Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Study of the Mutual Impact of Cultural Values and the Design and Use of Home Security Devices

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This doctoral dissertation improvement grant will support the investigator, a PhD candidate, to engage in a study of home security devices using participant observation and interviews. She will address how moral norms are configured into devices, how the home as a physical space and domestic sphere is affected by the design of home security products, and how risk is made material and intelligible through home security devices. Through an examination of this technology, she will also address the much broader question of insecurity and how home security technology serves as a defense against a sizable number and variety of threats. This project will contribute insights for better understanding how norms are configured into other technologies, particularly those that are designed to promote other prudential, individualistic ends, and how the resulting technologies in turn have an impact on societal norms. These are plausible, broader benefits of the results of this study to society.