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
