AAM Self monitoring as care 300720 with authors.pdf (426.11 kB)
Negotiating the practical ethics of ‘self-tracking’ in intimate relationships: looking for care in healthy living
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 21:45 authored by Catherine WillCatherine Will, Flis Henwood, Kate Weiner, Rosalind WilliamsIn this paper, we offer insights into practices of tracking as part of healthy living through talk about home blood pressure and weight from adults living in the UK. Drawing on theoretical resources from feminist ethics of care and Science and Technology Studies on care as socio-material practice, we build on interest in the relational dimensions of tracking and the potential for intimate surveillance and care using monitoring technologies. Our cases offer not only new perspectives in a field that has often focused on fitness tracking but also help go beyond a narrow focus on surveillance, showing how surveillance and care may be intertwined in the everyday negotiation of health-related tracking and other ‘health practices’ in family life. Using the diversity in our relatively large sample, and reflecting on the different types of interview completed, we highlight the varied ways in which adults engage with tracking blood pressure and weight (or body mass index) in the context of established relationships. The combination of attentiveness and appeals to responsibility for maintaining health as something owed to a partner can make tracking a very ethically sensitive area. In this paper we emphasise that reciprocity is one important way in which couples make tracking feel more like care. Tracking together or discussing it can take couples in this direction even if the actual practice remains somewhat difficult. On the other hand, responsiveness to someone else's feelings, including a desire to avoid the topic altogether, or avoid weight as a specific parameter, might all help move towards more caring tracking. We therefore develop a more sustained account of care in relation to tracking than in previous work, and a novel account of tracking as a (potential) care practice between adult partners.
Funding
Knowledge, care and the practices of self-monitoring; G1940; LEVERHULME TRUST
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
Social Science & MedicineISSN
0277-9536Publisher
ElsevierExternal DOI
Volume
266Article number
a113301Department affiliated with
- Sociology and Criminology Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2020-10-05First Open Access (FOA) Date
2021-09-10First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2020-10-05Usage metrics
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