Search

In Nordic countries, 'welfare technology' is a concept used increasingly by policymakers when discussing the promise of digitalisation in care for older people. In this paper, I draw on data from 14 qualitative ethnographic interviews with employees in municipal eldercare in Sweden, as well as observations carried out at a nursing home, to suggest the importance of studying how good care is enacted through welfare technology, whilst simultaneously attending to the adverse effects sometimes consequent from these practices. In this article, I explore what values are supported when doing care with welfare technology, and what values are neglected in this process. The theoretical starting point for this article takes its inspiration from recent discussions of care within Science and Technology Studies (STS). Employing a double vision of care, the article argues for the importance of understanding how good care is enacted with technology, while also attending to what these care practices exclude and neglect. Focusing on the use of social alarms, the article shows that when doing care with such technology, values such as independence, safety and some forms of togetherness and availability were enhanced; while other values such as other forms togetherness and availability, a stress-free working environment and functionality were neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with the doing and production of data. We ask how data are made in intimate spaces such as the home in collaboration with the different parties involved in home-based care and services. The article builds on ethnographic field notes from 73 home visits, in the context of home-based mental health, substance abuse and social care for adults in Finland and Sweden. Drawing on affect theory, the article aims to foreground aspects of the production of data and research that are often edited out of the research process. In so doing, we argue that the production of data would not be possible without the active and affective collaboration of all parties involved in home visits. Thus, the article scrutinizes in detail the efforts made by different parties, such as researchers, clients and workers to do and produce data. While we study an atypical setting of institutional interaction, we contend that affects and affective relations gain particular importance in the home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study contributes to discursive and interactional housing and home studies by analysing home visit conversations with clients who need support with their housing and living in the community. It focuses on the ways in which professionals comment on clients' home environments. The data, which consist of 20 audio-recorded home visits in Mobile Support directed at mental health and substance abuse rehabilitees, are analysed by applying the Foucauldian concepts of practices, normalization and inspecting gaze, Goffman's idea on face-work and the ethnomethodologically oriented research on the meanings of spaces in interactions. Five ways of using inspecting gaze are identified: pointing out, criticizing, giving advice, displaying concern and complimenting. The study provides a critical reflective basis for assessing the "soft" use of interactional power in clients' homes at a time when the provision of services in private home spaces is on the increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]