Spatialized emotions and emotional alienation in the micro-geographies of ageing: home, care, work, and daily life with Parkinson's disease
Date
2023
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This manuscript examines emotions of older Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients and care workers who have experiences with elder PD patients in micro-scaled places of care. Emotions exist as unique means to bridge one’s body and the external world, thus exploring emotions in terms of spatiotemporal scales brings insights into how specific people inhabit places that have largely eluded detailed geographical research. Thus, examining the emotions of older PD patients and care workers in PD care places gives ideas to improve not only both groups’ health but also the quality of eldercare places. To support this argument, this manuscript explores research participants’ emotions in three ways with three different analyses: theoretical analysis, emotional normalization process theory (ENPT) modeling, and emotional journey mapping. ☐ The first study proposes two concepts, emotional alienation and spatialized emotion, to theorize the emotional geographies of later-life care. The concepts build on spatiality in Marx’s alienation theory, Agamben’s concept of bare life and Massey’s politics of space. These new concepts are created and adopted in four steps: (1) a literature review on care, emotion, affect, eldercare, and Parkinson’s disease patients’ mental health in diverse disciplines; (2) theoretical analysis on the political economic status of ailing elderly and care workers; (3) spatial analysis interviews with a Parkinson’s disease patient and caregiver as an application of the proposed theories; and (4) a discussion of the expanded theoretical frame centered on the micro-spatial scales of the interior spaces of home. Alienation theory and the concept of bare life have limitations in explaining daily lived experiences in microscaled places. Because lived experience, and its emotional dimensions, has a specific geography, this paper argues that a spatialized approach is needed to identify and effectively intervene in the problems of contemporary eldercare. ☐ The second study introduces emotional normalization process theory (ENPT) as a method to analyze the emotional dynamics of 21 older PD patients and 20 care workers following a diagnosis of PD. This experimental study modified questionnaires with the permission of Healthmeasure, focusing on emotions, and the collected questions were structured to understand the participants’ normalized emotions as processes. Through this research, this chapter finds Parkinson’s disease participants’ normalized emotions included “loneliness, fear, frustration, and concern” in response to broken daily routines and experiences of isolation in a care place. Care workers’ normalized emotions were “worry, distress, and frustration” attributed to being in the caregiving workplace and feeling deep empathy for anticipated symptoms. In other words, both groups’ normalized emotions come from different contextual reasons in similar care places. This study shows three implications for the care receivers and providers: 1) normalized emotions impact how physical and psychological health is perceived; 2) different normalized emotions of research groups show gaps in experiences and understandings of current eldercare; 3) ENPT is applicable to understanding emotions of people who are suffering from other geriatric illnesses and may be applied in many different practice settings. ☐ The third study introduces a novel methodological tool to document, visualize, and analyze several domains that tend to elude conventional geospatial, qualitative, and quantitative research on ageing, PD, care workers, emotions, and the home. By rethinking the customer journey mapping tool with two critical human geographical theories—Henri Lefebvre’s daily rhythmanalysis theory and Liz Bondi’s challenging in emotional geographies (2014)—the emotional journey mapping method enables research subjects’ emotions to be mapped in relation to specific times and places in the micro-geographies of their home or other care places. This study creates 7 emotional journey maps, including 4 older PD patients and 3 care workers. Comparing all participants’ emotional journey maps shows different visualized emotional narratives, even if they have expressed their emotions with the same vocabulary. Visualizing emotions in daily time-space contexts enhances understanding of how the participants’ dominant emotions impact their daily lives. ☐ Combined, the three chapters contribute theory, methods, and empirical evidence to build a critical understanding of emotions to improve current PD care environments. Emotions are not amorphous. Properly theorized, mapped, and analyzed, they reveal lived experiences of elder PD patients and care workers and indicate areas to challenge structural disempowerment to increase dignity in later-life care.
Description
Keywords
Aging, Eldercare, Emotional alienation, Later-life care, Parkinson's disease, Spatialized emotion