M-health technologies: configuring bodies and health in surveillance society

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 workElectronic sensory becomes our new sensoryskinThe body performing beyond the boundaries ofits skinThe body as a nexus or node of collaboratingagents‘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?

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M-health technologies: configuring bodies and health in surveillance society

by Deborah Lupton on Jun 08, 2012

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M-health technologies: configuring bodies and health in surveillance society Presentation Transcript