Self-Tracking Entanglements and Critical Practices: A New Materialist Approach to Digital Health Technologies

根据新唯物主义的概念流，并位于关键数字健康研究领域，我通过动员复杂的理论资源和丰富的定性方法来研究体现，人类-技术-数据-行动，健康和性能的交叉主题。我的项目围绕两对问题展开：1)自我跟踪（S-T）设备的特定配置是如何出现的？如何去做。它们是否影响健康主体性的培养和体现？2)肢体是如何通过S-T的纠缠表演动作呈现出来的？通过S-T的“批判性”实践，这些身体的关节是如何被挑战、修改或颠覆的？针对相关文献中的一些呼吁，我应用并扩展了复杂的社会唯物主义方法，以更好地理解S-T技术发展所产生的社会和具体含义，这些技术与S-T个体的颠覆性技术有关，这些颠覆性技术通过传统使用这些技术来改变、挑战或抵制对身体的主导理解。对这些技术及其使用的主流理解提出了问题，我认为S-T实践并没有揭示预先存在的身体的品质，而是部分构成了身体，以及个人如何理解自己。我希望解开的实际问题是，从一个解释肉体、技术和更广泛的符号物质力量之间的关系、共同构成的相互作用的角度来看，S-T技术如何与这种预先定义的、新自由主义的“身体项目”联系在一起的本质。最后，我试图调查关键S-T实践的个别实例，这些实践为替代“身体项目”的生产提供了信息，这些项目与消费者S-T技术通常推广的健康身体的主流叙事相抗衡。为了理解我的中心研究问题所定义的S-T技术与身体之间的关系，需要关注这些技术的纠缠发展，包括程序员、设计师、营销人员、医疗专业人员、算法、数据保护法和应用程序商店等因素的代理内作用。因此，我研究的第一个核心重点将是探索跟踪数据可视化和概念化为可操作知识的过程。由此，这些产生的知识如何被用来规定特定的行为模式，并有助于对自我和身体的不同理解。技术与身体之间的关系不是连贯的或线性的，也不是S-T的关系表现，而是通过每个个体经验中不同因素的混乱纠缠而出现的。因此，我研究的第二个重点是围绕身体和技术之间的S-T实践中存在的紧张、谈判和颠覆。通过参与身体、技术和话语的动态阵列，探索它们如何通过S-T的迭代表演融合、稳定和实现，我希望阐明如何通过个体和S-T技术的关键、表演耦合来培养多样性的身体。在方法上，我致力于更广泛的分析性“逆向工程”实践（Fox, 2015），我将使用多方法方法来分割S-T纠缠，以探索身体、技术和话语如何通过关系、内部行为实现具体化。该方法包括三个重点参与-自我跟踪表演中的人体；S-T软硬件；以及S-T技术的开发人员——他们寻求调查通过每个共同组成部分的参与相互产生的不同但相关的实践。

Informed by the conceptual streams of new materialism(s) and situated within the field of Critical Digital Health Studies, I look at intersecting themes of embodiment, human-technology-data intra-actions, health, and performativity by mobilising sophisticated theoretical resources and rich qualitative methodologies. My project is structured around two pairs of questions: 1)How do particular configurations of self-tracking (S-T) apparatuses emerge? How.do they influence the cultivation and embodied performance of health-orientated subjectivities?2)How is the body rendered through entangled performative enactments of S-T? How are these articulations of the body challenged, modified, or subverted through 'critical' practices of S-T?Addressing a number of calls in the relevant literature, I apply and expand on complex sociomaterialist approaches to better understand the social and embodied implications arising from the development of S-T technologies in relation to the subversive techniques of S-T individuals that modify, challenge or resist dominant understandings of the body encouraged through conventional usage of these technologies.Problematising the dominant understanding of these technologies and their usage, I suggest that S-T practices do not uncover qualities of a pre-existing body but rather are partially constitutive of the body and how the individual comes to understand themselves. The practical problem I wish to unpick is the nature of how S-T technologies are implicated in this nexus of pre-defined, neoliberal 'body projects' from a perspective that accounts for the relational, co-constitutive interactions between flesh, technology and wider semiotic-material forces. Ultimately, I seek to investigate individual instances of critical S-T practices that inform the production of alternative 'body projects' which contest dominant narratives of the fit, healthy body commonly promoted through consumer S-T technologies.To understand the relationship between the technologies of S-T and the body as defined by my central research questions, a focus on the entangled development of such technologies, involving the agential intra-action of, among other elements, programmers, designers, marketers, medical professionals, algorithms, data protection laws, and app stores, is required. As such, the first core focus of my research will be to explore the processes through which tracked data is visualised and conceptualised into actionable knowledge. From this, how this produced knowledge is used to prescribe particular modes of behaviour and contribute to different understandings of the self and the body.The relations between technology and the body are not coherent or linear, nor are the relational performances of S-T, but instead they emerge through a chaotic entanglement of factors that differ in each individual experience. Consequently, the second focus of my research centres around the tensions, negotiations, and subversions that are present in S-T practices between the body and technology. Through engaging with the dynamic array of bodies, technologies, and discourses to explore how they coalesce, stabilise and become realised through the iterative performances of S-T, I wish to articulate how the cultivation of a multiplicity of bodies is made possible through the critical, performative coupling of individuals and S-T technologies.Methodologically, I am committed to a broader practice of analytical "reverse engineering" (Fox, 2015), I will use a multi-method methodology to split S-T entanglements to explore how bodies, technologies, and discourses materialise through relational, intra-active performances. This approach consists of three focused engagements-human bodies in performances of self-tracking; S-T software and hardware; and developers of S-T technologies-that seek to investigate the differing but relational practices that are mutually produced through the engagements of each co-constitutive component.