziell…
Indoor Environmental Quality in Mechanically Ventilated, Energy-Efficient Buildings vs. Conventional Buildings
Energy-efficient buildings need mechanical ventilation. However, there are concerns that inadequate mechanical ventilation may lead to impaired indoor air quality. Using a semi-experimental field study, we investigated if exposure of occupants of two types of buildings (mechanical vs. natural ventilation) differs with regard to indoor air pollutants and climate factors. We investigated living and bedrooms in 123 buildings (62 highly energy-effici…
Health and Wellbeing of Occupants in Highly Energy Efficient Buildings: A Field Study
Passive houses and other highly energy-efficient buildings need mechanical ventilation. However, ventilation systems in such houses are regarded with a certain degree of skepticism by parts of the public due to alleged negative health effects. Within a quasi-experimental field study, we investigated if occupants of two types of buildings (mechanical vs. natural ventilation) experience different health, wellbeing and housing satisfaction outcomes …
Doing Age in a Digitized World—A Material Praxeology of Aging With Technology
Digital technologies have gained vast relevance in postmodern societies and digital infrastructures are substantially integrated into the everyday lives of older people. This digitization is reframing the norms and practices of later life as well as the social construct of age itself. Despite the increasing amount of studies in the field of aging and technologies, it still lacks theorizing. This paper addresses this deficit, suggesting that the s…
Doing Transitions: Perspektiven und Ziele einer reflexiven Übergangsforschung
Grundzüge einer praxistheoretischen Übergangsforschung
Reflexive Übergangsforschung: Theoretische Grundlagen und methodologische Herausforderungen
Transitions in the curriculum vitae are not given, but are characterized by the following results of complex discursive, institutional as well as (inter-)subjective and design processes. This introductory volume negotiates the basic concepts and perspectives of reflexive transitional research. He opens the series Reflexive Transition Research - Doing Transitions. It is intended to provide an interdisciplinary platform for a theoretical and empiri…
Representing the ‘older end user’? Challenging the role of social scientists in the field of ‘active and assisted living’
As digital technologies have gained vast relevance in contemporary societies, technological assistance and support has also become an important topic in the field of care. Despite the fact that older adults are often framed as ‘laggards’ in the innovation process, they have become one major target group for technology development. This poses challenges to care recipients and infrastructures, but also to research in the field of gerontechnologies.…
Change Ahead—Emerging Life-Course Transitions as Practical Accomplishments of Growing Old(er)
With the ageing of the ‘Baby Boomer’ cohort, more and more adults are transiting from work into retirement. In public discourse, this development is framed as one of the major challenges of today’s welfare societies. To develop social innovations that consider the everyday lives of older people requires a deeper theoretical understanding of the retiring process. In age studies, retiring has been approached from various theoretical perspectives, m…
Everyday discrimination in the neighbourhood: What a ‘doing’ perspective on age and ethnicity can offer
Despite the fact that urbanisation, population ageing and international migration constitute major societal developments of our time, little attention has been paid to studying them together in a comprehensive manner. In this paper, we argue that, when treating age and ethnicity as practical processes for addressing and identifying with social groups, it is necessary to do so from a ‘doing’ perspective. The question we ask focuses on which social…
Familial Intimacy and the ‘Thing’ between Us: Cuddle Curtains and Desires for Detached Relationality in Germany, Austria and Switzerland
During the government-imposed contact restrictions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, older adults feared that they may no longer be able to experience physical contact with family members. They were, however, given hope by a ‘cuddle curtain’, a device that promised to enable familial intimacy while blocking the exposure of older bodies to the coronavirus. Our research team traced how one such artefact was used in nursing homes in Switzerland. …
Configuring the Older Non-User: Between Research, Policy and Practice of Digital Exclusion
Older adults face significant barriers when accessing the Internet. What can be done to address these barriers? This article analyses existing strategies to tackle the age-related digital divide on three different levels: research, policy and practice. It analyses (1) scientific conceptualisations that are used when studying Internet use and non-use in later life, (2) policies that address older adults’ Internet (non-)use in Austria and (3) chara…
No time to waste - How the social practices of temporal organisation change in the transition from work to retirement
In contemporary societies, chronological age is widely used as a temporal basis for regulating and organising social processes. A strong system of chrononormativity provides orientation on, for example, the appropriate time range to start working, have children, or to retire. This contribution explores the multiple temporal organisations of the life course by focussing on the transition from work to retirement as the beginning of 'old age'. It as…
Resonant Retiring? Experiences of Resonance in the Transition to Retirement
In the process of life course transitions, relations between the self and the world transform, which can according to Hartmut Rosa be framed as resonance. This article focuses on the retirement transition and thus on the exit from gainful employment as one of the central spheres of our world relationship in late modernity. It raises the following questions: How do experiences of resonance change in the course of the retirement transition? Does th…
Un/Doing Age: Multiperspektivität als Potential einer intersektionalen Betrachtung von Differenz- und Ungleichheitsverhältnissen
In der aktuellen Soziologie werden Diskussionen über die Herstellung von sozialen Differenzkategorien, deren Wechselwirkungen und damit einhergehenden Produktionen sozialer Ungleichheitsverhältnisse insbesondere über intersektionale Ansätze geführt. Kritik an intersektionalen Ansätzen richtet sich auf ihre Fokussierung auf eine begrenzte Anzahl bereits gut erforschter Differenzkategorien und auf Konstruktionsprozesse ( doings ), wobei tendenziell…
Near Co-Laborations: The Versus Project as Relational Epistemic Practice to Analyse the Covid-19 Pandemic
The contribution discusses the formation and collaboration in the VERSUS project (Versorgung und Unterstützung in Zeiten von Corona/Provisioning and support in times of Corona) as a relational epistemic practice. VERSUS formed as research project to investigate how provisioning recon-figured during the pandemic in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The researchers involved come from different yet ‘near’ scholarly backgrounds: anthropology, sociol…
Perceived Housing in Relation to Retirement and Relocation: A Qualitative Interview Study among Older Adults
As people age the home environment becomes increasingly important. Retirement commonly leads to spending more time in one's home, and relocating from your own home in older age could be associated with reduced health or wellbeing. The relationship between home and person is complex and perceived aspects of one's housing such as social, emotional and cognitive ties are considered important factors for health and wellbeing. However, little is known…
Transdisziplinarität in der Bildungsforschung: Perspektiven und Herausforderungen theoretischer, method(olog)ischer und empirischer Grenzgänge
Gesamtverzeichnis 2023 der besprochenen Bücher
My Home is My Castle/My Home is My Prison: The Relational Co-Constitution of Age and Home in the Transition from Work to Retirement
This article focuses on the co-constitution of the home and age(ing) in the retirement transition, that is, how the experiences of home change in the transition from work to retirement, and how the experiences of retiring change with transformations of the home. The article first outlines current literature on transitions in later life and the home. Subsequently, it presents data from the project ‘Doing Retiring’ along three lines of inquiry: mea…
Spacetimematter of aging – The material temporalities of later life
Material gerontology poses the question of how aging processes are co-constituted in relation to different forms of (human and non-human) materiality. This paper makes a novel contribution by asking when aging processes are co-constituted and how these temporalities of aging are entangled with different forms of materiality. In this paper, we explore the entanglements of temporality and materiality in shaping later life by framing them as spaceti…
Moving in together in later life: Making spaces into places as a joint endeavor
Using cross-cultural data, this novel study shows an unexpected diversity in housing and cohabitation trajectories among older adults. More research is needed to understand what "aging in the right place" with "the right person" really means and the role of life course trajectories and couple negotiations in such processes. Future research should focus on what comes before and after relocation rather than solely studying the decision-making proce…
Material gerontology – Central thematic intersections and blurring boundaries
Doing ageing research in pandemic times: A reflexive approach towards research ethics during the Covid-19 pandemic
The outbreak of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on societies and individual lives across the globe. In this paper, we address the impact of the pandemic and the protective measures on empirical social scientific ageing research through the lens of ‘ethically important moments’. One of the most crucial measures for preventing the spread of the virus includes social distancing; therefore, empirical research methods based on person-to-person d…
Intersektionale Perspektiven auf Alter(n) und Geschlecht in der Sozialen Arbeit
In diesem Beitrag geht es um die Frage, welche Rolle Alter im Zusammenspiel mit anderen Differenzkategorien wie Gender oder sozialer Klasse spielt. Dafür stellen wir sowohl theoretische als auch empirische Überlegungen zur intersektionalen Verflechtung von ‚Alter‘ mit anderen Differenzkategorien an. Wir fokussieren auf konzeptionelle Grundlagen von un/doing difference und un/doing age und plädieren dafür, Praktiken der Humandifferenzierung nicht …
Multiple Concepts of Space in Sociology: On the Polysemy of “Space” in German Sociological Dictionaries
Cet article explore le développement discursif des concepts spatiaux en sociologie générale allemande, à travers une analyse systématique des définitions disponibles dans les dictionnaires sociologiques publiés au cours des huit dernières décennies en Allemagne. Ces dictionnaires disciplinaires se présentent comme des archives du savoir, donnant à voir de manière concise l’état des connaissances sur un sujet donné au sein de la communauté scienti…
Sociology (16 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Political science (11 works) · Medicine (10 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Life course approach (7 works) · Retirement, Disability, and Employment (7 works) · Social science (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Gerontology (6 works)