Quand la personne âgée atteinte de démence est un être capable

Based on contemporary social theories, including the theories of care, this article sketches a sociology of care, the terrain of which is constituted by an ethnography conducted in five long-term care institutions that host elderly people suffering from dementia. Driven by the ideal of autonomy, these institutions have adopted a psychogeriatric intervention method based on the Montessori method of education that promotes a new « form of coordination » in the care relationship. This form, « doing with », presupposes that the caregiver and the cared-for are active subjects of the relationship, which becomes symmetrical while the two partners in co-presence interact with more or less equal intensity. « Doing with » coexists with three other forms of « taking care », in which the acting of the caregiver and the acting of the person being cared for differ in intensity : « doing without », « making do » and « doing for ». Locating the « doing with » within these other forms of « taking care » will give us the opportunity to recompose the moral territory in which it stands and to consider the care relationship according to the degrees of autonomy it distributes and arranges