Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University, Campus for Ageing & Vitality, Newcastle upon Tyne NE4 5PL, United Kingdom.
Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University, Campus for Ageing & Vitality, Newcastle upon Tyne NE4 5PL, United Kingdom.
J Aging Stud. 2023 Dec;67:101168. doi: 10.1016/j.jaging.2023.101168. Epub 2023 Sep 15.
Recent years have seen an influx of technologies aimed at enabling older people to remain at home. Remote monitoring is one such technology. By tracking the body as it moves through time and space, remote monitoring enables a care connection which transcends the physical boundaries of the home. Based on 43 interviews conducted with 21 older people trialling remote monitoring, this study critically explores how older people integrate (or not) remote monitoring into the material and symbolic fabric of their homes. Drawing on the concept of domestication alongside materialities of care, we explore the active ways in which participants make sense of, and incorporate, remote monitoring into the intimacy of their homes. We find that domesticating remote monitoring, an apparently mundane and ordinary object, is a complex and conflicting process which has consequences for the ageing body. Through its domestication, remote monitoring occupies an ambiguous symbolic and material position at the intersection of public and private. While the rationale behind remote monitoring is to minimise physical risk, we find that its proximity to intimacy and its capacity to 'monitor' everyday practice poses symbolic and social risks to people's sense of home and their identities. Our findings highlight how ageing bodies are mediated and reconfigured through these technologies and how ageing bodies are potentially viewed as in decline and/or risky. Remote monitoring was viewed as a 'safety net'; however, acknowledging that safety was a concern, simultaneously positioned participants as 'at risk', a category associated with decline and dependency. Once incorporated into the home, the technology represented an 'active ageing' gaze which, through its imagined capacity to judge, risked disrupting the flow of everyday routines; it elicited a heightened awareness of otherwise taken-for-granted practices. Despite this, for some participants, remote monitoring was appropriated to enact care for others, a way to alleviate the emotional labour of family members, and thus refute normative assumptions underpinning remote monitoring about older people as passive recipients of care. Remote monitoring is not passively incorporated into the domestic setting. On the contrary, older people actively assign symbolic meaning to it.
近年来，出现了许多旨在帮助老年人居家养老的技术。远程监控就是其中之一。通过跟踪人体在时间和空间中的移动，远程监控实现了超越家庭物理边界的护理连接。本研究基于对 21 名试用远程监控的老年人进行的 43 次访谈，批判性地探讨了老年人如何将远程监控融入家庭的物质和象征结构。本研究借鉴了本土化和关怀物质性的概念，探讨了参与者以主动的方式理解和融入远程监控的方式，以及远程监控如何融入家庭的亲密关系。我们发现，将远程监控（一个看似平凡普通的物品）本土化是一个复杂且充满矛盾的过程，这会对老年人的身体产生影响。通过本土化，远程监控在公私交集的模糊象征和物质位置上占据了一席之地。虽然远程监控的基本原理是最小化身体风险，但我们发现，它与亲密关系的接近程度及其监测日常实践的能力，对人们的家庭感和身份认同构成了象征和社会风险。我们的研究结果表明，这些技术如何调节和重新配置老年人的身体，以及老年人的身体如何被视为衰退和/或有风险的。远程监控被视为“安全网”；然而，承认安全是一个问题的同时，也将参与者定位为“有风险”，这一类别与衰退和依赖相关联。一旦被纳入家庭，该技术就代表了一种“积极老龄化”的凝视，通过其想象中的判断能力，有可能扰乱日常例行程序的流动；它引起了对习以为常的实践的高度关注。尽管如此，对一些参与者来说，远程监控被用来为他人提供关爱，以减轻家庭成员的情感劳动，从而反驳远程监控对老年人作为被动接受者的规范性假设。远程监控并没有被动地融入家庭环境。相反，老年人积极地赋予它象征意义。
