“The embodiment of pure thought”? Digital fabrication, disability and new possibilities for auto/biography

This essay draws on findings from a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council project: “In the Making” (AH/M006026/1) to argue that the digital turn in art therapy – particularly 3D printing – makes possible new forms of disability agency, engaging post-humanist theory to suggest re-conceptualizations of embodied person-hood. Keywords: digital fabrication; disability; auto/biography; embodimen

Interdisciplinary Insights for Digital Touch Communication

Communication is increasingly moving beyond ‘ways of seeing’ to ‘ways of feeling’. This Open Access book provides social design insights and implications for HCI research and design exploring digitally mediated touch communication. It offers a socially orientated map to help navigate the complex social landscape of digitally mediated touch for communication: from everyday touch-screens, tangibles, wearables, haptics for virtual reality, to the tactile internet of skin. Drawing on literature reviews, new case-study vignettes, and exemplars of digital touch, the book examines the major social debates provoked by digital touch, and investigates social themes central to the communicative potential and societal consequences of digital touch: · Communication environments, capacities and practices · Norms associations and expectations · Presence, absence and connection · Social imaginaries of digital touch · Digital touch ethics and values The book concludes with a discussion of the significance of social understanding and methods in the context of Interdisciplinary collaborations to explore touch, towards the design of digital touch communication, ‘ways of feeling’, that are useable, appropriate, ethical and socially aware

All Under One Roof: An Ethnographic Commons in the Missoula Public Library

In 2021 the Missoula Public Library opened in a new state-of-the-art building to include a science museum, a research facility, a family resource center, and a media resource center in addition to the library facilities, all providing free and low-cost programs to the public. This establishment, internally dubbed All Under One Roof (AUOR), offers a window into the culture of Missoula and provides the community myriad resources in one, co-located model that has never been seen in the United States. Using ethnographic methods, this study provides insight into AUOR and the significance of its culture house model as the future of educational, collaborative community spaces by demonstrating the effectiveness of diverse partnerships, centralized resources, and community-centered design. This work has found that AUOR mirrors Missoula’s culture and produces an effective way to collectively address social issues by providing opportunities for interdisciplinary and intergenerational learning

Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan

The bursting of the economic bubble in the 1990s shook the very foundation of the post-war economic 'miracle' and marked the beginning of a gradual shift in the environmental consciousness of the Japanese. Yet, it by no means removed consumption from the pivotal position it occupied within Japanese society. Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan argues that consumption in Japan today is no longer simply a component of everyday economic activities, but rather a reflection of a society guided by the 'logic of late capitalism'. The volume pins down the contradictory nature of the setting in which consuming occurs in Japan today: the veneration of material comfort and convenience on the one hand, and the new rhetoric of recycling and energy conservation on the other. Theoretical insights developed as part of an art-historical enquiry, such as notions of socially engaged art and its critique, offer a new paradigm for investigating this dilemma. By combining case studies analysing the production and consumption of contemporary art with ethnographic material related to ordinary commodities and shopping, this volume provides a novel, transdisciplinary approach to exploring how a 'society of consumers' operates in post-bubble Japan and how contemporary life is a 'consuming project'

WEHST: Wearable Engine for Human-Mediated Telepresence

This dissertation reports on the industrial design of a wearable computational device created to enable better emergency medical intervention for situations where electronic remote assistance is necessary. The design created for this doctoral project, which assists practices by paramedics with mandates for search-and-rescue (SAR) in hazardous environments, contributes to the field of human-mediated teleparamedicine (HMTPM). Ethnographic and industrial design aspects of this research considered the intricate relationships at play in search-and-rescue operations, which lead to the design of the system created for this project known as WEHST: Wearable Engine for Human-Mediated Telepresence. Three case studies of different teams were carried out, each focusing on making improvements to the practices of teams of paramedics and search-and-rescue technicians who use combinations of ambulance, airplane, and helicopter transport in specific chemical, biological, radioactive, nuclear and explosive (CBRNE) scenarios. The three paramedicine groups included are the Canadian Air Force 442 Rescue Squadron, Nelson Search and Rescue, and the British Columbia Ambulance Service Infant Transport Team. Data was gathered over a seven-year period through a variety of methods including observation, interviews, examination of documents, and industrial design. The data collected included physiological, social, technical, and ecological information about the rescuers. Actor-network theory guided the research design, data analysis, and design synthesis. All of this leads to the creation of the WEHST system. As identified, the WEHST design created in this dissertation project addresses the difficulty case-study participants found in using their radios in hazardous settings. As the research identified, a means of controlling these radios without depending on hands, voice, or speech would greatly improve communication, as would wearing sensors and other computing resources better linking operators, radios, and environments. WEHST responds to this need. WEHST is an instance of industrial design for a wearable “engine” for human-situated telepresence that includes eight interoperable families of wearable electronic modules and accompanying textiles. These make up a platform technology for modular, scalable and adaptable toolsets for field practice, pedagogy, or research. This document details the considerations that went into the creation of the WEHST design

Discursive resources in the everyday construction of engineering knowledge /

Includes vita.Jaber F. Gubrium, Dissertation Supervisor.|Includes vita.Includes bibliographical references (pages 175-178)

Ageing and Technology: Perspectives from the Social Sciences

The booming increase of the senior population has become a social phenomenon and a challenge to our societies, and technological advances have undoubtedly contributed to improve the lives of elderly citizens in numerous aspects. In current debates on technology, however, the "human factor" is often largely ignored. The ageing individual is rather seen as a malfunctioning machine whose deficiencies must be diagnosed or as a set of limitations to be overcome by means of technological devices. This volume aims at focusing on the perspective of human beings deriving from the development and use of technology: this change of perspective - taking the human being and not technology first - may help us to become more sensitive to the ambivalences involved in the interaction between humans and technology, as well as to adapt technologies to the people that created the need for its existence, thus contributing to improve the quality of life of senior citizens

Health and literacy: a study of literacy practices in a day hospital in the Western Cape

Located in the Hout Bay Day Hospital, this research project focused on literacy practices as embedded in social context. In exploring how patients - both those regarded as literate arid non literate - engaged with the discourses of medicine as represented by medical texts, symbols and artifacts, their constructions of identity, agency, voice and meaning within the medical domain were examined. It was at the interface between the formal as represented by the medical institution and the informal, represented by individuals from within the community that diverse literacy practices were encountered. While individuals were dependent on the system for medical entitlements and treatment, they were able to rescript dominant medical literacies and technologies within the context of their own health and social needs. What was more important was not patients' encoding and decoding of medical texts but rather how they used their own socially embedded literacies to mediate and gain access to these health care entitlements and medical treatment and the discursive skills and resources that they employed in doing so. Uncovering the processes whereby patients were able to recontextualize their experiences of medical literacy and technologies in the context of their material and social realities was one of the key issues explored in this thesis. The research findings suggested that a discursive boundary existed between patients' conceptions of health and illness and those presented by the medical institution. An understanding of patients' different discursive strategies and their social constructions was developed through ethnographic research methods. A socio-spatial analysis of 'hidden' literacy practices lead me beyond the confines of print literacy (alphabetic literacy and numeracy) and suggested differing ways of 'seeing' and 'reading' literacy, further broadening the concept of literacy to include body or somatic literacy. The manner in which the patient's body was 'read' and narrated as a text on entering the medical space was examined and interpreted. In addition, the way in which patients created their own space from within formal institutional space was discussed. In conclusion I argue that the ways in which local knowledge is constructed by the recipients of health care needs to be explored and examined and that these constructions should be taken into consideration when planning future health care initiatives

From Meaning to Breathing: Rationalization, Translation, Embodiment, and Cultural Meaning: Four Method Assemblages, Four Realities of Prechoreographed Group Exercise Instructing

Group exercise-to-music classes have long been a popular keep-fit activity and long criticized for their so-called alienating and objectifying aspects. Today there is an ongoing trend from the “freestyle” type where instructors chose their own music and moves, to the “prechoreographed” type produced by corporations like Les Mills International (LMI). LMI prepares standardized, class-in-a-box music and choreography kits which local instructors deliver in licensed clubs—a practice critics claim leads to deskilling, and further alienation and loss of meaning for instructors. Yet, not all instructors feel alienated. In cases where instructors really like the prechoreographed system, what processes underlie their experiencing it as meaningful and worthwhile? Through John Law’s method assemblage approach, I argue, it is possible to use different, sometimes contradictory theoretical perspectives to capture these instructors’ realities. The approach was used in the analysis of empirical material collected through qualitative interviews with LMI instructors and participants, participant observations, and examination of LMI texts. Material was analyzed from a Grounded Theory approach and resultant categories were used to build four method assemblages from existing theoretical perspectives. The assemblages shed light on processes of rationalization, translation, embodiment, and cultural meaning which make instructing through LMI worthwhile from interviewees’ points of view. The paper also demonstrates the utility of the multi-method assemblage approach

Images of the "future of work" : a discourse analysis of visual data on the internet

This paper presents findings from a critical discourse analysis of visual data gathered in regular, monthly data sampling on Google, DuckDuckGo and Bing on the theme ‘the future of work’ that were published online on Polish and Swedish websites during 2018–2021. Visions about the future in the form of images create an archive of ideas on the potential directions of societal development, where discourse is present both in what is visible, and what is invisible. The study shows predominantly stereotypical framings of work by young office workers. Conclusions are drawn on how the future is visualized contrary to popular claims of job losses that are predicted to strike mainly the younger, middle-class population. In the images collected, humans appear as mainly content in a working life without manual labour, frustration or clutter, but also without leisure, displaying a lack of visions of an older workforce, as well as the possible role of humans as useful and fulfilled without work in the future