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

受到新唯物主义概念流(S)的启发，并处于关键的数字健康研究领域，我通过调动复杂的理论资源和丰富的定性方法，着眼于体现、人类-技术-数据内部行动、健康和可执行性的交叉主题。我的项目围绕两对问题构建：1)特定配置的自动跟踪(S-T)设备是如何出现的？然而，它们是否影响了以健康为导向的主体性的培养和具体化表现？2)身体是如何通过S-T纠缠的表演法令呈现的？这些关于身体的表述是如何被S-T的批评实践挑战、修改或颠覆的？在回答相关文献中的一些呼唤时，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技术的发展所产生的社会和体现的影响，这些技术与S-T个人的颠覆性技术有关，这些技术修改、挑战或抵制通过这些技术的常规使用鼓励的对身体的主导理解。质疑对这些技术及其使用的主导理解，我认为，S-T练习并不是揭示一个预先存在的身体的品质，而是身体的一部分，以及个体如何开始了解自己。我想要解开的实际问题是，从解释肉体、技术和更广泛的符号-物质力量之间的关系、共同构成的互动的角度来看，S-T技术是如何牵涉到这种预先定义的、新自由主义“身体项目”的联系中的性质。最后，我试图调查S-T的批判性实践的个别实例，这些实践为另类“身体项目”的制作提供了参考，这些项目与通常通过消费者S-T技术推广的健康身材的主流叙事相抗衡。要理解S-T的技术与我的中心研究问题所定义的身体之间的关系，需要关注这些技术的纠缠发展，涉及程序员、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要素的代理内部作用。因此，我的研究的第一个核心重点将是探索跟踪数据被可视化并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，并促成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或线性的，S-T的关系也不是线性的，而是通过不同个体经验中不同的因素的混沌纠缠而出现的。因此，我的第二个研究重点围绕着S-T实践中存在的身体和技术之间的紧张、谈判和颠覆。通过接触身体、技术和话语的动态阵列，探索它们如何通过S-T的迭代表演而结合、稳定和实现，我希望阐明如何通过个人和S-T技术的批判性、表演性的耦合来培养多元的身体。从方法论上，我致力于更广泛的分析性“逆向工程”实践(福克斯，2015年)，我将使用多种方法来拆分S-T的纠葛，以探索身体、技术和话语如何通过关系的、内部活跃的表演来实现。这一方法包括三个重点参与--自我跟踪表演中的人体；S-T软件和硬件；以及S-T技术的开发者-寻求调查通过每个共同构成组件的参与而相互产生的不同但相互关联的实践。

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.