Sep 3, 2024 5:00 PM
To be confirmed
Cancelled

Modulating “affordance”: the spatial and corporeal living conditions of elderly

Modulating “affordance”: the spatial and corporeal living conditions of elderly

Panel:
[PA] Semiotics and the Elderly: Embracing a Semiotic Approach to Understanding an Ageing Society (Federico Bellentani, Massimo Leone)
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Speaker:
Gunnar Sandin
Lund University
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Ever since Gibson’s invention of the concept of affordance, it has been debated to what extent this concept can capture the diversity of individual action possibilities, such as when age makes our range of action capacities different. It is not yet sufficiently discussed to what extent affordances are pre-semiotic perceptive moments, or if they are “fully developed” signs that stimulate further action. The offer of an affordance is ecologically defined as the action possibility perceived in the moment a perceiving subject (or organism) experience it. As humans grow older, changes appear to the biologically conditioned movability, strength, and perception capacities. Usually, we think of this as how the range of affordances diminish – for the individual – even if the physically present affordances are still there, “waiting” for anyone to discern them as such and act upon them. Certain attempts have been made to theoretically, also semiotically, discuss and adjust the somewhat overly general, open-ended or even vague, definition of affordance. Such attempts have discussed for instance the psychological, corporeal or extra-organismic position of affordance, but also its degree of obligation, or how much an affordance offer something openly or restrictively. Furthermore, the commonness of the concept has been debated: to what extent are affordances individually or culturally defined? In these debates, there are elements that support a broader theorization of the conditions of elderly, and to what extent elderly adapt to their own state of getting older, an adaptation that inevitably requires a dynamic notion of affordance.

Location:
2.116 room, WLS (Dobra 55 street)

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02
September
9:30
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10:30
Location:
Mickiewicz Hall, Auditorium Maximum (Krakowskie Przedmiescie 26/28 str.)
Congress events
Opening Ceremony

September 2, 2024
Congress events
Mickiewicz Hall, Auditorium Maximum (Krakowskie Przedmiescie 26/28 str.)
02
September
10:30
-
11:30
Location:
Mickiewicz Hall, Auditorium Maximum (Krakowskie Przedmiescie 26/28 str.)
From Signs of Language to Semioses of Life: Paradigms and Turns in Global Semiotics

September 2, 2024
Mickiewicz Hall, Auditorium Maximum (Krakowskie Przedmiescie 26/28 str.)
02
September
11:30
-
12:15
Location:
Australia Hall, WLS (Dobra 55 street)
Catering
Coffee break [catering]

September 2, 2024
Catering
Australia Hall, WLS (Dobra 55 street)
Gunnar Sandin