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Redrawing Boundaries Around the Self: The Case of Self-Quantifying Technologies

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Quantified Lives and Vital Data

Part of the book series: Health, Technology and Society ((HTE))

Abstract

Drawing on a 4-year ethnographic analysis of the ‘Quantified Self’, Dudhwala explores how personal medical devices (PMDs) in the form of self-quantifying technologies seem to be facilitating a new boundary around that which we would traditionally call the ‘self’ or the ‘body’. Dudhwala argues, using the sensibilities of science and technology studies, that rather than self-quantifying technologies reflecting a stable self, or body, already ‘out there’ waiting to be depicted through the data they produce, the self-quantifying technologies are an inextricable part of the multiple enactments of the self and the body and thus cannot be separated from the practices of using them.

All interview material used in this chapter was gained with informed consent and is used with permission.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Farzana Dudhwala

Authors
  1. Farzana Dudhwala
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Farzana Dudhwala .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom

    Rebecca Lynch

  2. School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Conor Farrington

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

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Dudhwala, F. (2018). Redrawing Boundaries Around the Self: The Case of Self-Quantifying Technologies. In: Lynch, R., Farrington, C. (eds) Quantified Lives and Vital Data. Health, Technology and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95235-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95235-9_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95234-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95235-9

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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