Department of Public Health, Centre for Medical Science and Technology Studies, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5B, 1014, Copenhagen K, Denmark.
Cult Med Psychiatry. 2023 Sep;47(3):766-789. doi: 10.1007/s11013-022-09797-y. Epub 2022 Jul 1.
'Nostalgic environments' are increasingly being created in museums and institutional care settings for people with dementia, to support residents' capacities for memory and recognition. Drawing upon ethnography carried out in a public nursing home specialized in dementia care in Copenhagen, Denmark, this paper engages conceptually the employment of material heritage within dementia care environments, proposing dementia care as a 'curatorial' practice: caregivers act as 'curators' who re-establish and reorganize the 'meaning' of the residents by preserving their individual biographies and societal belonging. The analytical alignment of dementia care with the curating of cultural valuables reveals that the human is not only the subject within-and the creator of-cultural heritage, but also the object: the person with dementia is simultaneously an acting subject in care and an object for performances of the category of the human. As the curatorial care performed in nursing homes preserves not only individual, but also collective memories of what it takes to be human and belong in society, these institutions should be recognized as significant sites within society concerned with the production of meaning, value and cultural heritage.
“怀旧环境”在博物馆和机构护理环境中越来越多地被创造出来，以支持患有痴呆症的人的记忆和识别能力。本文通过对丹麦哥本哈根一家专门从事痴呆症护理的公立养老院进行的民族志研究，从概念上探讨了物质遗产在痴呆症护理环境中的运用，提出痴呆症护理是一种“策展”实践：护理人员充当“策展人”，通过保留居民的个人传记和社会归属，重新确立和重组居民的“意义”。将痴呆症护理与文化珍品的策展进行分析性匹配表明，人类不仅是文化遗产的主体和创造者，也是客体：患有痴呆症的人既是护理中的行为主体，也是人类类别表演的对象。由于养老院中的策展护理不仅保留了个人的记忆，还保留了作为人类和社会成员所需要的集体记忆，因此这些机构应该被视为社会中关注意义、价值和文化遗产生产的重要场所。
