Healtism and ageing in the technological health care system: a matter of techno-ism?

Lene Teglhus Kauffmann

Publikation: Konferencebidrag uden forlag/tidsskriftAbstraktForskningpeer review

Abstract

See, if I should say something about this thing, technology, how much it interests me, on a scale from 1 to 10, I would say minus 40… I am here to drink coffee. I drink a lot of coffee. It means a lot, coffee drinking… I am not so fund of exercise, but I come to participate because it is good for my body, and we drink coffee after the event, in the canteen. In shift, we buy coffee, I even bring my own mug. I enjoy the social, the being together there….We also have someone coming to tell us about the disease now and then, I didn’t know much about the disease before, but now I know I bit more … see, it is the combination of things … and the coffee!
Peter, 70+, tall, grey hair, participant in the ‘lung network’, a network of citizens suffering from chronical lung disease (KOL), explains in this way what is important for him about the network. This expresses one of the viewpoints on technology that formed the debate on the issue in a ‘fieldshop’ conducted as part of the fieldwork in the network. The fieldwork was related to an intervention project, that is one work package in a larger research project called MATURE. The project’s outset was to implement a new device, i.e. a digital platform, in order to support the relations and the communication in the network.
Peter is one of the elderly citizens who face the challenge of the contemporary health discourse, that proclaims the way in which being chronical ill as well as elderly should be dealt with. Keywords in this discourse are selfcare (egenomsorg), rehabilitation, an economically viable health care system and improved equality in health. And, last but not least, welfare technology. The paper contributes to the ‘user’ perspective on welfare technology, but also to the debate on ‘active ageing’.
In this paper, I discuss how so-called welfare technology, in this case a digital platform, on one hand creates worries and uncertainties for elderly citizens with sparse digital competences, and on another hand, in unimagined and unintended ways, creates new ways of strengthening the network. The paper argues that welfare technologies should be seen in a socio-historical context in which they turn out to be contributing to well described healthism, and discuss whether we might even talk about a new –ism; techno-ism.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
Publikationsdatoaug. 2018
StatusUdgivet - aug. 2018
BegivenhedAppropriating Technologies - Københavns Universitet, København, Danmark
Varighed: 24 sep. 201825 sep. 2018

Seminar

SeminarAppropriating Technologies
LokationKøbenhavns Universitet
Land/OmrådeDanmark
ByKøbenhavn
Periode24/09/1825/09/18

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