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<div class="csl-entry">Vogel, L., & Köszegi, S. T. (2023, July 5). <i>Robotics in elderly care – a contradiction per se? Sociomaterial perspectives on care work, professional identity, and technology</i> [Conference Presentation]. ÖGS-Kongress 2023: Kritische Zeiten, Wien, Austria.</div>
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dc.identifier.uri
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12708/189880
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dc.description.abstract
With the end of the so-called Fordist sexual contract (Adkins and Dever 2016) and an aging society, many industrial countries face an increasing demand for care services. There are specific hopes that future technology can provide solutions to social problems. Besides increasing the autonomy and quality of life for clients and “creating work that is smarter and more qualified,” political strategies also intend to produce “labor-saving technologies” (Kamp et al. 2019:2). This emphasizes the relevance to examine critically how these new technologies are designed and how they are perceived by the workers affected.
Technological development in elderly care has predominantly been driven by technical feasibility. Instead of searching for meaningful roles of technologies in a care context, new application fields for emerging technologies are searched. This limited view does neither justice to the potential of robotics and AI nor to the requirements of professional care.
In the context of the research project “Caring Robots//Robotic Care,” we analyze how robotic technology affects care workers' perception of their own professional identities and how to care values and care technologies are negotiated in a professional care context. We use Wanda Orlikowski’s (2007: 1437) socio-materiality approach to understand the "constitutive entanglement" of the social and technological. Insights from feminist Science and Technology Studies Wajcman 1991, 2010 and gendered hierarchies and skills in care professions (Wetterer 2002) constitute the theoretical foundation of our work.
Building on previous studies (e.g., Kamp et al. 2019) that show care technologies fail when they conflict with care values and professional identities; we want to understand whether and how new (robotic) technology can be reconciled with the values and professional identities of those working in care. Related to these questions are aspects regarding power and skills within work relations (Frennert et al. 2020, Ajslev et al. 2019). Methodologically, we combine participatory design with analysis methods based on Grounded Theory (Frauenberger et al. 2019, Teram et al. 2005, Charmaz 2008).
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dc.description.sponsorship
FWF Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF)
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dc.language.iso
en
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dc.subject
care work
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dc.subject
sociomateriality
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dc.subject
robotics
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dc.subject
professional identity
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dc.subject
participatory design
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dc.subject
qualitative research
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dc.title
Robotics in elderly care – a contradiction per se? Sociomaterial perspectives on care work, professional identity, and technology
