Those who think they find social reality overestimate their perception, those who think they invent it their imagination. (Hirschauer, 2008, p. 175)

Life course transitions are often researched as predominantly temporal phenomena – as phases, stages, or processes. With this contribution, we aim to explicate that this temporality is deeply entangled with materiality. Reflexive transition research, as proposed in this book, raises the fundamental question of how transitions in the life course are constituted and shaped in social practices, and how social order and stability are (re)produced in this process. As social practices are inherently material (Shove et al., 2012), a practice-based perspective on transitions sensitizes for the material dimension(s) of life course transitions. This contribution addresses how and why materiality matters in doing transitions.

In the past decades, many research fields in the social sciences have undergone a material turn, emphasizing the importance of materiality in the reflection and analysis of social reality and practice. Approaches within this turn tend to criticize existing theories first, for maintaining (and reinforcing) the Cartesian dualism of body and mind, and, second, for focusing primarily on human actors, human actions, and human agency. Such perspectives, they criticize, veil the power of different forms of materiality within processes of formation, continuation, and change of social phenomena (Barad, 2003; Schatzki, 2002; Reckwitz, 2002). Instead focusing on materialities opens up a view of social phenomena beyond language, and thus of “what takes place as a silent process: wordless, inarticulate, ‘illiterate’” (Hirschauer, 2001, p. 430). The material turn has manifested in different research fields in various forms and shapes. In this chapter, we will limit ourselves to new materialisms. New materialisms can be understood as a nexus of theories formulated mainly in gender studies and feminist Science-and-Technology Studies (STS). Approaches and concepts such as agential realism (Barad, 2003), Deleuzian materialism (Braidotti, [1994] 2011), or posthumanism (Haraway, 2007) understand discourses and materialities as inextricably linked within “material-discursive practices” (Barad, 2003, p. 818), that is: every social phenomenon that we might perceive as a stable and fixed entity with clear boundaries is actually a process of continuous, entangled becoming and co-constitution. They assume that ‘we’ – as people living in the social world, but also and in particular as researchers – continuously participate in practices of boundary-making and agential cuts (Barad, 2003) with which we delimit, shape and constitute social phenomena in the first place.

New materialist perspectives imply that the emergence of the social can be understood neither through the substantial setting of autonomously and intentionally acting subjects, nor through the explanation of the overwhelming power of structures and discourses behind them, but rather as a relational interplay of different actors and elements that co-constitute each other continuously. Thus, the focus of observation is on relations, dynamics, processes, and the “reciprocal constitutional relationship of the social and its subjects” (Alkemeyer et al., 2015a, b, p. 15) – and, we might add, objects. In this context, transitions – powerful and complex phenomena that can be thought of as producers and stabilizers of social order on the one hand, and as socially constructed, manufactured, and thus always contingent phenomena on the other – require a relational style of thinking, which includes materialities (Rieger-Ladich, 2020).

Despite the growing popularity of materialist perspectives in the social sciences and humanities, they have not yet spread across transition research. However, in applying a new materialist perspective to the phenomena of life course transitions, we can identify several respects in which reflexive and relational transition research could profit. First, the “gain of this metaphysical abstinence [...] is its turning to the world of things and objects, spaces and bodies” (Rieger-Ladich, 2020, p. 209). Consequently, this chapter focuses on three different dimensions of materiality – bodies, spaces, and things –, which form social practices as “three-dimensional arrangements” (Reckwitz, 2012. p. 252), as they become relevant in different life course transitions. Second, these dimensions of materiality are relational and co-constitutive – both among themselves and in regards to life course transitions. Hence, by deploying a perspective that is sensitive towards materialities to life course transitions makes us see how bodies, things and spaces matter in and hence co-constitute and shape processes of subjectivation, changing practices of identification, adressation and representation, or the (chrono-)norms, expectations and motivations that are so central to transition research.

Social practices as the units of analysis at the core of a ‘doing’ transitions perspective, however, do not only unfold in abstract power relations, but in concrete, material life realities, spaces, and situations. Social practices, consequently, always involve both material and discursive, human and non-human elements (Barad, 2003; Latour, 2007). From a reflexive, anti-essentialist understanding neither transitions nor social status positions, nor materialities themselves are fixed and stable entities, but processual and multi-dimensional constructions. As anthropologist Florent Bernault (2010) argues, this multi-dimensionality of materiality can dissolve essentialist notions of substance, integrity, and individual agency. As Karen Barad (2003) puts it, material phenomena emerge just as other (discursive or social) phenomena do; their boundaries are drawn in practice. Hence, a human body is, for example, not a fixed material-biological entity, but an assemblage of material-discursive practices and, as Barad puts it, the agential cuts we draw around it in the construction (and analysis) of the social world. Consequently, the chapter focuses on the complexity and multidimensionality of materialities for the analysis, reflection and re/deconstruction of life course transitions. Thus, the paper demonstrates the added value of a relational, reflexive perspective on materiality and its multidimensionality in transition research.

To do so, we provide a theoretically guided reflection of three dimensions of materiality – bodies, spaces and things – and illustrate their role in transitional processes with empirical examples from two research projects. Based on this data, we draw three conclusions for reflexive transition research regarding (1) the relations of multiple dimensions of materiality in the co-constitution of transitions, (2) the relations of different (‘linked’) transitions through materialities, and (3) the relations between multiple materialities and temporalities in the life course.

Bodies, Spaces, and Things in Life Course Transitions

In the following sections we discuss selected empirical material from two research projects studying transitions in childhood and later life: First, the project “Growing up in an Individualized society” (2017–2022) deals with transitions during childhood. The empirical analysis refers to children aged 9–12, an age range which, apart from entering puberty, involves the transition from primary to secondary school. In Germany this implies differentiation to different tracks of different status whereby for all actors involved (teachers, youth workers, parents and the children themselves) social inequality becomes visible affecting further educational and life chances. Data collection consisted in participant observation in two socio-pedagogical settings located in socially deprived areas and aimed at supporting children in their growing up by means of non-formal education in both school and leisure activities. Second, the project “Doing Retiring” (2017–2021) follows 30 older adults in Germany from 1 year before to 3 years after retirement, combining episodic interviews, activity and photo diaries, and participant observations. Relating transitions in childhood and older age has been conceptualized as “linking ages” due to its heuristic potential in analyzing the complementarity of transitions into and out of middle adulthood referred to as the productive stage in the modern life course regime (Höppner et al., forthcoming).

Because the two projects use multi-method approaches, they provide data that reveals different dimensions of materiality from multiple perspectives – for example, observations of corporeality and place appropriation and narrations on bodily perceptions and affective relationships to things. Below, we draw upon empirical material that sheds light on the three dimensions of materiality outlined above – bodies, spaces and things – in life course transitions in childhood and later life. And even though we will, in the following, discuss these three dimensions separately, this separation is purely analytical, whereas in fact, the different dimensions are constantly interwoven, co-constitutive, and entangled in dynamics of social practices.

The Role of Bodies in Life Course Transitions

One, if not the most, important dimension of materiality in the study of transitions might be the body as “we always carry it with us” (Goffman, (1967) 1997, p. 152; as cited in Burghard, 2018, p. 554). It is probably the most prominently discussed dimension of materiality which at the same time has been neglected for a long time in debates about life course transitions.

The body is a constant part of social practice, and thus becomes significant as an object of attribution, addressing and staging processes under which the body is constituted and thus made relevant as a ‘corporeal object’ of transitions. This is “marked, habitually shaped or aestheticized by social, categories generating inequality such as gender, ethnicity, age […]” (Burghard, 2018, p. 564). It can subsequently be stated that bodies are constituted and formed in and through social practice – “structures of social inequality (as well as power and domination) are inscribed in bodies” (ibid.). These inscriptions also become effective in producing change. This relevance becomes particularly visible and perceptible through bodily changes and physical development processes (such as losing one’s teeth in childhood or older age, physical growth, or changes in motoric competences).

In the “Doing Retiring” project, the body is mainly made relevant by research participants in terms of its abilities, or much rather, the lack thereof: Decreased functionality and inability to be as productive as it used to, the body can interfere with working life. In this, the body marks the ‘right timing’ to retire, both to ‘it’s subject’ and (significant) others. Monica, formerly employed in the financial sector, remembers:

And the superiors see that you no longer achieve as you used to [...] and if the expectation is a minimum of ten hours, because all the others, who are healthy and young, are still doing that somehow, then it is of course obvious that you also stand out somehow.

Throughout the whole transitional process, the body is thereby granted its own agentiality and even a kind of stubbornness – “If my body allows it” is a frequently used phrase in the “Doing Retiring” project. In this, the functionality of the body – whether it “allows” for working, climbing a mountain, travelling, or maintaining sexual relationships – is not only crucial for determining the ‘right timing’ to retire (Wanka, 2019), but also for envisioning and planning one’s future retirement life. The body is made relevant in different stages of the transition process and, again, operates with multiple temporalities. Loss of physical capability, care-dependency and, finally, death, are widely feared potential hindrances to these that are all connected to, or located in, the body. Talking about entering a new romantic relationship, Petra recalls a recent conversation:

Someone from the choir said to me the other day: ‘I would only marry a younger woman.’ I say: ‘Why?’ ‘Well, if I become care-dependent at some point, at least I will have someone.’

But the body can not only be understood as an object of attribution and addressing. Furthermore the body is the main material through which the social world and transition processes within it are subjectively, affectively and sensually experienced and incorporated. Hence, the body is the main point of reference through which subjects perceive and express transitional processes, and through which transition researchers can access these experiences. Transitions are processes that people deal with “in a conscious way, on the cognitive-linguistic level, but also and especially on the sensual-bodily” level (Villa, 2004, p. 72). The body thus becomes not only the object of social norming, addressing, and attribution under which it is constituted. It also becomes the site of the pre-reflexive anchoring of implicit knowledge, social patterns of interpretation and incorporated structures. The body is thus conceived as a pre-reflexive reservoir of experience and knowledge and, following Pierre Bourdieu and his habitus theory, can be grasped via the concept of the “hexis” (cf. 1987) of the habitus, as a ‘somatization’ of social relations. The bodily hexis forms the somatic dimension of social practice, and makes the pre-reflexivity of action explicable (cf. Villa, 2011, p. 67).

Following the insight that people are part of social practice not only with their bodies, but rather as their bodies (cf. Alkemeyer et al., 2015a, b, p. 18), the interplay of incorporated structure and positioning within a social order and the (somatic) sense of self becomes accessible. An understanding of vulnerability unfolds through this ambivalence, which, we argue, is especially marked by the body. Understanding transitions as special phases of vulnerability – as an in-between – which may well include bodily development and the self-perception of this as well as changing addressing and expectations, the examination of the body allows to understand not only its physical, but also its sensual-bodily dimension. Thus, through the body, an access to the complexity of the subjective structure of experience – not only in its conscious, but also unconscious, sensual form – is made possible.

This can be illustrated especially in relation to the transition from childhood to adolescence since not only the body and the perception of it by the subjects themselves changes, but also the forms of addressing it and thus the orders of recognition under which it is perceived, evaluated and positioned. This perspective can be illustrated by an exemplary situation observed in one of the socio-pedagogical projects analyzed in the “Growing up” study. On one occasion, the social workers take a group of girls to the river to collect shells. While the social workers remain on the shore, the girls, together with the researcher, move further and further away into the water:

We all go deeper and deeper into the water and find a place where many seashells appear. The place is a long distance away and I wonder if the girls would be allowed to go that far, If I were not present. The place is on the shore, but not visible for Joseph and Bernhard [social workers]. In addition, many waves occur as soon as a ship passes by. I ask the girls if they are allowed to be alone here and Lara says yes, if they are very careful.

If one understands the transition from childhood to adolescence also as a conflict between dependence and independence, this scene and the role of the body provide a more sensitive understanding of these negotiation processes that mark the transition. Based on this scene, we can unfold the relevance of the body on different levels: First, the danger that emanates from the river explicates the vulnerability of the body, its exposure to and physical dependence on the world that surrounds us - especially in relation to childhood and the bodies of children, as becomes evident in the researcher’s addressing of the children (and their bodies). Second, the scene reveals the perception and understanding of one’s own vulnerability and negotiation of personal responsibility in relation to the protection of one’s own body. In the statement “if we are very careful”, a reflection of the perception and handling of one’s own vulnerability becomes apparent and the importance of others with whom we share the world – in this case peers – becomes delineable. Through collective action, the vulnerability of the individual is contrasted with the shared practice and the intersubjectivity inherent to it. The body in its development and individual temporality and vulnerability in transition thus enables an understanding of its dependence on others and the world. It is not only interwoven in multiple temporalities, as exemplified above, but also linked to other bodies, people and things. It therefore brings insights into social relationships and trust, which can be unfolded through the body and its vulnerability as a connecting element.

The processes in which transitions are done throughout the body are complex and multi-layered. The body is a product, a recipient and a producer of (future) change, a means of experience and expression, and a reservoir of (past) transitional experiences and forms of knowledge. Thereby, the body opens up a level of reflection for the stability and dynamics, or the structuration and contingency – and thus the temporality – of social practice in transitions. The multidimensionality of materiality can therefore be seen as the examination of how the body and its materiality – in transition – is shaped and constructed in social practice, in socio-spatially situated, specific ways, thus becoming the hinge between the subject and the structure (cf. Villa, 2011).

The Role of Spaces in Life Course Transitions

As illustrated above, bodies always move in and through spaces – something that is also elucidated in the term transition as movement from one place to another. Life course transitions materialize, thus, not only in changing bodies, but also changing spaces. And in analogy to bodies, the processes in which transitions are done as spatial practices are multi-layered and complex: They form the spatial context in which transitions take place while at the same time they are constituted in practices – and are thus object of transitions; they play an active role in shaping, producing, and enacting practices in transition; and form the reservoir, the materialized memory of past and the materialization of planned (future) transitions. Thus, similar to the bodies that move in and through them, spaces, “are not absolute entities, but constantly (re)produced fabrics of social practices” (Kessl & Reutlinger, 2010, p. 7; see also the chapter by Freutel-Funke & Müller, Chap. 14, this volume).

Bourdieu’s concept of (incorporated) habitus cannot be thought of independently of the social and physical dimensions of space (cf. Bourdieu, 2018a, b). From such a perspective, social structures materialize in two co-constitutive aggregate states: “in materialized, objectified form (= habitat) and in incorporated, subjectified form (= habitus)” (Rieger-Ladich & Grabau, 2016, p. 108). Just as the bodily hexis can be understood as the product of social conditions and relations, the space or habitat can be understood as their product as well. Hence, and in opposition to a ‘container’ model of space, spaces “are not neutral protective shells [that] merely react to an elementary anthropological need: They are part of the “second nature“ that humans construct, and thus at the same time a social fact” (ibid.).

Precisely because spaces are not independent of socio-cultural conditions, it must be reflected that “the social power relations that inevitably come into view [...] do not remain external to the designed spaces” (ibid.). Thus, in dealing with spaces, there is also a need for an “understanding of the social processes that manifest themselves spatially and of the socially structuring power of spatial orders that takes into account relations of power and inequality” (Manderscheid, 2008, p. 168). Hence, spaces are strongly entangled in the (re-)production of social inequalities which ‘spatialise’ and may eventually lead to social and physical segregation (Löw, 2008) expressed in both the spatial-physical as well as symbolic arrangements.

Emphasizing the relations between the different dimensions of space outlined above – the material, the social in relationships and structures, and the symbolic-discursive, the actual practices and the imagination, the planning and building as well as the appropriation of space (Lefebvre, 1991; Löw, 2008). Spaces are both part of social practice and act in social practice, they are both products and producers. As Reckwitz (2012, p. 252) puts it:

Just as every complex of social practices arranges its artefacts and is arranged by them, every complex of social practices – organisational, private, public, subcultural etc. – produces its own spatiality: office spaces, public spaces, private spaces etc.

Space thus represents a multi-layered research phenomenon in reflexive and relational transition research that might encompass varied research projects. Hence, spaces can be products of transitions in the sense that they are shaped and constituted through social practices in the course of transitions, as much as they themselves may shape and co-produce transitions.

They thereby, on the one hand, form the material memory of past transitions as well as the material prospect of planned (future) transitions – exemplified as much in the cemetery as a place of memory of the last transition in a person’s life as in the house being built to found a family. On the other hand, spaces are not only the product, but also the co-producer of transitions, as they might limit or broaden action scopes and possibilities and form the material arrangements in which certain practices are more likely to happen than others. In the case of retirement, spatial practices visibly mark the boundary between work and retirement, for example refurbishing one’s home, relocating, or retirement travel. Many research participants went on such a transitional journey directly after their last working day, as Tom, a former developer, remembers:

We went on holiday straight away [...] practically without a break. So I stopped one day and the next day we went down to Spain. For four weeks. [...] That was also very important for me, and in retrospect it was a very good decision to take a holiday here straight away. Yes, and to have the distance then, yes. That was good. That was nice.

Travelling is not unique to retiring, but is part of the temporal-spatial structuring of many transitions, as exemplified in graduation trips or honeymoon vacations. Going on a holiday has even become a normalized part of annual transitions, like that from one half of the year to the other (and institutionalized, one school year to another). However, transitional travelling in general and retirement travel in particular differ from ordinary vacations in several aspects: they tend to take more time and lead to particularly remote destinations, from monasteries to far-away islands (depending on the financial resources). It is in these journeys that the extra-ordinariness that is so crucial for marking the transition as such in the first place (see the chapter by Wanka & Prescher, Chap. 10, this volume). Moreover, however, changes in place are also transformative themselves and thus co-constitute transitional processes, for example by inducing self-reflection in remoteness. Thereby, transitions not only spatialize (and thus materialize), but also spaces can be transitional.

Such transitional spaces become apparent in the following example from the project “Growing up in an individualized society”. The socio-pedagogical children and youth facility in which the analysis took place offers an open space that the children can use for themselves in different ways. It is accessible and they do not have to register. The observed situation refers to the arrival of the children in the facility. In front of the door of the facility, a dispute arises between the children, which the researcher describes as follows:

After some children have entered the institution, I hear loud voices and then screaming from the entrance hall, then I hear someone crying loudly. As I stand in the hallway, I can see that it is Nesrin who is crying and refuses to enter the building.

The scene takes place in front of the building of the children and youth facility with its voluntary offer. It remains unclear what the conflict is about and who is involved. Obviously, Nesrin has become a part of it, which is visible through her crying and her refusal to enter the space. Her refusal to enter the building can be interpreted as the expression that it is too painful for her, whether this is due to the situation taking place outside or to the facility itself. In any case, the conflict is powerful enough to interrupt her movement to enter the facility. Her crying while being immobile allows an understanding that she finds it too difficult or no longer attractive and helpful to enter despite the voluntariness of the offer. At the same time, she does not leave the place either, she does not simply give up and leave after the dispute. In fact, she appears stuck in a situation, which does not dissolve.

Particularly in a neighborhood that can be seen as deprived, an understanding for the importance of places that can be used with others of the same age emerges, especially in the time of early adolescence and the increasing importance of peers. Spaces thus also become understandable through the intersubjective relationships that unfold in them and give them meaning. This refers to the complexity of spaces not only in their material but also in their symbolic dimension. As a consequence, the relationships between bodies and spaces can be understood as interdependent. The socio-pedagogically designed space can be understood, following the scene, as a place of transition, it becomes an important place of experience and interaction and of the reality of life and one’s own biography. In this it can be stated that spaces not only symbolize or mark transitions, but in their subjective meaning also become significant places of transition.

The Role of Things in Life Course Transitions

Regarding things and transitions, we can refer above all to the work of Bruno Latour (2007) and the emphatically emphasized importance of non-human actors in social practice, which we want to argue also holds true in transition processes. When we therefore, again, approach materiality as multidimensional and things as complex and relational, things become relevant in different ways: as objects in transitional practices that shape them and make them visible, as products of transitions that memorialize and document them, or as transitional objects that can exert their own agential power in transition processes.

Their importance as objects in transitional practices, like a tuxedo or ball gown worn for a transition ceremony, can be explained by the fact that objects become effective as cultural and thus significant artifacts in social practice. Here, one can follow the argumentation of the French sociologist Bourdieu (2018a, b) and his emphasis on the relational embeddedness of materiality arguing that it is not arbitrary which things are valued and how they are used, i.e. how taste is constituted. This also reveals the relations between the different dimension of materiality discussed, namely bodies, spaces and things, as objectified taste is related to social space, habitat, and incorporated habitus, and thus also to structures of power and domination.

As bodies and spaces, also things carry meanings – emphasizing, again, that all practices are material-discursive in nature. Following Alfred Lorenzer, in recourse to Marx and Freud, “[n]ot only figures of speech, but also objects [...] function as carriers of collectively agreed meaning” (1981, p. 157). In this context objects can be interpreted and understood as in their “collectively agreed form” (ibid.) and as “coagulated social practice” (ibid.). In this, they are not neutral – instead, they convey social meaning, symbolic orders and cultural imperatives. But they can also be appropriated (differently), given subjective meaning and individual meanings, and become an expression of one’s own person and history, but also of transitions.

This can be exemplified with regard to a situation in the project “Growing Up in an Individualized Society” observed during a leisure time excursion of the (adolescent) girls’ group to the swimming pool:

I notice that Lara begins to cry loudly and some of the group is already with her to comfort her. Social worker Joseph also comes to Lara to ask her what is wrong. It turns out that Lara has brought two bikini tops instead of a bikini top and a bathing trunks and therefore cannot go swimming [...] Even when Joseph offers her one of the boys’ swim trunks that Joseph is carrying in a bag (these are old trunks that previous participants forgot) and suggests that Lara could try one of these, she doesn't calm down, instead insisting that she can’t go swimming.

Here, we want to focus on the gendered artefact of a boys’ bathing trunks and its significance for the social practice expressed through it. First of all, it needs being kept in mind that even if the situation is part of a leisure trip the overall framework is supporting young people from a disadvantaged context in in growing up ‘normally’ (see the chapter by Boll, Chap. 11, this volume). Growing up includes the demand to position oneself in the gendered order which especially in the phase of adolescence is a challenge which is compelling and risky. In this context, the socio-pedagogical work within a gender-separated group of girls can be understood as a special support for this process. Second, a swimming pool is a place in which bodies are visible and positioned in this gendered order in a particular way. Third, Lara’s social position as an 11-year-old girl on the onset of puberty and her subjective experience in this situation is insecure and vulnerable. in such a situation the object of bathing trunks is far from being neutral (even more if offered by a male social worker) but acts as a powerful symbol of this gendered order. For Lara and her still developing body, putting on a gendered object like boys’ bathing trunks is perceived as too ambiguous and as risk of being attributed a ‘wrong’ gender. Obviously, she would rather renounce to going swimming than exposing herself to an uncertain gender affiliation.

The vulnerability and insecurity of gender belonging, as symbolized by the bathing trunks, and of one’s own gender identity can thereby – and following the perspective of the chapter – also be described in connection with the body and space and emphasized in their mutual production. Lara’s refusal to put on the bathing trunks designed for boys provides access to her personal ambiguity, insecurity and vulnerability, but, moreover, also to the underlying gender order that structures her transition.

Such objects, then, can also become memories and documents of transitional practice – like the wedding gown that, once the wedding day has passed, might only serve as a material memory of that ritual as “objects that seem to hold one’s own history in contexts in which the individual is lost” (Emcke, 2016, p. 63). In their temporal dimension, objects can thus contain collective as well as individual (memories of) experiences and meanings; cultural imperatives and subjective occupation become effective in them and thus also meanings and contexts that can be used and reflected upon as an explanatory approach for the stability as well as for the dynamics of social practice. Things, thus, not only render visible the relation between different dimensions of materiality (bodies, spaces), but, secondly, the relation between materiality and temporality, and thirdly, the relation between different life course transitions. The story of Harald is illustrative here: At age 63, multiple transitions have cumulated in his life: He developed a serious illness, had to retire from work, his father died and his mother, whom he and his father had cared for, moved to a nursing home. Hence, Harald felt he had a lot to deal with and reflect upon: his own past, resembled in the transitions his parents had just gone through, his future, resembled in the new life stage ahead of him, but also his worry about whether or not his body and health would allow him to live it the way he wanted to. For Harald, all of this was materializing in his parents’ house. When his father died, and his mother decided to move to a nursing home, Harald inherited their house – the same house he had grown up in as a child. For the following year, Harald would spend his retirement cleaning, sorting out old stuff, looking through memories, and making plans for the future. He recalls:

For a year we have been cleaning out my parents’ house. That starts with a rag that you can easily throw away, and goes to photo albums, memories, or the cupboard filled with glasses and tableware.

In the future, Harald wishes that his daughter and the two grandchildren may move in at the basement:

The house, and the cleaning out – it reminds me that I have a past here; and when my children and grandchildren will move here, too, also a future.

Hence, the inherited house provides an anchor that links past, present and future, as well as the transitions of his parents, himself and his children. Moreover, it is agential in inducing relocations: The house, too big and unhandy for one care-dependent person, ‘makes’ Harald’s mother move away, and might ‘make’ Harald’s children move closer to him. Hence, the case shows how materiality does not only provide an intersection for linked transitions, but it also actively engages in the practices of linking them. Finally, following Latour (2007), we can ascribe things as non-human actors their own agency in transition processes, which can also take different shapes and forms. Some things might induce the right timing for a certain transition – like a (digital or analog) calendar detecting and reminding of somebody’s birthday or the days on which a person might get pregnant. Others might enable or prohibit certain transitions – like a passport that grants the right to work, a condom that prohibits pregnancy, or a pacemaker that both allows for certain new transitions as well as reduces the risk of others (e.g., serious illness or death).

Conclusions

This paper set out to demonstrate the added value of a relational, reflexive perspective on materiality and its multidimensionality – in bodies, things and spaces – in transition research.

Informed by the empirical examples from two projects studying transitions at two different margins of the life course, we could unveil how bodies, spaces, and things, and their relation matter in life course transitions. Speaking with Alkemeyer et al. (2015a, b, p. 9), the epistemic as well as empirical perspective of the article, when considering transitional processes, “allows us to explain social orders and their implicit as well as explicit normativity […] differently”. Hence, it can be noted how productive the theoretical and empirical examination of the multidimensionality of materiality is, how it can open up new ways of understanding and perspectives and offer more explanatory approaches than the mere reference to the contingency and stability of practice.

As the article has shown, bodies, spaces, and things can be interwoven into the practice of transitions in multiple and diverse ways. Their materiality can be understood as part of transitional processes, but at the same time they are produced as a product of these very processes. In addition, materiality also produces transitional practices as active agents. Simultaneously, practices of transition must also always be understood as those of time, which materialize in them as past and future transitions.

Even if the complexity unfolding in this could only be shown in its outlines within the article, Table 12.1 shall visualize and give a deepening impression of the possibilities unfolding above:

Table 12.1 Dimensions of materiality and how they matter
Full size table

Through this understanding, the body, in its complexity within social practice as well as in its role in processes of transition, becomes significant in particular ways and in relation to change: In life course transitions, the way the body is addressed as an object and thus constituted as a material entity changes, just as boundary-setting practices around the body change; the body as an idiosyncratic, biologically evolving agent can initiate or hinder transition processes as they advance or come to a halt; the body stores transitional histories (including across generations) and is also the main resource for future transitions. This also applies to spaces and things: On the one hand, they are materialized history. They form the contexts and frames in which transitions take place. At the same time, as part of social practice, transitions are always constituted through space and things; thus, they also form the materialized memory of past and the materialization of planned (future) transitions. On the other hand, things serve as “memory keepers” and, at the same time, enact their own kind of temporality on people’s lives by anchoring them to a material thing (and often to a particular place as a result), thus structuring the ways in which their transitions can unfold. They can be products, initiators, and documents of transitions. Through them, lives that intersect in materialities and touch different generations connect past, present, and future transitions. Thus, they pave the way for and narrow down the space/scope for negotiation/agency of human actors involved in doing transitions. Whereas bodies, spaces and things might matter differently in transitions, our empirical examples have also shown how heavily entangled and related these three dimensions of materiality are: Bodies move through spaces and act with things; the spatial arrangements of bodies and things constitute places; and all three dimensions together can mark or hide, facilitate or hinder, materialize and memorize life course transitions of the past and the present, and structure those to come in the future. Hence, we can conclude that not only these different dimensions of materiality are entangled among each other, but these dimensions of materiality are also entangled with different dimensions of temporality (past, present, and future). In materiality, and this can be described as a realization of the considerations, different and many-sided temporalities are thus always expressed. The Life course and its transitions are often perceived as predominantly temporal (phases, processes, timelines) – on the backdrop of our results, however, and through a materialist and practice-theoretical lens, we propose to theoretically acknowledge and empirical grasp the connections between the multidimensionality of materiality the complexity of temporality. This is particularly significant for reflexive transition research. Materiality, thus, makes transitions transcend time. Transitions and the multidimensionality of both materiality and temporality are entangled in complex ways, together creating tempo-material processes of practice change.