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Tracking Culture: Surveillance in the sphere of intimacy

The purpose of this workshop is to debate and conceptualize the culture of tracking as it emerges from the systamatic surveillance practices within the intimate sphere of private life.

Info about event

Time

Wednesday 14 January 2015, at 09:00 - Thursday 15 January 2015, at 16:00

Location

Moesgaard Museum

Organizer

Anders Albrechtslund and Center for STS, AU

Gadgets and applications are increasingly being developed and used for tracking, quantifying, and documenting everyday life activities. Especially health and fitness devices are well known and popular, but tracking practices involving networked technologies can be found across many domains. What is particularly interesting is the emergent use of tracking technologies by individuals within intimate contexts such as personal health, family life, and sexuality. Intimacy is precisely the right term with which to describe the primary sphere where personal tracking occurs, indicating a context of close interpersonal relations and commitment, where matters of trust and openness are negotiated e.g. between family members, as well as spaces of personal privacy and processes of self-knowledge. The main purpose of this workshop is to debate and conceptualize the culture of tracking as it emerges from the systematic surveillance practices within the intimate sphere of private life. As an emergent phenomenon, the use of networked tracking technologies in relation to intimate and everyday practices is in need of systematic scholarly attention. Approaching this phenomenon as a cultural practice allows for an in-depth understanding of the way tracking is embedded in and influences cultural notions of existential and societal values. The workshop is generously sponsored by the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science (EUopSTART office) and Aarhus University (Universitetsledelsens Strategiske Midler).