TY - CHAP

T1 - Digital health

T2 - Practices and Infrastructures

AU - Marent, Benjamin

AU - Langstrup, Henriette

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - Digital health is currently a widely used but vaguely defined term. In policy discourses as well as everyday talks it signifies emerging technologies that are increasingly adopted across various practices of health and medicine. The sociological perspective is interested in the relationship between technologies and practices as well as their orchestration within and through wider infrastructures at play. This chapter explores this relationality through a sociomaterial approach. Thereby, we elaborate an analytical notion of digital health that facilitates critical investigations of the opportunities and constraints encountered within practices of care. The concept of infrastructures traces the relation between local practices and wider ecologies of care. While often invisible, infrastructures are configuring how people participate in care. These forms of material participation shift alongside technological advances. Yet, participation is not always invited nor are technological innovations always envisioned by health providers or tech companies. At the fringes of established care infrastructures, we can observe emerging forms of digital health activism. Recognised as real utopias, health activists’ enactments can stimulate our imaginations about desirable digital health futures.Keywords: Sociomaterial practices; Care infrastructures; Chronic care; Participation; Digital futures; Science and Technology Studies; HIV; Diabetes

AB - Digital health is currently a widely used but vaguely defined term. In policy discourses as well as everyday talks it signifies emerging technologies that are increasingly adopted across various practices of health and medicine. The sociological perspective is interested in the relationship between technologies and practices as well as their orchestration within and through wider infrastructures at play. This chapter explores this relationality through a sociomaterial approach. Thereby, we elaborate an analytical notion of digital health that facilitates critical investigations of the opportunities and constraints encountered within practices of care. The concept of infrastructures traces the relation between local practices and wider ecologies of care. While often invisible, infrastructures are configuring how people participate in care. These forms of material participation shift alongside technological advances. Yet, participation is not always invited nor are technological innovations always envisioned by health providers or tech companies. At the fringes of established care infrastructures, we can observe emerging forms of digital health activism. Recognised as real utopias, health activists’ enactments can stimulate our imaginations about desirable digital health futures.Keywords: Sociomaterial practices; Care infrastructures; Chronic care; Participation; Digital futures; Science and Technology Studies; HIV; Diabetes

UR - https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/handbook-on-the-sociology-of-health-and-medicine-9781839104749.html

U2 - 10.4337/9781839104756

DO - 10.4337/9781839104756

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9781839104749

T3 - Research Handbooks in Sociology series

SP - 504

EP - 524

BT - Handbook of the Sociology of Health and Medicine

A2 - Petersen, Alan

PB - Edward Elgar Publishing

CY - Cheltenham, UK

ER -