Self-tracking modes: reflexive self-monitoring and data practices

The concept of ‘self-tracking’ (also referred to as life-logging, the quantified self, personal analytics and personal informatics) has recently begun to emerge in discussions of ways in which people can voluntarily monitor and record specific features of their lives, often using digital technologies. There is evidence that the personal data that are derived from individuals engaging in such reflexive self-monitoring are now beginning to be used by actors, agencies and organisations beyond the personal and privatised realm. Self-tracking rationales and sites are proliferating as part of a ‘function creep’ of the technology and ethos of self-tracking. The detail offered by these data on individuals and the growing commodification and commercial value of digital data have led government, managerial and commercial enterprises to explore ways of appropriating self-tracking for their own purposes. In some contexts people are encouraged, ‘nudged’, obliged or coerced into using digital devices to produce personal data which are then used by others. This paper examines these issues, outlining five modes of self-tracking that have emerged: private, communal, pushed, imposed and exploited. The analysis draws upon theoretical perspectives on concepts of selfhood, citizenship, biopolitics and data practices and assemblages in discussing the wider sociocultural implications of the emergence and development of these modes of self-tracking

Neighbourhood Effects: Can we measure them and does it matter?

Renewed interest in disadvantaged neighbourhoods is generating increasing research activity. Current work includes qualitative community studies and quantitative investigations of area effects on individual outcomes. This paper criticises the contribution of area effects research to date. Methodological and data constraints mean that quantitative studies often operationalise a weak conception of neighbourhood that does not reflect the understanding gained from qualitative work. These constraints present a barrier to testing specific theories that might usefully inform policy, while exaggerated claims are made about the policy relevance of more generic work. The paper concludes that area effects should be accorded less significance in the broad debate on area-based policy. Multi-disciplinary work is needed to develop studies that can influence the design of specific programmes.neighbourhoodarea effects

Homotopy Actions, Cyclic Maps and their Duals

An action of A on X is a map F: AxX to X such that F|_X = id: X to X. The restriction F|_A: A to X of an action is called a cyclic map. Special cases of these notions include group actions and the Gottlieb groups of a space, each of which has been studied extensively. We prove some general results about actions and their Eckmann-Hilton duals. For instance, we classify the actions on an H-space that are compatible with the H-structure. As a corollary, we prove that if any two actions F and F' of A on X have cyclic maps f and f' with Omega(f) = Omega(f'), then Omega(F) and Omega(F') give the same action of Omega(A) on Omega(X). We introduce a new notion of the category of a map g and prove that g is cocyclic if and only if the category is less than or equal to 1. From this we conclude that if g is cocyclic, then the Berstein-Ganea category of g is <= 1. We also briefly discuss the relationship between a map being cyclic and its cocategory being <= 1.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX 2