Aldring, ensomhed og social navigation: at kaste anker i nye relationer

Aging, Lonelines and Social Navigation. Dropping Anchor in New Relations.
Based on an ethnographic study of a cross-municipality initiative to prevent depression among the elderly, I investigate partly how perceptions of depression and loneliness are entangled in the municipality initiative and partly how the elderly targeted in the intervention experience lack of close relations. With an analytical onset in social navigation and anchoring, the paper illustrates that the elderly, even in late life, may often establish and engage in new relations requiring strong abilities in navigating changing relations and call for many considerations as to how such relations are established, used, nursed and spared to avoid them being drained. The paper discusses, how establishing new relations, e.g. through municipal-driven activities to prevent depression, may add meaningful activities in the elderly’s everyday lives, yet managing experiences of vulnerability, dependency, and despair require close mutual and often familial or long-standing relations.