10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17404
application/pdf
2038-3460
17404
1
en
Letizia Zampino
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Deborah Lupton, The Quantified Self. A sociology of Self-tracking, Polity, 2016
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
9
Book Reviews
2018-08-06
2023-06-25
2018-08-06
2023-08-28
139-142
TS
Letizia Zampino
2018/08/06
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17404
139
Sapienza Università di Roma
2038-3460
1
en
142
Deborah Lupton, The Quantified Self. A sociology of Self-tracking, Polity, 2016
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17404/16262
9
Book Review                                                                139


                                     ***


   Deborah Lupton
The Quantified Self. A sociology of Self-tracking. Cambridge, Polity,
2016, pp. 240

Letizia Zampino Sapienza Università di Roma

    As Deborah Lupton argues in The Quantified Self, everyday practices
and bodily functions have been monitored, measured and recorded since
ancient times. These practices are now reconfigured trough self-tracking
technologies, which are designed to be mobile, implantable and wearable,
to collect and transform – automatically or not – the everyday elements of
individual and urban life into graphics, statistics, and behavioral patterns.
    The sociological literature on self-tracking is recently beginning to
emerge in a fragmented debate, given the complexity of this open-ended
phenomenon. Indeed, several scholars have criticized self-tracking tech-
nologies for the further level of surveillance trough data (Kitchin and
Dodge 2011). On the contrary, others underline the reflexive impact of
data upon the users through a constant self-improvement and self-
management (Ruckenstein 2014), as well as the emergence of new ways of
participatory democracy with the formation of citizen-science and citizen-
subjects (Gabrys 2014). The book outlines the discussions on self-
tracking practices from various sociocultural theoretical perspectives, us-
ing the concept of “self-tracking cultures” in order “to encapsulate the
view […] that the practices, meanings, discourses and technologies asso-
ciated with self-tracking are inherently and inevitably the product of
broader social, cultural and political processes” (p. 1).
    The first chapter deals with the various and huge range of devices and
technologies engaged in self-tracking practices, from early lifelogging pro-
ject to quantified self. The rise of small-scale computerized technologies
inspired a variegated range of methods for tracking and displaying bodily
elements until the emergence of the Quantified Self movement in 2007.
The lifelogging project is the first form of self-tracking. Gordon Bell has
used this term in 1998 to specify his habit of recording through technolo-
gies the different aspects of everyday life like conversations, e-mails, films,
photos, and so on. Examining how often the terms “self-tracking”, “life-
logging” and “quantified self” have been used in Google searches,
Lupton establishes the popularity of the term “quantified self” that over-
takes definitively the other two in 2012. The term “Quantified Self” in-
vented by two editors of the magazine Wired, Kevin Kelly and Gary
Wolf, becomes a general term for indicating self-tracking practices that
140                                                           Tecnoscienza – 9 (1)

have an important role in health promotion and in everyday life.
    Moreover, she shows that the list of self-tracking tools available to
track daily activities is very vast from wearable, implanted and mobile
technologies, to sensors embedded in bodies and in the urban space.
Nevertheless, the author underlines that sociological academic studies on
how people are engaging in quantified self-practices are very few.
    In the second chapter, Lupton explores the different theoretical per-
spectives for analyzing self-tracking cultures, underling the importance of
the sociomaterial perspective for studying the digital life. According to
the author, sociomaterialism is relevant to understand the assemblages of
human and nonhuman actors in order to analyze “the ways in which peo-
ple incorporate objects into the routines of their everyday lives – or effec-
tively how they become entangled in assemblages with these objects” (p. 41).
    Then the author pays attention to the notion of knowing capitalism to
denote the new form of global economy, in which digital data and partic-
ularly big data become commercially profitable because offer unprece-
dented opportunities to make predictions and trend patterns on human
behaviors, healthcare and public wellbeing, healthy environmental and so
on. Moreover, the self-tracking cultures promote the ideal neoliberal citi-
zen, who must be responsible and capable of self-reflection and acquire
self-knowledge. From another perspective, the self-tracking practices are
just another approach to manage and control owns embodiment. Here,
the attention is on the body intended as a site of identity and information
that can be transformed in digital data in order to master the uncertain-
ties of the contemporary society. Nevertheless, the digital data raise im-
portant privacy issues. As Lupton underlines, some scholars used the
Foucault’s concept of panopticon in order to highlight “how external ra-
tionales of surveillance may be internalised, so that people engage in self-
monitoring not only because they can never be sure whether hidden oth-
ers are watching them, but also because they have accepted these ration-
ales as part of practices of the self” (p. 59). This form of invisible but par-
ticipate surveillance is defined dataveillance.
    The third chapter presents an overview of the ways in which self-
tracking cultures are shaping the concepts of self and body. Therefore,
she reports some interview and articles in which self-trackers underline
the achievement of self-knowledge, self-management, and self-improve-
ment through the uses of these technologies. In this sense, self-trackers
monitor reflexively their own selfhood, who becomes viewable, quantifi-
able, thus comparable through digital data, endorsing the ideal notion of
responsible, productive, flexible and efficient citizen. Therefore, the body
is portrayed as a machine that produces measurable and quantifiable da-
ta, which can be used to understand selfhood in a scientific way. At the
same time, self-tracking technologies are personal and biographical, be-
coming an archive of everyday practices, interactions and bodily func-
tions, so a repository of significance and emotions.
Book Review                                                              141
    The author underlines that the uses of these technologies are recon-
figuring the concepts of public and private. They promote a voluntary
self-surveillance with the possibility by second and third parties to surveil
private life, but also the opportunity to extend citizens’ control into pub-
lic spheres. According to Lupton, users become part of heterogeneous
network of human and nonhuman actors, in which the opportunity to
share experiences offers both new ways to facilitate a participatory sur-
veillance, but also the generation of reflexive self-monitoring practices in
order to became expert users of their selves.
    The fourth chapter explores the diverse aspects of keyword “data”.
Recording personal information, the users generate assemblages’ data
that can be useful to visualize and materialize with graphs or statistics
some elements of body/self not otherwise perceptible, in order to change
or just analyze their behavioral patterns in a reflexive way. Beyond,
Lupton emphasizes that even if the numbers are presented as neutral and
objective they are always socially constructed.
    The last chapter discusses the political and privacy issues arising from
the spread of big data and predictive algorithms. Indeed, the small data
aggregated in big data are valuable for second and third parties in order
to monitor and control but also to manipulate the population. In this per-
spective, there is a fine difference between pushed and imposed self-
tracking.
    Hence, some agency, particularly health-insurance agencies, are per-
suading people to participate in self-tracking practices. As Lupton under-
lines, the type of pushed self-tracking adheres to the soft power of ne-
oliberalism governance, that encourage citizens to engage in the approach
of promoting and preventive health in which the focus is on the develop
of self-responsibility in order to achieve the ideal self. While imposed
self-tracking can be used in drug programs, or in family law, but also in
some workplace. This arise controversial consequences and important
political issues about the loss of privacy. However, there is a communal
self-tracking, for example the community of Quantified Self movement or
the initiatives of citizen science, in which the open and accessible data
sets are seen as a way for the citizens to learn from data shared by others
and to plan their activities in the smart city. Moreover, the users can re-
spond at the dataveillance with resistant strategies as the choice of certain
devices or the use of several software that obscure personal information
with the production of ambiguous and false data.
    This book incorporates different theoretical frameworks, in which the
sociomaterial perspective is represented as one of the most useful for ana-
lyzing “the nature of humans’ intertwinings with technologies” (p. 39),
and for capturing the different aspects of self-tracking cultures. Adopting
a thorough STS theoretical framework means, instead, considering cul-
tures as elements of heterogeneous assemblages, in which technical, so-
cial, and conceptual bits and pieces are not distinct. In this way, techno-
142                                                             Tecnoscienza – 9 (1)

logical practices exist only in a heterogeneous alignment, in which science
and technology – technoscience – work by translating material and social
from one form into another (Latour 2005). This could suggest studying
the intra-actions between humans and nonhumans actors, objects and
subjects in their mutual constitutions, and rethinking the notions of em-
bodiment that “is a matter not of being specifically situated in the world,
but rather of being of the world in its dynamic specificity” (Barad 2007,
p. 377).
    Nevertheless, the book has the merit of being a map of the emerging
and fragmented self-tracking literature. It looks like a captivating chal-
lenge for STS scholars, called to focus on the ontological and epistemo-
logical strength of techno-scientific approaches, in order to put into ques-
tion the digitalization processes.


References
Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entan-
       glement of matter and meaning, Durham, SC, Duke University Press.
Gabrys, J. (2014) Programming environments: environmentality and citizen sens-
       ing in the smart city, in “Environment and Planning D: Society and
       Space”, 32 (1), pp. 30-48.
Kitchin, R. and Dodge, M. (2011) Code/space: Software and everyday life, Cam-
       bridge, MA, MIT Press.
Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-
       Theory, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Ruckenstein, M. (2014) Visualized and interacted life: Personal analytics and en-
       gagements with data doubles, in “Societies”, 4 (1), pp. 68-84.
