Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Installing telecare, installing users

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

Installing telecare, installing users: Felicity conditions for the instauration of usership

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
Close
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>09/2014
<mark>Journal</mark>Science, Technology, and Human Values
Issue number5
Volume39
Number of pages26
Pages (from-to)694-719
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date9/01/14
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This article reports on ethnographic research into the practical and ethical consequences of the implementation and use of telecare devices for older people living at home in Spain and the United Kingdom. Telecare services are said to allow the maintenance of their users’ autonomy through connectedness, relieving the isolation from which many older people suffer amid rising demands for care. However, engaging with Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature on “user configuration” and implementation processes, we argue here that neither services nor users preexist the installation of the service: they are better described as produced along with it. Moving beyond design and appropriation practices, our contribution stresses the importance of installations as specific moments where such emplacements take place. Using Etienne Souriau’s concept of instauration, we describe the ways in which, through installation work, telecare services “bring into existence” their very infrastructure of usership. Hence, both services and telecare users are effects of fulfilling the “felicity conditions” (technical, relational, and contractual) of an achieved installation.