Name: The Datafied Family: Algorithmic Encounters in Care, Intimacies, Routine and Play
Start: 2023-06-28
End: 2023-06-28

From body-trackers, non-human digital support apps, smart home tech, parenting apps and gadgets, surveillance devices from the womb to the cradle, technologies of intimacy and play in the Internet of the Things, and wellbeing and wellness support bots – the textures of family life are changing – at disparate paces across global cultures and economies with a steady increase in family technologies, which are subtly, and not so subtly altering the doing of care, intimacy, leisure, learning, play, routine and more. The Datafied Family –a day-long, international, virtual workshop – interrogates these issues and will bring international voices at the cutting-edge of Sociology, Communications, Education, Data Science, and Health and Wellbeing – to meet the University of Surrey’s research clusters across its faculties around digital societies, technology and society, family sociology and health, parenthood and childhood.

The Datafied Family – will raise and respond to a set of key questions – without restricting its topics to these alone. Overarchingly, we ask

In what ways have family dynamics – routines, caring, intimacies, leisure, play, learning, parenting and more – been interrupted, (re)shaped, or transformed by the steady algorithmizing of everyday family life?
What material artefacts – toys, apps, smart home tech, educational applications, portals and meta-portals – punctuate family life and to what effect?
What inequalities, injustices, and power dynamics are being rehearsed or reshaped through the datafication of family life?
How is the algorithmic shaping of domestic routines and rapports encountered in practice, resisted, or reshaped through human agency?
What global perspectives remain less visible and unincorporated in theorising the datafied family, including the disparities between the global north and south?

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Professor Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics, UK

Professor Usha Raman, University of Hyderabad, India

Dr Giovanna Mascheroni, Catholic University of Milan, Italy

Professor Veronica Barassi, University of St Gallen, Switzerland

WORKSHOP ORGANISER

Professor Ranjana Das, Department of Sociology

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Registration deadline: 28 June 2023

***Datafied Family abstract submission has now closed***

Announcing the call for papers for The Datafied Family - a one-day, virtual event on 28^th June, 2023, which aims to engage researchers of family life, datafication and technologies – across disciplinary boundaries.

At a time when such technologies are pervading, and on occasion, re-scripting (Maalsen & Dowling, 2020) countless aspects of family life, as demonstrated particularly by the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant reliance on technology, there is often both, societal hope around the possibilities opened up by these technologies, or panic, around their less than ideal consequences. These discourses, spanning both public understandings and industry framings, often rely on an arbitrary and homogeneous understanding of the ‘user’ of these technologies. This user, on the one hand appears regularly, as a homogenous and imagined entity in market and policy discourse around these interfaces, and yet, real users – in families of diverse shapes and configurations, and living their lives in messy, overlapping, unequal and diverse contexts remain under-explored. Thus, we lack, currently, an expansive, critical analysis of the emerging societal outcomes of the family turn to technology in the context of a new generation of technologies which affords both ease, access and opportunity, as well as the gathering and processing of personal data at a previously unknown scale, embedding themselves into family life.

Our aim behind the virtual format is to enable widespread, and global participation and particularly to be open and inclusive of marginalized voices in these discussions, who are currently underrepresented in scientific events. The event will feature keynotes from Professor Sonia Livingstone, Professor Usha Raman, Dr Giovanna Mascheroni and Professor Veronica Barassi.

The Datafied Family – will raise and respond to a set of key questions – without restricting its topics to these alone. Overarchingly, we are seeking papers which engage with questions such as the below -

In what ways have family dynamics – routines, caring, intimacies, leisure, play, learning, parenting and more – been interrupted, (re)shaped, or transformed by the steady algorithmizing of everyday family life?
What material artefacts – toys, apps, smart home tech, educational applications, portals and meta-portals – punctuate family life and to what effect?
What inequalities, injustices, and power dynamics are being rehearsed or reshaped through the datafication of family life?
How is the algorithmic shaping of domestic routines and rapports encountered in practice, resisted, or reshaped through human agency?
What global perspectives remain less visible and unincorporated in theorising the datafied family, including the disparities between the global north and south?

More broadly, we welcome paper submissions from participants in the following areas – which are indicated below but not produced as an exhaustive list –