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1 – 10 of 748Purpose: As biomedicine grants technology and quantification privileged roles in our cultural constructions of health, media and technology play an increasingly important role in…
Abstract
Purpose: As biomedicine grants technology and quantification privileged roles in our cultural constructions of health, media and technology play an increasingly important role in mediating our everyday experiences of our bodies and may contribute to the reproduction of gendered norms.
Design: This study draws from a broad variety of disciplines to contextualize and interpret contemporary trends in self-quantification, focusing on metrics for health and fitness. I will also draw from psychology and feminist scholarship on objectification and body-surveillance.
Findings: I interpret body-tracking tools as biomedical technologies of self-surveillance that facilitate and encourage control of human bodies, while solidifying demands for standardization around neoliberal values of enhancement and optimization. I also argue that body-tracking devices reinforce and normalize the scrutiny of human bodies in ways that may reproduce and advance longstanding gender disparities in detriment of women.
Implications: A responsible conceptualization, design, implementation, and usage of health-tracking technologies requires us to recognize and better understand how technologies with widely touted benefits also have the potential to reinforce and extend inequalities, alter subjective experiences and produce damaging outcomes, especially among certain groups. I conclude by proposing some alternatives for devising technologies or encouraging practices that are sensitive to these differences and acknowledge the validity of alternative values.
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Some of today's most widely used technologies do not seem conducive to self-care, and consequently they do not nourish us as selves. Rather, in today's most lauded sociotechnical…
Abstract
Some of today's most widely used technologies do not seem conducive to self-care, and consequently they do not nourish us as selves. Rather, in today's most lauded sociotechnical systems, from Google search to Facebook, users' participation (free labor) is commodified and channeled into corporate profits. Users do engage in self-focused activities, such as posting selfies and status updates, but these do not have the character of self-care. This amounts to self-obsession without self-consideration. An illustration is given by comparing the early-modern artistic practice of self-portraiture with the modern-day smartphone practice of selfie-making. Self-portraiture has been shown to be conducive to self-care, whereas the selfie by and large is not. This comparison invites strategies for injecting self-care into selfie-making technology, as an entree into designing for self-care generally. These strategies include jardin secret, self-questioning, and multiplicity.
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Luke Jones, Tim Konoval and John Toner
The purpose of this chapter is to promote the importance, utility and necessity of applying a sociocultural lens to the analysis of the normalized appropriation of surveillance…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this chapter is to promote the importance, utility and necessity of applying a sociocultural lens to the analysis of the normalized appropriation of surveillance technologies and wearables across sports settings.
Approach
The chapter synthesizes existing literature that has embraced a sociocultural lens to examine the implications of the increasingly normalized adoption of surveillance technologies in sport settings. In doing so we hope to provoke discussion regarding the contemporary effects of technologies in order that they may be better understood by not only sports scholars but those who operate within sport. To achieve this aim, we provide an exemplar of how Michel Foucault's concepts have been a useful heuristic for this endeavour.
Findings
Within the highly commercialized and spectacularized domain of corporate sport, the performing athletic body has become a commodity of vital importance. Correspondingly, sports practitioners across the globe have rallied to devise innovative ways to train, protect and improve athletes. As this chapter details, one of the main ways in which this project has occurred is through the increased appropriation of wearable (and increasingly invasive) surveillance technologies. A major finding from existing literature is that surveillance technologies can contribute to the unproblematized production of compliant athletic commodities in sports settings. Moreover, that this can have significant limiting outcomes for athletes' development and well-being and coaches' practices.
Research limitations/implications (if applicable)
The chapter argues for three future ‘touchstone’ areas of study: Surveillance technologies and athlete retirement, unintended consequences of more technology and resisting the regulatory intentions of behavioural nudges.
Originality/value
This chapter provides one of the first summaries of the socioculturally informed research that has examined the implications of the increasingly normalized presence of surveillance technologies across sports settings. In doing so, it also acts as one of the first resources designed to help those who coach and develop athletes to reflect upon the significant dangers and limiting outcomes that can be associated with the unconsidered deployment of surveillance technology.
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Karolin Eva Kappler, Agnieszka Krzeminska and Eryk Noji
Nowadays there are many digital tools and mediatised ways for self-tracking for the sake of gaining self-knowledge through numbers. In his recent book ‘Resonance’, Hartmut Rosa…
Abstract
Nowadays there are many digital tools and mediatised ways for self-tracking for the sake of gaining self-knowledge through numbers. In his recent book ‘Resonance’, Hartmut Rosa suggests that artefacts can indeed resonate with people (Rosa, 2016, p. 381ff.) by affecting emotion, intrinsic interests and self-efficacy expectations. In contrast, Rosa characterises self-tracking as an attempt to measure the resource potential of individuals, confounding it with the good life itself (Rosa, 2016, p. 47). That is why we want to challenge Rosa’s concept of a good life and enhance the assertion of individual and social practices that can generate resonance.
With several case studies, we want to study empirically how people ‘resonate’ (or not) with and in self-tracking practices and to which degree Rosa’s hypothesis is verifiable or not. By empirically contrasting the quantifying practices and metric culture of self-tracking with the recently emerging sociological field of ‘world relationships’ and ‘resonance’, new insights on the embedding of the quantified with the qualified self will be gained.
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Anna Bos-Nehles and Maarten Van Riemsdijk
The social innovation of devolving HRM responsibilities to line managers results in many debates about how well they implement HRM practices. The implementation constraints line…
Abstract
Purpose
The social innovation of devolving HRM responsibilities to line managers results in many debates about how well they implement HRM practices. The implementation constraints line managers perceive in their HRM role are researched by taking organisational contingencies into consideration.
Design/Methodology/Approach
We present four case studies in which our findings are based on quantitative and qualitative data from the cases. The qualitative data allow us to explain some of our quantitative results in terms of organisational differences.
Findings
The HRM implementation effectiveness as perceived by line managers depends on the line managers’ span of control, his/her education level and experience and his/her hierarchical position in the organisation. Each HRM implementation constraint knows additional organisational contingencies.
Research Limitations/Implications
We did not consider possible influences of one organisational characteristic on another, and the effect of this combined effect on the HRM implementation factors. In order to overcome this limitation, we would suggest using a structural equation model (SEM) in future research.
Practical Implications
This chapter offers HR professionals solutions on how to structure the organisation and design the HRM role of line managers in order to implement HRM practices effectively.
Social Implications
We see many differences on how HRM implementation is managed in organisations. This chapter offers solutions to policy makers on how to equalise the HRM role of line managers.
Originality/Value
The focus of this chapter is on the line manager (instead of HR managers) as implementer of HRM and the impact of organisational contingencies on HRM implementation.
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