Aging and anti-aging discourses in refused knowledge communities: the alkaline water case

This paper analyses discourses about ageing and anti-ageing practices in refused knowledge communities in their contrast to the practices of institutional and orthodox knowledge and, at the same time, in mimicking them. The study is based on web-ethnographic observation (Hine 2015; Markham 2016) of the online sites for the promotion of alkaline water production devices conducted in the months of January-June 2020, marked by the emergence of the Covid-19 health crisis in Italy. The analysis, inscribed in the theoretical frame proposed by the Social Studies of Science and Technology, focuses on web communities supporting and promoting alkalisation through water drinking and diet as anti-ageing practices and associated to commercialisation networks of technological devices producing alkaline water at home. The research highlights the ambivalence in the discourses circulating within these communities, on the one hand, and in their relationship with orthodox medicine discourse, on the other.