Ageing, embodiment and datafication: Dynamics of power in digital health and care technologies
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
As a growing body of work has documented, digital technologies are central to the imagining of aging futures. In this study, we offer a critical, theoretical framework for exploring the dynamics of power related to the technological tracking, measuring, and managing of aging bodies at the heart of these imaginaries. Drawing on critical gerontology, feminist technoscience, sociology of the body, and socio-gerontechnology, we identify three dimensions of power relations where the designs, operations, scripts, and materialities of technological innovation implicate asymmetrical relationships of control and intervention: (1) aging bodies and the power of numbers, (2) aging spaces and the power of surveillance, and (3) age care economies and gendered power relations. While technological care for older individuals has been promoted as a cost-effective way to enhance independence, security, and health, we argue that such optimistic perspectives may obscure the realities of social inequality, agist bias, and exploitative gendered care labour.
Metrics
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Since 2020 the International Journal of Ageing and Later Life uses a Creative Commons: Attribution license, which allows users to distribute the work and to reform or build upon it without the author's permission. Full reference to the author must be given.
References
Aceros, J. C., Pols, J. & Domènech, M. (2015). Where is grandma? Home telecare, good aging and the domestication of later life. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 93: 102–111. doi: 10.1016/j. techfore.2014.01.016
Aging Analytics. (2019). Longevity Industry Landscape Overview 2019. London: Aging Analytics Agency.
Barakat, S., Woolrych, R. D., Sixsmith, A., Kearns, W. & Kort, H. S. M. (2013). eHealth technology competencies for health professionals working in home care to support older adults to age in place: Outcomes of a two-day collaborative workshop. Medicine 2.0 2(2): e10. doi: 10.2196/med20.2711
Barnes, M., Henwood, F. & Smith, N. (2016). Information and care: A relational approach. Dementia 15(4): 510–525. doi: 10.1177/147130121 4527750
Beer, D. (2016). Metric Power: London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after Technology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Berg, A. J. (1994). A gendered socio-technical construction: The smart house. In C. Cockburn & R. Fürst-Dili (eds.), Bringing Technology Home: Gender and Technology in a Changing Europe (pp. 165–180). Buckingham: Open University Press.
Bergschöld, J. M. (2018). Configuring dementia: How nursing students are taught to shape the sociopolitical role of gerontechnologies. Frontiers in Sociology 3: 1–13. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2018.00003
Bergschöld, J. M., Neven, L. & Peine, A. (2020). DIY gerontechnology: Circumventing mismatched technologies and bureaucratic procedure by creating care technologies of one’s own. Sociology of Health and Illness 42(2): 232–246. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.13012
Berridge, C. (2016). Breathing room in monitored space: The impact of passive monitoring technology on privacy in independent living. The Gerontologist 56(5): 807–816. doi: 10.1093/geront/gnv034
Berridge, C. (2017). Active subjects of passive monitoring: Responses to a passive monitoring system in low-income independent living. Ageing and Society 37(3): 537–560. doi: 10.1017/S0144686X15001269
Berridge, C., Chan, K. T. & Choi, Y. (2019). Sensor-based passive remote monitoring and discordant values: Qualitative study of the experiences of low-income immigrant elders in the United States. JMIR mHealth and uHealth 7(3), e11516. doi: 10.2196/11516
Berridge, C. & Wetle, T. F. (2019). Why older adults and their children disagree about in-home surveillance technology, sensors, and tracking. The Gerontologist 60(5): 926–934. doi: 10.1093/geront/gnz068
Carver, L. & MacKinnon, D. (2020). Health applications of gerontechnology, privacy, and surveillance: A scoping review. Surveillance & Society 18(2): 216–230. doi: 10.24908/ss.v18i2.13240
Chivers, S. (2018). Not an activist? Ableism meets ageism in the Canadian media. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 12(1): 107–109. doi: 10.3828/jlcds.2018.7
Chung, J., Demiris, G. & Thompson, H. J. (2015). Obtrusiveness of a smart home application as perceived by Korean American older adults. The Gerontologist 55(Suppl2): 381. doi: 10.1093/geront/gnv174.05
Couclelis, H. (2009). Rethinking time geography in the information age. Environment and Planning A 41(7): 1556–1575. doi: 10.1068/a4151
Cowan, R. S. (1983). More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. New York: Basic Books.
D’Ignazio, C. & Klein, L. F. (2020). Data Feminism. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Dalmer, N. K. (2018). Informing Care: Mapping the Social Organization of Families’ Information Work in an Aging in Place Climate [Doctoral dissertation]. The University of Western Ontario.
Dalmer, N. K. (2020). “Add info and stir”: An institutional ethnographic scoping review of family care-givers’ information work. Ageing & Soci¬ety 40(3): 663–689. doi: 10.1017/S0144686X18001125
de La Bellacasa, M. P. (2011). Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things. Social Studies of Science 41(1): 85–106. doi: 10.1177/0306312710380301
Dominguez-Rué, E. & Nierling, L. (2016). Ageing and Technology. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.
Eyssel, F. & Hegel, F. (2012). (S)he’s got the look: Gender stereotyping of robots. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 42(9): 2213–2230. doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2012.00937.x
Forma SafeHome. (n.d.). Secure independent living experience [Company website]. 30 November. Available on https://www.formasafehome. com/rosie
Fotopoulou, A. (2019). Understanding citizen data practices from a feminist perspective. In H. Stephansen & E. Trere (eds.), Citizen Media and Practice (pp. 227–242). New York: Routledge.
Fotopoulou, A. & O’Riordan, K. (2016). Training to self-care: Fitness tracking, biopedagogy and the healthy consumer. Health Sociology Review 26(1): 1–15. doi: 10.1080/14461242.2016.1184582
Fox, S., Duggan, M. & Purcell, K. (2013). Family Caregivers are Wired for Health. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.
Garg, V., Camp, L. J., Lorenzen-Huber, L., Shankar, K. & Connelly, K. (2014). Privacy concerns in assisted living technologies. Annals of Telecommunications-Annales des Télécommunications 69(1): 75–88. doi: 10.1007/s12243-013-0397-0
Gilleard, C. & Higgs, P. (2021). Agents or actants: What technology might make of later life? In A. Peine, B. L. Marshall, W. Martin & L. Neven (eds.), Socio-Gerontechnology: Interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Ageing and Technology (pp. 99–111). New York: Routledge.
Ghosh, R., Lindeman, D., Ratan, S. & Steinmitz, V. (2014). The New Era of Connected Aging: A Framework for Understanding Technologies that Sup¬port Older Adults in Aging in Place. Centre for Technology and Aging, University of California. 15 November. Available on http://www. techandaging.org/ConnectedAgingFramework.pdf
Haggerty, K. D. & Ericson, R. V. (2000). The surveillant assemblage. British Journal of Sociology 51(4): 605–622. doi: 10.1080/00071310020015280
Höppner, G. & Urban, M. (2019). Materialities of age and ageing. Frontiers in Sociology 4(14). doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2019.00014
Huber, L. L., Shankar, K., Caine, K., Connelly, K., Camp, L. J., Walker, B. A. & Borrero, L. (2013). How in-home technologies mediate caregiving relationships in later life. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 29(7): 441–455. doi: 10.1080/10447318.2012.715990
Joyce, K. (2021). Encountering aging, science, and technology: Whose future? Whose definition of aging? In A. Peine, B. L. Marshall, W. Martin & L. Neven (eds.), Socio-Gerontechnology: Interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Ageing and Technology (pp. 189–194). New York: Routledge.
Joyce, K. & Loe, M. (2010). Technogenarians: Studying Health and Illness Through an Ageing, Science, and Technology Lens. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Kamp, A., Obstfelder, A. & Andersson, K. (2019). Welfare technolo¬gies in care work. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies 9(S5): 1–12. doi: 10.18291/njwls.v9iS5.112692
Katz, S. & Marshall, B. L. (2018). Tracked and fit: FitBits, brain games, and the quantified aging body. Journal of Aging Studies 45: 63–68. doi: 10.1016/j.jaging.2018.01.009
Kutney, M. E. & Wilson, K. (2019). Age-tech will be huge for the silver economy. Policy Options Politiques, 5 January. Available on https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/october-2019/age-tech-will-be-huge-for-the-silver-economy/
Lewis, T. (2015). Rise of the Fembots: Why artificial intelligence is often female. Live Science, 5 January. Available on www.livescience. com/49882-why-robots-female.html
López Gómez, D. (2015). Little arrangements that matter. Rethinking autonomy-enabling innovations for later life. Technological Forecast and Social Change 93: 91–101. doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2014.02.015
Lupton, D. (2016). The diverse domains of quantified selves: Self-tracking modes and dataveillance. Economy and Society 45(1): 101–122. doi: 10.1080/03085147.2016.1143726
Mahler, M. & Sarvimäki, A. (2010). Indispensable chairs and comforting cushions: Falls and the meaning of falls in six older persons lives. Journal of Aging Studies 24: 88–98. doi: 10.1016/j.jaging.2008.11.003
Marshall, B. L. (2018). Our Fitbits, our (ageing) selves: Wearables, self-tracking and ageing embodiment. In S. Katz (Ed.), Ageing in everyday life: Materialities and embodiments (pp. 197–213). Policy Press.
Marshall, B. L., & Katz, S. (2016). How old am I? Digital Culture & Society 2(1): 145–152. doi: 10.14361/dcs-2016-0110
Marier, P. (2021). Four Lenses of Population Aging: Planning for the Future in Canada’s Provinces. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Martin, A., Myers, N. & Viseu, A. (2015). The politics of care in technoscience. Social Studies of Science 45(5): 625–641. doi: 10.1177/030631271 5602073
Mejias, U. A. & Couldry, N. (2019). Datafication. Internet Policy Review 8: 1–10. doi: 10.14763/2019.4.1428
Milligan, C. (2009). There’s No Place Like Home: Place and Care in an Ageing Society. Farnham: Ashgate.
Milligan, C. & Power, A. (2010). The changing geography of care. In T. Brown, S. McLafferty & G. Moon (eds.), A Companion to Health and Medical Geography (pp. 567–586). Oxford: Wiley.
Mol, A., Moser, I. & Pols, J. (2010). Care: Putting practice into theory. In A. Mol, I. Moser & J. Pols (eds.), Care in Practice: On Tinkering in Clinics, Homes and Farms (pp. 7–25). Bielefeld: Transcript.
Moreira, T. (2017). Science, Technology and the Ageing Society. London: Routledge.
Moreira, T. (2019). Anticipatory measure: Alex Comfort, experimental gerontology and the measure of senescence. History and Philosophy of iological and Biomedical Sciences 77, 101179. doi: 10.1016/j. shpsc.2019. 101179
Mortenson, W. B., Sixsmith, A. & Woolrych (2015). The power(s) of observation: theoretical perspectives on surveillance technologies and older people. Ageing & Society 35(3): 512–530. doi: 10.1017/ S0144686X13000846
Mortenson, W. B., Sixsmith, A. & Beringer, R. (2016). No place like home? Surveillance and what home means in old age. Canadian Journal on Aging 35(1): 103–114. doi: 10.1017/S0714980815000549
Murphy, M. (2016). What can’t a body do? Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 3(1): 1–15. doi: 10.28968/cftt.v3i1.28791
Nafus, D. & Sherman, J. (2014). This one does not go up to 11: The quantified self-movement as an alternative to big data practice. The International Journal of Communications 8: 1785–1794.
Neff, G. & Nafus, D. (2016). Self-Tracking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Neven, L. (2010). “But obviously not for me”: Robots, laboratories and the defiant identity of elder test users. Sociology of Health & Illness 32(2): 157–168. doi: 10.1002/9781444391541.ch12
Neven, L. (2015). By any means? Questioning the link between gerontechnological innovation and older people’s wish to live at home. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 93: 32–43. doi: 10.1016/j. techfore.2014.04.016
Neven, L. & Peine, A. (2017). From triple win to triple sin: How a problematic future discourse is shaping the way people age with technology. Societies 7(3): 26. doi: 10.3390/soc7030026
Neves, B. & Vetere, F. (eds.). (2019). Ageing and Digital Technology: Designing and Evaluating Emerging Technologies for Older Adults. Singapore: Springer.
Neves, B. B., Waycott, J. & Malta, S. (2018). Old and afraid of new communication technologies? Reconceptualising and contesting the “age-based digital divide.” Journal of Sociology 54(2): 236–248. doi: 10.1177/1440783318766119
Oudshoorn, N. (2012). How places matter: Telecare technologies and the changing spatial dimension of healthcare. Social Studies of Science 42(1): 121–142. doi: 10.1177/0306312711431817
Oudshoorn, N., Neven, L. & Stienstra, M. (2016). How diversity gets lost: Age and gender in design practices of information and communication technologies. Journal of Women & Aging 28(2): 170–185. doi: 10.1080/08952841.2015.1013834
Oxlund, B. (2012). Living by numbers. Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 37(3): 42–56.
Oxlund, B. & Whyte, S. R. (2014). Measuring and managing bodies in the later life course. Journal of Population Ageing 7(3): 217–230. doi: 10.1007/ s12062-014-9104-9
Pantzar, M. & Ruckenstein, M. (2017). Living the metrics: Self-tracking and situated objectivity. Digital Health 3: 1–10. doi: 10.1177/2055207617712590
Peek, S. T. M., Aarts, S. & Wouters, E. J. M. (2017). Can smart home technology deliver on the promise of independent living? A critical reflection based on the perspectives of older adults. In J. van Hoof, G. Demiris & E. J. M. Wouters (eds.), Handbook of Smart Homes, Health Care and Well-Being (pp. 203–214). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Peine, A., Marshall, B. L., Martin, W. & Neven, L. (eds.), (2021). Socio-Gerontechnology: Interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Ageing and Technology. New York: Routledge.
Peine, A. & Neven, L. (2019). From intervention to co-constitution: New directions in theorizing about aging and technology. The Gerontologist 59(1): 15–21. doi: 10.1093/geront/gny050
Peine, A. & Neven, L. (2021). The co-constitution of ageing and technology – a model and agenda. Ageing and Society 41(12): 2845–2866. doi: 10.1017/S0144686X20000641
Pickard, S. (2011). Health, illness and normality: The case of old age. BioSocieties 6(3): 323–341. doi: 10.1057/biosoc.2011.10
Pol, M., van Nes, F., van Hartingsveldt, M., Buurman, B., de Rooij, S. & Kröse, B. (2016). Older people’s perspectives regarding the use of sen¬sor monitoring in their home. The Gerontologist 56(3): 485–493. doi: 10.1093/geront/gnu104
Pols, J. & Moser, I. (2009). Cold technologies versus warm care? On affective and social relations with and through care technologies. Alter: European Journal of Disability Research 3(2): 159–178. doi: 10.1016/j. alter.2009.01.003
Pols, J., Willems, D. L. & Aanestad, M. (2019). Making sense with numbers: Unravelling ethico-psychological subjects in practices of self-quantification. Sociology of Health & Illness 41: 98–115. doi: 10.1111/ 1467-9566.12894
Prendergast, D. & Garattini, C. (eds.) (2015). Aging and the Digital Life Course. New York: Berghahn Books.
Roberts, C., Mackenzie, A. & Mort, M. (2019). Living Data: Making Sense of Health Bio-Sensing. Bristol: Bristol University Press.
Roberts, C. & Mort, M. (2009). Reshaping what counts as care: Older people, work and new technologies. Alter: European Journal of Disability Research 3(2): 138–158. doi: 10.1016/j.alter.2009.01.004
Rosales, A. & Fernández-Ardèvol, M. (2020). Ageism in the era of digital platforms. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 26(5–6): 1074–1087. doi: 10.1177/1354856520930905
Ruckenstein, M. (2014). Visualized and interacted life: Personal analytics and engagements with data doubles. Societies 4(1): 68–84. doi: 10.3390/ soc4010068
Sanders, R. (2017). Self-tracking in the digital era: Biopower, patriarchy, and the new biometric body projects. Body & Society 23(1): 36–63. doi: 10.1177/1357034X16660366
Schwennesen, N. (2019). Algorithmic assemblages of care: Imaginaries, epistemologies and repair work. Sociology of Health & Illness 41(S1): 176–192. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12900
Sharon, T. & Zandbergen, D. (2016). From data fetishism to quantifying selves: Self-tracking practices and the other values of data. New Media & Society 19(11): 1695–1709. doi: 10.1177/1461444816636090
Smith, A. (2014). Older Adults and Technology Use. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.
Smith, G. J. D. & Vonhethoff, J. D. (2016). Health by numbers? Exploring the practice and experience of datafied health. Health Sociology Review 26(1): 6–21. doi: 10.1080/14461242.2016.1196600
Sousa, I. (2013). New technologies and concepts of care. In P. Armstrong & S. Braedley (eds.), Troubling Care: Critical Perspectives on Research and Practices (pp. 129–142). Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press.
Storelli, E. (2010). Aging in Place: Smith, Media Texts and the Invisible Gendered Caregiver. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Center for the Study of Women.
Strengers, Y. & Kennedy, J. (2020). The Smart Wife: Why Siri, Alexa, and Other Smart Home Devices Need a Feminist Reboot. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Taipale, S., Wilska, T.-A. & Gilleard, C. (eds.). (2018). Digital Technologies and Generational Identity: ICT Usage across the Life Course. New York: Routledge.
Tay, B., Jung, Y. & Park, T. (2014). When stereotypes meet robots: The double-edge sword of robot gender and personality in human-robot interaction. Computers in Human Behavior 38: 75–84. doi: 10.1016/ j.chb.2014.05.014
Toner, J. (2018). Exploring the dark-side of fitness trackers: Normalization, objectification and the anaesthetisation of human experience. Performance Enhancement & Health 6(2): 75–81. doi: 10.1016/j.peh.2018.06.001
Urban, M. (2021). Topographies of ageing: A new materialist analysis of ageing-in-place. In A. Peine, B. L. Marshall, W. Martin & L. Neven (eds.), Socio-Gerontechnology: Interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Ageing and Technology (pp. 56–69). New York: Routledge.
Van Hees, S., Wanka, A. & Horstman, K. (2021). Making and unmaking ageing-in-place: Towards a co-constructive understanding of ageing and place. In A. Peine, B. L. Marshall, W. Martin & L. Neven (eds.), Socio-Gerontechnology: Interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Ageing and Technology (pp. 133–146). New York: Routledge.
Wachter-Boettcher, S. (2017). Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech. New York: W. W. Norton.
Wanka, A. & Gallistl, V. (2018). Doing age in a digitized world – A material praxeology of aging with technology. Frontiers in Sociology: Sociological Theory 3: 1–16. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2018.00006
Winance, M. (2010). Care and disability. Practices of experimenting, tinkering with, and arranging people and technical aids. In A. Mol, I. Moser & J. Pols (eds.), Care in Practice: On Tinkering in Clinics, Homes and Farms (pp. 93–117). Bielefeld: Transcript.
Woods, O. & Kong, L. (2020). New cultures of care? The spatio-temporal modalities of home-based smart eldercare technologies in Singapore. Social & Cultural Geography 21(9): 1307–1327. doi: 10.1080/ 14649365.2018.1550584
Woods, T. (2019). “Age-tech”: The next frontier market for technology disruption. Forbes Magazine, 5 January. Available on https://www. forbes.com/sites/tinawoods/2019/02/01/age-tech-the-next-frontier-market-for-technology-disruption/