An anthropological account of the experience of age and ageing in an inner-city neighborhood in Milan.

This book is an anthropological account of the experience of age and ageing in an inner-city neighborhood in Milan, exploring the relationship between ageing and technology amidst a backdrop of rapid global technological innovation, including the advent of mobile health, smart cities, and a number of wider socioeconomic and technological transformations. Through extensive urban and digital ethnographic research in Milan, Shireen Walton shows how the smartphone has become a “constant companion” in contemporary life, accompanying people throughout the day and through individual and collective experiences. The volume argues that ageing with smartphones in the contemporary urban Italian context is about living with ambiguity, change, and contradiction, as well as developing curiosities about a changing world, our changing selves, and changing relationships with others.
 

Shireen Walton is a lecturer in anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London.
 

Chapter summaries List of figures Series Foreword Acknowledgements
1. Introduction 2. Experiences of ageing: policies, perceptions and practices 3. Everyday life, activity and activisms 4. Social relations: social availability 5. Smartphones: constant companions 6. Health and care in digital times 7. Coming of age with smartphones: the experiences of younger people 8. Life purpose: narratives of ageing 9. Conclusion: threading together
Bibliography Index