Reshaping the Landscape of Care: Health Apps and the Ethics of Self-responsibility and Care for the Other

Authors

  • Susanna Trnka Auckland University
  • Andrea Merino Ortiz University of Auckland

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11157/sites-vol14iss2id376

Keywords:

auto-ethnography, health apps, care, ethics, sociality, temporality

Abstract

This article considers the ethical implications of health apps, focusing on how digital technologies create new temporalities of care for the self and for others. Drawing on our own experiences of engaging in digital care, we examine how apps that focus on mood/emotion tracking, mental health, meditation, and other forms of stress-relief reconfigure inter-relationality. Recasting how information is shared as well as the temporal possibilities of social exchanges, such health apps enable "friends" we know or are coming to know, as well as those we do not want to know, to enter into some of the most intimate aspects of our lives, as they unfold in the open-ended flow of time. In doing so, health apps, we suggest, demand a rethinking of the ethics of how we constitute and care for both the self and a variety of (known and unknown) others.

Author Biographies

  • Susanna Trnka, Auckland University
    Associate Professor, Social Anthropology
  • Andrea Merino Ortiz, University of Auckland
    Masters student in Anthropology

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Published

21-09-2017

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 2 (2017)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright © in this published form is held by Sites: New Series, Association of Social Anthropologists of Aotearoa New Zealand, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Individual readers and non-profit libraries acting for them, are permitted to print or download a single copy of an article without charge for use in research or teaching. Permitted use includes providing a link to an article, or hosting a PDF article in online Learning Management Systems or E-Reserve Systems for authorised users. A single article may be used in print or online Course Packs. Interlibrary loan is permitted. New Zealand Copyright Law and Copyright Licensing New Zealand Education Licence provisions apply. This consent does not extend to other kinds of copying, such as copying for general distribution, for advertising or promotional purposes, for creating new collective works or for resale. For such uses, written permission is required. Write to the Editor: sites@otago.ac.nz

How to Cite

Reshaping the Landscape of Care: Health Apps and the Ethics of Self-responsibility and Care for the Other. (2017). Sites: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies, 14(2). https://doi.org/10.11157/sites-vol14iss2id376