10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17476
Scientification and technification of later life have pushed the very notion of ageing, embracing materiality as one of the co-producers of a continuous process of becoming. In this paper, we want to explore the role of materiality in a mechanism designed to allow older people to develop arguments regarding digitalization to inform public policies. To achieve this aim, we will employ a concept that will unfold the layers with which theories of ageing are configured in practice: infrastructuring. In our particular case study, this will highlight the coordinated effort among different agents needed to identify, negotiate and prove who can be considered a legitimate older citizen. Along this path, we will face three instances where the theory is challenged by practice: 1) the very sense of what an infrastructure is; 2) the theory about what a consensus conference is; and 3) what the definition of older person is. To conclude, we suggest the necessity to switch the very question about who can be considered an older person to how in a certain context a heterogeneous assemblage of (human and non-human) actors defines what an older person is.
application/pdf
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Gonzalo Correa
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
older people
Participatory Ageing as Assemblage: Infrastructuring in Practice
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
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Essays
2021-03-09
2023-06-27
2021-03-09
2023-10-16
33-52
TS
Gonzalo Correa
2020
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17476
33
Universidad de la República
2038-3460
2
older people
en
52
Participatory Ageing as Assemblage: Infrastructuring in Practice
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17476/16325
11
                                                                                              Essay
                                                                                                      33




Participatory Ageing as Assemblage:
Infrastructuring in Practice

              Guillem Palà                                    Gonzalo Correa
             Independent Researcher                         Universidad de la República, UY



      Abstract: Scientification and technification of later life have pushed the
      very notion of ageing, embracing materiality as one of the co-producers of
      a continuous process of becoming. In this paper, we want to explore the
      role of materiality in a mechanism designed to allow older people to de-
      velop arguments regarding digitalization to inform public policies. To
      achieve this aim, we will employ a concept that will unfold the layers with
      which theories of ageing are configured in practice: infrastructuring. In our
      particular case study, this will highlight the coordinated effort among dif-
      ferent agents needed to identify, negotiate and prove who can be consid-
      ered a legitimate older citizen. Along this path, we will face three instances
      where the theory is challenged by practice: 1) the very sense of what an
      infrastructure is; 2) the theory about what a consensus conference is; and
      3) what the definition of older person is. To conclude, we suggest the ne-
      cessity to switch the very question about who can be considered an older
      person to how in a certain context a heterogeneous assemblage of (human
      and non-human) actors defines what an older person is.

      Keywords: assemblage; consensus conference; doing age; infrastructuring;
      older people.

      Submitted: April 30, 2020 - Accepted: October 22, 2020

      Corresponding author: Guillem Palà, University of Turku, Faculty of
      Social Sciences, Assistentinkatu 7, 20100 Turku, Finland. Email:
      palanosas@gmail.com.




1. Introduction

    Demographic ageing is a significant challenge that industrialized socie-
ties have already faced during the last decade and one that will only grow
more influential in the future (Phillips 2011; Schuitmaker 2012). Since the
attestation of this tendency, it has been broadly agreed that the response to

 TECNOSCIENZA
 Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies
 11 (2) pp. 33-52 - ISSN 2038-3460
 www.tecnoscienza.net                                2020
34                                                            Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

this grand challenge should be provided by science, technology and inno-
vation (Cagnin et al. 2012; De Smedt et al. 2013; Mort et al. 2012; Roberts
and Mort 2009), even though the particular articulation of this movement
and its effects are still a matter of discussion. It has been argued, for exam-
ple, that, despite an increasing amount of studies in the field of ageing and
technologies, a lack of theorization is apparent (Sixsmith and Gutman
2013). What seems clear is that scientification and technification of later
life have pushed the very notion of ageing, stretching it out not only beyond
the biological - ageing bodies (Baars 1991; Dannefer and Daub 2009; Mar-
shall and Katz 2002) - but even beyond the social, as well into what has
been called a socio-material constitution of later life (Endter 2016; Peine
et al. 2015; Wanka and Gallistl 2018). Materiality, in that sense, is consid-
ered to be one of the co-producers of a continuous process of becoming
(Urban 2017).
     Within this context, the very question highlights the role that those con-
cerned should play in these reconfigurations and the threats associated
with excluding them from the instances where possible futures are drawn
given that what is at stake is the way to connect scientific and technological
production with democratic ideals (Callén et al. 2009; De Vries 2007; Mort
et al. 2013). This query is particularly relevant when it comes to considering
the elderly, a social segment that is continually in danger of being excluded
from social and community participation (Everingham et al. 2009). Indeed,
in many European countries, the public policies regarding the welfare of
older adults have frequently been developed without any involvement of
or input from their beneficiaries (Carney 2010; Mort et al. 2009).
     In this paper, we want to focus on a mechanism designed to allow the
elderly to develop arguments regarding digitalization to inform of public
policies: the Citizen Conference of Barcelona’s Older People about the
Digitalization of Society, carried out in 2013. The initial aim of the organ-
izing team was to carry out an adaptation of the standards of the Danish
model of the consensus conference, to include a concerned collective. Ac-
cordingly, starting from the design of the conference, we will show the suc-
cessive modifications needed to allow older people to engage in the expe-
rience under the most careful conditions. As we will see, the initial consid-
erations of the organizing group of the conference, which took biological
age as a statistical criterion to run the call for participation, soon faced
other considerations regarding who can be considered as an older person.
That is why we consider it to be more appropriate to investigate what an
older person may be as a process towards the recognition of all the entities
that take part in the identification, negotiation and proof of who can be
considered to be a legitimate older citizen. We will develop a concept that
will unfold the different layers where the theories of ageing are set in
Palà & Correa                                                                35
practice, called infrastructuring. Highlighting the coordinated effort
needed among different agents to stabilize a specific collective. Along this
path, we face three issues where theory is challenged by practice: 1) the
very sense of what an infrastructure is; 2) the theory about what a consen-
sus conference is; and 3) the meaning of what an older person is.


2. Doing Age: Infrastructuring Older People’s Engagement
in Science

Since there are many ways of ageing - according to a mix of cultural, class,
gender or ethnic conditions - defining it is a complex task. In that sense,
the institutional approaches to what an older person is are normally based
on statistical criteria. Most countries have accepted the chronological age
of 65 years as a definition of an older person, coinciding with the age when
one can begin to receive pension benefits. Thus, this definition relates the
condition of an older person to the absence of productivity (Ranzijn et al.
2002). Although the common use of a natural age to mark the onset of old
age is the equivalent of using the biological age, it is generally accepted that
the two are not necessarily the same (Burholt et al. 2020). In many parts of
the world, the economic and social stratum or the urban condition to which
a person belongs is much more relevant than the chronological age in the
conceptualization of old age (Gorman 1999; Marston and van Hoof 2019).
     Furthermore, the progressive scientification and technification of later
life have acted as a call for academics - and non-academics - from different
perspectives to open new ways of conceptualizing the relationships be-
tween people, mostly of advanced age and different materialities, mostly
characterized as new technologies beyond chronological age. From tele-
phonic companies to policy makers and from health professionals to bus
drivers, it is difficult to find a collective alien to this new configuration.
Notably, two propositions have obtained a broad consensus within the new
contemporary approaches to age theorization: 1) age is a practical process
that is being performed; and 2) human and non-human agents are involved
in this process (Wanka and Gallistl 2018, 6-7). For all of these reasons, we
consider ageing bodies and digital technologies as co-producers of contin-
uous materializations and hence the construction of age itself. In this way,
age is understood as an “interrelationship of societies and technologies”
(Urban 2017, 3). Undoubtedly, one of the main reasons that have contrib-
uted to fostering this agreement is the shared rejection of foregrounding
theoretical proposals that take the isolated subject as a hermeneutic being
by itself. Age is not something that concerns only the subject. Indeed, John
Dewey already pointed out the necessity to know “the ways in which social
36                                                            Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

contexts react back into biological processes as well as to know the ways in
which the biological processes condition social life” (Dewey, 1939, xxvi).
In that way, if there is, at least, a subject result of the interaction between
the biology and the social, it means that we have to apply a transitive char-
acter to age, turning it into constant ageing.
    Although discourse generally directed at people, ageing would not be
possible without the whole network of institutions, companies, social prac-
tices and technological developments (in a broad sense) that provide it with
substance. Hence, we want to focus on those materials that allow subjects
and discourses “to matter” in the definition of who an older person is or,
more accurately, what an older person is. Accordingly, we consider it to be
appropriate to introduce a notion that will help us explore the role of ma-
teriality in our particular study case: infrastructure.
    The use of the term infrastructure is not a minor issue here. We con-
sider the arrangements and configuration of the citizen conference as an
infrastructure, since it is a properly designed setting that is crucial to the
development of different practices and to the emergence of particular com-
munities (Star 1999). Thereby, Star’s conceptualization of infrastructure is
not guided by a Marxian idea of infrastructure (Ferguson 2012) because
the scope encompasses not only power relations and ideologies but also,
above all, particular (human and non-human) modes of existence (Graham
and Thrift 2007). In this way, a particular design directly establishes certain
limits on the definition and negotiation of identities. However, we are not
arguing that the infrastructure determines what an actor may become since
the actors do not act within a backstage, where reality is hiding (Mol 2002).
Instead, they configure particular collectives with the infrastructure. As
Michael (1996) stated, we are inseparable from the things around us.
Namely, identity is always formed in an assembled way. This is especially
relevant when we take into consideration our particular case study since,
when we discuss techno-scientific issues, we are debating at the same time
what world we want and who we are as a collective (Stengers 2005). That
is why we aim to turn the focus to the way in which we infrastructure this
composition, stressing the acting part of the infrastructure in the whole
configuration.
    Linked to the idea of infrastructure, Star underlined the role of stand-
ardization as a normative process that sustains or excludes any object or
subject of a particular assemblage (Star and Bowker 2002; Star and Ruhle-
der 1996). For that, and to emphasize the idea of the process and constant
change, we can introduce a nuance with respect to Star’s definition of in-
frastructure to expand its reach. Following Karasti and collaborators (Ka-
rasti and Syrjänen 2004; Karasti and Baker 2004), we use the term infra-
structuring. As Helena Karasti (2014) states, they coined the term
Palà & Correa                                                            37
infrastructuring inspired particularly by Star and Bowker’s article, How to
Infrastructure (2002). The term emphasizes the processual, ongoing quality
of infrastructuring activities and pays attention to the extended periods
during which infrastructuring unfolds (Karasti 2014, 142). According to
this perspective, infrastructuring could be considered as a particular par-
ticipatory practice that provides socio-material resources and experiences
by way of attachments to the constitution of collectives or communities
gathered around common issues. The primary and distinctive feature of
this concept is its openness. This ongoing process includes other previous
infrastructure activities, so, as Le Dantec and Di Salvo (2013, 255) high-
lighted, “an important aspect of infrastructuring is recognizing that those
attachments are dynamic; they will change, often in unanticipated ways”.


3. Research Setting

3.1 Making a consensus conference with older people

The Citizen Conference of Barcelona’s Older People about Digitalization
of Society was the result of a broader research project carried out by the
GESCIT research group (nowadays STS-b) between 2012 and 2015 - from
now on identified as “organizing team”. The outputs of several previous
projects focusing on the crossroad between science, technology and older
people suggested changes in the way in which Spanish society perceived
the role of science and technology in the daily lives of citizens and showed
the implications of expert knowledge and technical devices for ageing,
identity construction, social organization and institutions. Considering
these, one of the main aims of the project was to design and implement a
consensus conference focusing on older people. The proposal was to test
the strengths and weaknesses of the mechanism in terms of the capacity to
join experts and older people in the same collective. At the same time, we
were interested in allowing the members of this concerned collective to
express their views regarding digitalization and even to assess public poli-
cies.
    The existence of a concise manual systematizing all the standards
needed to organize a successful consensus conference (Nielsen et al. 2006),
as well as the related literature, brought clarity regarding the limits and
scope of this participatory device (Einsiedel and Eastlick 2000; Fixdal
1997; Grundahl 1995; Kleinman 2000; Kleinman et al. 2011; Petts and Nie-
meyer 2004). Nevertheless, in placing a concerned collective, such as the
older people of Barcelona, as the citizen panel of the mechanism, we con-
tradicted one of the main principles of the original model, the one stating
38                                                            Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

that the selection of the lay panel should be ruled by random representa-
tional criteria. The call for participation addressed only to older people,
remained open from October to December 2012. Ultimately, from the peo-
ple who applied to take part in the conference, nine men and four women
were selected as members of the citizen panel. The places of residence of
the final thirteen participants were relatively evenly dispersed across Bar-
celona, with at least one from every district.
    From that point, we started to realize that some of the conditions im-
posed by the manual on the participants were quite demanding. The man-
ual of the mechanism points out the need to introduce full and restrictive
timetables to deal with a considerable workload, resulting on the decision
to extend the whole process, adding more time than planned to make it
less exhausting, from 9 January to 15 February 2013.
    The first stage, considered as “preparatory”, consisted of six meetings
distributed across two non-consecutive weeks and carried out in a centrally
located hotel in Barcelona. During this period, the participants in the citi-
zen panel were to become familiar with the topic of the conference and
select specific issues of interest, those being: economy and ICT, solitude
and ICT, motivation and education, gender and ICT, administration and
civil society, and health and usability. A recently retired professor in group
dynamics - someone who was closer in age and interests to the participants
- was responsible for giving the majority of instructions to the citizen panel.
One important output of the preparatory stage was the formulation of
questions to be answered by a panel of experts in the next phase.
    The second stage was the public phase of the conference, held at the
Contemporary Culture Centre of Barcelona (CCCB). There, the citizen
panellists presented each topic of interest in an oral exposition, giving an
account of the discussions that had taken place during the preparatory ses-
sions and posing the questions that the citizen panellists had agreed to ask
the experts. Then, several experts on particular technological issues replied
to the lay participants’ questions. This second stage took place on two days,
12 and 14 February 2013.
    Finally, in the third stage, the citizen panel met for two more days —
the first at the CCCB and the other in a municipal building - to produce
the final document outlining its conclusions and recommendations. This
document was subsequently delivered to the City Council at a public event
attended by the organizers and the panellists (Citizen Conference of Bar-
celona’s Older People about Digitalization of Society 2013).

3.2 Methodological approach
Palà & Correa                                                                39
We began by realizing that the citizen conference mobilized not only people
but also a multitude of things, such as institutions (the Barcelona City Coun-
cil or the CCCB), materials, papers, wires, tables, Internet connections and
so on. That is why we argue the necessity of following a device-centred ap-
proach to take into consideration not only the discourses but the whole range
of materialities that are conjugated and shape the mechanism. This is an in-
dispensable action to recognize the political participation of things in
          deliberative devices (Marres 2011; Marres and Lezaun 2011).
    For our research, we adopted a methodological strategy able of dialogu-
ing with the ongoing mechanism of the consensus conference. In that sense,
we developed a multi-situated ethnography (Marcus 1995), exploring the
different sites within the participatory mechanism, from its design to the
public event where the final report was presented (city hall offices, older peo-
ple’s houses, meeting rooms, conference hall, etc.). In the context of this eth-
nographic study, we employed different techniques that allowed us to take
into consideration three sources of data. Firstly, we considered the resulting
fieldwork notes and video recording (Jensen 2005) obtained through partic-
ipant observation as part of the organizing group of the citizen conference.
Secondly, the interviews were carried out with different actors at different
stages of the experience (Powell and Kleinman 2008): in the selection pro-
cess, during the preparation stage and later, when the CC had finished. Fur-
thermore, we proposed that participants should write a diary to register their
own experiences, indicating that they could include any impressions, feelings
or opinions about their condition of being panellists (Jacelon and Imperio
2005).


4. Assembling Ageing and Politics through Infrastructuring

In the construction of the citizen panel, several socio-material processes
were conducted. In this analysis, we will show how the infrastructural as-
pects sustained a particular mode of doing age in a public engagement with
science mechanism. Accordingly, firstly, we will show the process by which
the selection of participants is infrastructured. Then, we will present the
way in which the infrastructuring process supports the constitution and
legitimization of the citizen panel. Finally, we will highlight the necessary
care practices to hold the assemblage between humans and things.

4.1 Infrastructuring older participants

The question regarding who can be considered an older person arose at the
very beginning of the citizen conference. This point should be clear when
40                                                           Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

calling for participation in an experience meant to address older people. In
that sense, the organizers should define it before launching the call for par-
ticipation. The first parameter considered by the organizing team was age,
which is a statistical criterion. Some national laws and norms (such as the
Promotion of Personal Autonomy and Attention to Dependent People
Law, in Spain) and several institutions concerning ageing (such as the In-
stitute for the Elderly and Social Services, known by its Spanish acronym
IMSERSO) establish a minimum of 65 years: people beyond this age
should be considered older people. Taking this minimum into account as
a standard, the organizing team prepared a call for expressions of interest
addressing this particular population. Thus, in the distributed flyer, one
could read, “Who can participate? People older than 65 who live in Bar-
celona”. The call for participation remained open from October to Decem-
ber 2012.
    Overall, after the call for participation, we received 28 applications -
although we had expected around 50. After the applications had arrived,
we interviewed the candidates to select the participants. The process by
which a citizen panel is selected is always the focus of much debate (Irwin
et al. 2013) since it supposes selection and judgement regarding acceptable
behaviours (Laurent 2009). This already involved adding criteria to the
configuration of our target older people beyond age. To be chosen, first,
people had to be communicative and have the dialogical capacity to take
part in situations of debate. This requirement casts doubt on the inclusive
nature of the deliberative mechanisms based on traditional means of
speech and on an ideal model of communication inspired by the Haber-
masian discourse theory (Cohen 1999) since people who do not have cer-
tain speech and communicative capacities have to be refused participation
in this kind of mechanism. Secondly, the selection interviews worked as an
opportunity to assess people’s engagement: people had to have enough
time to participate in all the activities of the conference. Hence, many
women told us that they could not participate because they had to care for
their grandchildren and husbands. Even though, after the first round of
interviews, we made an effort to contact women from different neighbour-
hoods, we did not succeed in configuring a gender-balanced panel.
    This shows that becoming a member of the citizen panel does not only
concern age. To become an older citizen in this context, one also had to
have the time to take part in a lengthy process - sometimes disregarding
some care practices that one is expected to undertake.
    During the selection interviews, it was made clear that not only the par-
ticular standards of the consensus conference or the logics regarding active
ageing (Sixsmith and Gutman 2013) were challenging our early definition
of older people. The applications of two candidates exemplify that
Palà & Correa                                                                       41
enrolment was not a unidirectional act but a process in which every actor
actively participated, manifesting particular interests and purposes to con-
test our initial assumptions. In that sense, these two candidates, who were
younger than 65, considered themselves to be older people and deployed
different strategies to become participants. In one of the cases, the appli-
cant completed the online form and wrote in the blank corresponding to
age that he was 65 - that is, he lied about his age. Later, in the selection
interview, he revealed his real age. He justified his deception by arguing
that, if he had given his real age, 63, he would not have been chosen. He
added that he considered the limit of 65 to be unfair and discriminatory.

        It was said, “If you are older than sixty-five …” in front of which I
        revolted and said, “Well, why this limitation? I am a person who is
        not looking for a job. I am completely retired. I have similar rights
        as a retired person in their eighties. I do not care! I will not look for
        a job… so, why this limit of sixty-five?” So, I revolted, and I applied
        as an act of rebellion. (Extract from the post-conference interview,
        Participant 4)

This excerpt shows that some strategies could be adopted to challenge the
definition of who is an older person by adding other entities to it. That is
why we consider it to be more appropriate to explore what an older person
is than who an older person is since the definition extends beyond the in-
dividual. In particular, in this situation, we can tackle two aspects intending
to define what an older person is. Firstly, according to Participant 4, taking
part in a network aiming to exchange activities for money (as waged labour
activity is) or, on the other hand, not being linked with this network (being
retired) should be added as a criterion to delimit what an older person is.
Secondly, every delimiting action of identity is an act of force that causes
inclusion and exclusion effects. For Participant 4, being excluded from the
elderly group is an unfair and discriminatory action. As a consequence of
these two aspects, the initial definition of an older person became broader
and more complex.
    Another situation that challenged the organization’s first assumption
that being an older person involves being aged 65 or over involved a par-
ticipant who merely wrote his real age in the blank - 63 as well. Given that
the online form enabled anybody of any age to register despite the age limit,
he could apply and was ultimately interviewed. What would have hap-
pened if that online form had been programmed with a drop-down list
containing limited age choices? The option of the second participant
would not have been possible; he would have been excluded from the ex-
perience or forced to change his strategy to take part. These assumptions
are useful as they prompt us to think about how this kind of (software)
42                                                              Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

infrastructure acts to define who can be enrolled in this kind of experience,
showing the range of possible negotiation. Both applicants were finally se-
lected and were able to participate in the experience, modifying the origi-
nal age range of 65 and older.
    As we can observe, identity involves not only people but also everything
that comprises their daily life - that is, their material relationships and their
variations. In that way, identity can be presented as a formation that actu-
alizes a series of heterogeneous relationships (we are thinking of the actions
and features that define an older person, as explained by Participant 4 for
example). The definition provided by the organizers (“an older person is
anyone over 65”) can be considered as a master narrative of this participa-
tory infrastructure (Star 1999) based on the construction of socio-demo-
graphic indicators. Given its standardized capacity, it erased, hid or, at
least, put aside specific nuances written in minority narratives. Neverthe-
less, the participatory infrastructure allowed the possibility of contesting
the master narratives and even promoted the emergence of new meanings
regarding what an older person may be.

4.2 Infrastructuring older citizens

    In spite of 13 participants being chosen through the selection process
to take part in the consensus conference, after considering their availability
and disposition to take an active role in the development of the conference,
that recognition alone was not enough. Henceforth, they were supposed to
demonstrate that they could effectively become a constitutive part of the
citizen panel. Accordingly, although participants were recruited as virtual
citizens (Levy 1998), they should prove the civic capacities needed to be
considered legitimate citizens (Powell and Kleinman 2008). This can be
shown by one of the most recurring demands requiring an active role of
participants to be engaged in collective discussions:

       In the debates, there are people who want to demonstrate expertise
       in new technologies and explain the devices they own. On this sub-
       ject, others remain silent. (...) I surprised myself by interrupting
       people who were speaking. (Diary excerpt, Participant 1)

    In that excerpt, we can see that, even though some of the participants
were not familiar with the use of some technologies, they were asked to talk
about them. Despite their initial concerns about not being able to take part
in the discussions, many participants turned their worries into active en-
gagement in the very early stages. Step by step, many of the participants
earned a deep sense of self-trust until they gained the impression of being
Palà & Correa                                                                    43
able to engage in discussions with experts on equal terms. This can be
shown by the next excerpt, in which one of the citizen panel members ex-
presses her impressions of a meeting where the citizen panel held a discus-
sion with five members of the steering committee (a group composed of
researchers, members of civic associations, entrepreneurs and so on). This
took place during the last session of preparation and, apart from fostering
the encounter of the two groups, the meeting served as a rehearsal for the
group since it would be the first time that they would face experts:

        Five collaborators were presented from different fields and then we
        presented our questions and our conditions. They have explained
        things, each within their knowledge. (...) It was interesting to see
        how people inside the issue have a vision not so different from ours
        and that they do things to improve the quality of older people’s life.
        (Diary excerpt, Participant 9)

    To “have a vision not so different from ours” is a good summary of the
attitude the panellists had towards the specialists. They enquired when they
felt they had to, showed their positions and developed a dialogue. That is,
they were able to discuss issues on equal terms with the specialists. This
success was because of the constant efforts made by the participants to
meet the requirements of the organization and the infrastructure as a
whole. This work not only encompassed dialogical skills in the preparation
stage but also continued through the public phase of the conference (and
even in the days between the two instances), during which they were asked
to perform practical material tasks:

        Several hours have been devoted to preparing the presentation. Be-
        sides preparing the PowerPoint, I have devoted time of my life to
        prepare the text, indispensable for that. Besides these tasks, I have
        attended other commitments. These have been crazy days due to
        Laura’s emails (a member of the research group) because her sug-
        gestions made me change my writing … words, phrases, size of text,
        and so on. It was something positive, thanks to her tips, work has
        been pretty good. (Diary excerpt, Participant 7)

The described actions give an account of the participant’s work to prove
her commitment and determination to complete the required tasks. This
situation puts in evidence an affected older person who responds as such.
As we have shown, dialogical skills are an indispensable component of in-
volvement as an active member of the citizen panel. Nevertheless, a wide
range of other requirements had to be met to demonstrate that the elderly
can be considered legitimate citizens. There are material requirements,
44                                                               Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

such as the ability to produce a PowerPoint presentation or to write a co-
herent speech, but the competence to deal with stressful situations is nec-
essary as well. Those components give form to a particular way of becom-
ing an older citizen in this configuration.
    Nevertheless, becoming a legitimate citizen is not only related to indi-
viduals’ capacity to overcome certain requirements or to move beyond
themselves. As argued previously, a complex infrastructure has to be put
in place and sustained to endure this achievement. For this aim, it is not
enough to design the network a priori. Meticulous caring practices are
needed to hold the assemblages in a constant process of infrastructuring.
Those are the practices that we will present in the next section.

4.3 Caring about becoming as a mode of infrastructuring

    The actions described so far have given an account of the participants’
particular efforts to cope with the mechanism’s demands. As seen, the con-
stant challenges posed by the organization affected the participant’s bodies
from the beginning. Nevertheless, we have also seen how the organizing
team was present to support and sustain the possibility of achieving the
demands. In that vein, anxiety became more evident when the public stage
of the conference was about to start. That is why affective support - as well
as a multitude of other activities connected to taking care of the partici-
pants - emerged as a key component of the sustainment of the whole infra-
structure, which was as important as anything else. The next excerpt ex-
emplifies the nature of this additional support:

       Today, I do not know if by insecurity or jitters, or to know how to
       situate myself in the place where the conference will be carried out,
       or by the onset of all my concerns ... the fact is that at 8:30 AM, I
       was already at the CCCB where the young students were getting
       everything ready. I could test my presentation on the laptop with
       Laura. I could see if it looked good on the screen, and so on. This
       has helped me to relax a little bit and to wait more peacefully for
       my intervention. (Diary excerpt, Participant 7)

The lack of development on this issue through the literature is - at least -
surprising. Within the consensus conference manual, for example, the au-
thors talk about issues such as providing a comfortable venue, but the con-
cerns about participants’ care are reduced to comfort. However, a whole
range of other care practices should be highlighted. For example, breakfast
is one of the spaces intended for nutrition within such care but is also a
point of socialization during which researchers and participants interact,
Palà & Correa                                                                   45
transferring affections that are more than necessary to achieve the comfort
of these bodies.

        Breakfast also lets us meet students who give us so much support.
        They want to be hidden, but they also have an active role. I must
        say they are very friendly. (Diary excerpt, Participant 3)

    Likewise, it is essential to equip these bodies with the basics like food,
water, shelter, and accommodation, but the care practices need to go fur-
ther than that. In that sense, the existence of the citizen panel depends,
among other elements, on how the facilitation work is developed. To sus-
tain the panel, it is necessary to undertake articulation work that enables
13 people to become a collective:

        The collaborators have made efforts to ensure logistical processes
        work and to assist everybody. Particularly, I found very interesting
        the performance of the facilitator. She has allowed people without
        common interests, in a short time, to be able to debate issues and to
        arrive to definitions and conclusions. (Diary excerpt, Participant 3)

    The preparation stage was a key component of the achievement of this
aim, not as a simple activity of knowledge transfer in a unidirectional mode
but rather as careful work to produce changes in such a composition, going
from the sum of individuals to the citizen panel as a whole. In that respect,
the duties of the organizing team extended beyond just transmitting a rep-
ertoire of conceptual and informational tools to the participants. As a par-
ticipant expressed on the fourth day of the preparation stage:

        They gave us a working document discussed in groups of three.
        Then we were all working together point by point. It seems that this
        document is the result of the previous three sessions. It is intended
        to show the experts to explain the points we have recently solved
        and the session ends to continue in the next, discussing the docu-
        ment. (Diary excerpt, Participant 9)

     Documents, prepared by the organization, acted as summaries of other
moments (events that have already occurred and reappeared again), giving
continuity to the process and highlighting a tendency for repetition. Be-
tween one session and another, the bridge that unites them is a document,
a mnemonic infrastructure used to record what happened, to give continu-
ity in time and relevance as well as to introduce new elements.
     As we have shown, a multiplicity of care practices had to be carried out
during the process of infrastructuring our experience. However, the main
46                                                            Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

purpose of highlighting them is to realize that care is a living technology
with vital material implications for human and non-human worlds (Puig de
la Bellacasa 2011). Constant attention to detail was required to assure the
sustainability of the mechanism, but these care practices concerned hu-
mans and the materiality in itself symmetrically. As a result, we can appre-
ciate how taking care of participants means taking care of the political in-
frastructure and how caring for the political infrastructure involves caring
about the participants. That is, they are two sides of the same process: to
hold the assemblage (Denis and Pontille 2013).


5. Discussion and Conclusions

    When we refer to technology, we usually think of complex machines or
ICT, among other things. However, in the examples that we presented, we
could see the diversity of technologies, such as documents, tables, projec-
tors or computers, which, due to their everyday use, have become natural-
ized but overall, we could see their interactions. This wide set of techno-
logical relationships were assembled throughout the process to make a pe-
culiar consensus conference possible. The interaction of these components
made the emergence and sustainability of a particular kind of subjects at-
tainable: the panellists of this conference as older citizens engaging in tech-
nological issues. This brings two crucial aspects to the scene: first, it rein-
forces the idea that one becomes older in an assemblage (in our case, mak-
ing a political exercise of these citizens possible) and, second, political
practices require certain infrastructures, decentralizing the politics of the
primacy of language. Along this path, we faced three instances in which
theory was challenged by practice.
    The first concerned the very sense of what an infrastructure is. While
Star (1999) stressed its relational character, studies on infrastructures have
focused on large infrastructures that connect and articulate different com-
munities of practices. What infrastructures a practice, far from being re-
duced to those large groups such as a bridge (Suchman 2001), a drinking
water distribution network (Wakhungu 2019) or a wired network (Wueb-
ben 2017), it can be configured from the interaction of a myriad of things
that support the development of a specific practice in a particular situation.
The concept of infrastructuring contributes to providing this nuance by
accommodating the appropriate ductility to deal with certain contextual
events, emphasizing the immanent coordinated character of the relation-
ships needed to stabilize and fix collectives and enable them to last (Karasti
2014). The experience that we related taught us about the continuity be-
tween what supports our vital practices and the practices that make us
Palà & Correa                                                              47
emerge as singular individuals, between the stages and the actors, and also
between the tables with microphones and the citizen panels. Infrastruc-
tures are nothing more than the continuity of our bodies by other means, a
way of doing-with-the-world regularly. While it is true that the stabilization
of an infrastructure can be a decisive element for the exclusion of certain
subjects from a network (referencing the case where our software could
have excluded a participant), it is also true that it is an indispensable ele-
ment for the connection and sustenance of collectives. However, that con-
nectivity is subject to constant production that involves the set of relation-
ships that make up a particular assembly. Thus, we could think of unstable
infrastructures, their instability being precisely what allows them to give
consistency to a set, in this case a consensus conference.
    Secondly, the theory was challenged by practice regarding how a con-
sensus conference is meant to be carried out. However, from the begin-
ning, interventions were made for its adaptation, and along the way it re-
quired several minor, handcrafted adjustments to enable the realization of
the participatory mechanism, and its adaptation to those who took part. As
a result, even though the mechanism was conceived as a stage for giving
voice to older people, in practice it became the production of a new way of
conducting politics and ageing. The unexpected emerged in the produc-
tion of the experience itself. It emerged when met with the diversity of hu-
man and non-human groups that were part of the process. Along those
unexpected lines, we could see how different actors - human and non-hu-
man - interweave, forming the heterogeneous collectives necessary to make
the political process possible. Even the adapted arrangement of the space
acquired a primary role. In that sense, a whole range of care practices
needed to be tailored to both the participants and the materials. Thus, only
by paying attention to these practices, whereby twilight entities that reach
beyond what is expected are enacted, can we explain the fluidity of the
political component and its achievement. In this particular, a citizen panel
extended beyond what was established by the manual. The identity of the
citizen panel would not have been kept without the participation of the
organization. However, the facilitator of the experience or the panel of the
experts is indispensable as well. They are also needed to shape and stabilize
the citizen panel. If we push the argument to its last consequences regard-
ing our particular target, we will see how the citizen panel represents far
more than an aggregate of thirteen people.
    Experts, facilitators, and organizers are indispensable components of
the assemblage, as crucial as venues, documents, agendas, flip charts or
breakfast. If we shift the focus from the subjects to the assemblages (Sayes
2014), we will see actants appear (and disappear), being everywhere and
nowhere at the same time; “sometimes [as] a particular node, sometimes
48                                                               Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

[as] an entire network, (. . .) sometimes absent, sometimes interchangea-
ble” (Mialet 2009, 459).
    Lastly, the meaning of what an older person is was challenged. Even
though we can establish clear definitions of who can be considered an older
person in an abstract plan, from an academic or institutional point of view,
this Citizen Conference has shown us that the processes by which age is
addressed in a particular situation need to be explored through a contex-
tual approach. That implies recognizing the political, technological or so-
cial entities that are taking part in the definition. That is why we suggest
the need to switch the very question about who can be considered an older
person to how in a certain context a heterogeneous assemblage of (human
and non-human) actors defines what an older person is. As presented, sin-
gular modes of ageing are updated and activated as a result of an assem-
blage composed not only of older people but also of academics, young re-
searchers, documents, microphones, lunches, laughter or conversations.
We were able to tackle this reconfiguration from the initial assumptions of
the organizing team. Which took the biological age of 65 and beyond as a
statistical criterion to call for participation. Through the considerations
made for two potential participants who were willing to take part in the
mechanisms despite being aged under 65 or within an extended variety of
logics, such as those configuring active ageing and public engagement with
science mechanisms.
    In sum, this experience overall supposed a paradigmatic case to appre-
hend how age is approached in practice since what was constantly at stake
was the identification, negotiation and proof of who can be considered a
legitimate older citizen. Accordingly, we have pointed out the concept of
infrastructuring as a pertinent mode to unfold the layers by which theories
of ageing are configured in practice, highlighting the coordinated effort
among different agents needed to stabilize a specific assemblage.


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