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Slides from a presentation on the use of mobile digital devices for health promotion. Sociological critique of how these devices may make people think of their bodies and health in different ways. Presented at the 'Surveillence In/And Everyday Life' conference, University of Sydney, 21 February 2012.
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M-HEALTH TECHNOLOGIES: CONFIGURING BODIES AND HEALTH IN SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY
Deborah Lupton, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney
What is m-health?
• Using Web 2.0 platforms incorporating:• social media such as Facebook, YouTube,
Twitter, blogs and wikis • mobile wireless computer technologies such
as smartphones and tablet computers• to measure health indices, provide treatment
regimens and promote health.
Medical biometric devices
• Smart pill boxes• Blood glucose• Blood chemistry readings• Blood pressure, heart rate and cardiac output
readings • Movement sensors
Commercial health apps
• Exercise programs• Digitalised scales and blood pressure devices• Menstrual cycles and ovulation patterns• Sleep patterns• Hearing tests• Pregnancy and labour logs• Fat and lean body mass using a caliper• Alcohol intake
Theorising the body/machine interface
• The cyborg body• The post-human body• The surveillant medical gaze• Surveillant assemblages• Data-doubles• Participatory surveillance
Some new approaches …
• The spectacular body• Prosthetic culture• Technology use as performance• Domesticating technologies – the social life of
things
Exhibit from Body Worlds
Example of medical app
Stelarc – Third Hand
Stelarc – Third Ear
Theorising Stelarc’s work
Electronic sensory becomes our new sensory skinThe body performing beyond the boundaries of its skinThe body as a nexus or node of collaborating agents‘We are all Stelarcs now’
Future research questions
• What are the implications for subjectivities and embodiment in the world of m-health?
• How are the assemblages of m-health technologies/practices/flesh enacted and lived?
• What are the political dimensions and power relations inherent in the use of these technologies?
• How will privacy (or loss of privacy) be defined and experienced in the context of these media?
• What are the implications for how people conduct their everyday lives and intimate relationships?
More specifically …
• Will the ‘nagging voices’ of the health promoting messages automatically issuing forth from a person’s mobile device be eventually ignored by its user?
• Will m-health technologies produce a cyborg, post-human self in which the routine collection of data about bodily actions and functions is simply incorporated unproblematically into the user’s sense of selfhood and embodiment?
• How will concepts of ‘health’ itself be shaped and understood in a context in which one’s biometric indicators may be constantly measured, analysed and displayed publicly?
• Will the ‘objective’ measurements offered by mobile devices take precedence over the ‘subjective’ assessments offered by the senses of the fleshly body?