A good life with dementia Ethnographic articulations of everyday life and care in Dutch nursing homes

The most common story about dementia is that of sufferers sailing into darkness, disappearing over a horizon beyond communication and expression. Despite predictions of a staggering increase in the prevalence of dementia in the not too distant future, little has been written about how ways of living well with the condition can be brought about and supported. This thesis contributes to the urgent project of creating new imaginaries, in order to inspire practices that allow for life with dementia to be a good life. In her ethnography of everyday life and care in three care and nursing homes for people with dementia in the Netherlands, Annelieke Driessen draws on participant observation in various activities on the ward, including food provison, bathing residents, and a biweekly dancing event. She shows how care professionals and others who provide care, in taking seriously what residents want, becoming aware of interactions with the built environment, attending to difference, and crafting conditions for enjoyment, enact 'interesting subject positions' for people with dementia. If residents accept these invitations, they can become desiring, appreciating subjects. Driessen's study advances 'radical relationality' as methodological approach, an analytical strategy and a key finding, therein formulating novel and useful insights for researchers who seek to make their methods more inclusive to people who cannot voice their perspective in an interview; and furthers the dementia research in pushing for the understanding of subjectivity as dependent on the sociomaterial.