[ecrea] Quantified Self at Work: Call for Papers

The Quantified Self at Work
Special Issue

Editors:

Dr Phoebe Moore, University of Middlesex, London

Dr Christopher Till, Beckett University, Leeds
Call for contributions

The quantified self movement (QSM) refers to an emerging trend 
identified by a range of technological devices used for self-tracking.  
Examples include Microsoft’s wearable camera, the SenseCam, which 
provides the possibility to record autobiographical data and is worn on 
clothes. The Narrative Clip, formerly known as Memoto, is another 
miniscule life logging camera that users wear and which takes geotagged 
photos. Autom is a personal health lifestyle coach robot that provides 
customised responses based on data input about eating habits over time. 
Such technologies can be used for first-person digital ethnographies, 
lifelogging, and self-tracking of mental and physical activities as well 
as recording surroundings and actions also seen in the police force 
(Atkinson, 2014) and professional sports (Wade, 2014). Interest in such 
technologies is evident in health, fashion, and increasingly in workplaces.


Wearables and other types of tracking devices in the workplace places 
responsibility firmly into the hands of productive bodies, but 
simultaneously remove autonomy through transferring tracking to a device 
that produces extensive data used to inform management techniques. 
Further, the link between wearables and self-improvement/well-being is 
inseparable from productivity in the way these technologies are framed 
and marketed. Although this brings an unprecedented dimension to the 
potential for control at work many of these devices are self-imposed. 
Recently they are also becoming interconnected with labour processes 
and, whether through employer-mandated use or self-use, are  intended to 
enhance ‘responsible’ performance in order to achieve the goal of 
accelerated productivity.


Recognition of the relationship between emotion, health and work is not 
new. The emotional labour thesis accurately identifies exploitative 
dimensions of service work (Hochschild, 1983). Subjectivities are 
already privatised while expressing dominant social norms through social 
media, self-branding, visible consumption and socially mandatory 
hedonism. Building on these arguments, quantification in the workplace 
through technology now demonstrates:


1)    attempts to measure emotions and physical well-being so as to 
maximise productivity

2)    the quantification of the connection between physical and 
emotional states by technological means

3)    the ambivalence arising from a growing reliance on self-management 
of emotions and health


Here, we take very recent empirical cases of use of wearable and other 
quantifying technology as a starting point to understand implications 
for work and workplaces, whether workplaces and thus bodies are mobile 
or static, looking at theoretical and philosophical questions that arise 
with the emergence of these technologies as linked with work and labour, 
including questions of subjectivity,  surveillance, productivity, 
resistance, emotional and affective labour, wellbeing, lifestyle, and 
the new world of work in contemporary neoliberal capitalism.

Journals we will pitch

We are currently approaching Theory Culture and Society; New Technology, 
Work and Employment; Body and Society (and perhaps others)

Timetable

September 2014 - Initial call for contributors

15th October 2014 -  Deadline for submission of proposed titles and 
abstracts. Please send to Chris Till (c.till /at/ leedsmet.ac.uk) and Phoebe 
Moore (p.moore /at/ mdx.ac.uk)

1st November 2014 -  Decisions on submitting titles and abstracts

We will contact contributors separately and at that point send the 
finalised proposal

30th April 2014 - Deadline for submission of papers

We have to be fairly strict about this so please let us know asap if 
this isn’t possible so we can have a rethink.

30th July 2014 - Estimated return of first round of reviewer's comments 
and revisions finalized.

Journals have specific methods for dealing with Special Issues so 
depending on which one we work with we will tell contributors the exact 
process.

Dec 2014/Jan 2015 - Estimated publication


Editors’ contributions


Dr Phoebe Moore:

Managing the self through quantification

According to ABI Research, more than 13 million wearable fitness 
tracking devices will be incorporated into employee wellness programs 
2014-19 (Nield, 2014). BP, Amazon, Tesco, and Autodesk are leading this 
trend. Employers have increased focus on well-being in 2014, up from 33 
per cent in 2012 (Paterson, 2013), and wearables are seen as a cutting 
edge method to improve employees' well-being and health (Wilson, 2013b; 
Nield, 2014). A recent report shows that one employee can create more 
than 30GB of data per-week based on three wearable devices. ‘Scaled 
across an organisation, this is clearly a huge amount of information 
that needs to be captured, stored and analysed’ (Rackspace, 2014). So 
the incorporation of wearables in well-being projects simultaneous to 
big data accumulation has become a popular concept with business. This 
article takes these trends and beings to analyse what the implications 
are for workplace well-being programmes that include 
self-quantification, in particular using Bergson’s thesis on 
divisibility, with reference to labour process theory.


Existing work in this area:

P. Moore (2014 in press) 'Tracking Bodies, the Quantified Self and the 
Corporeal Turn’, in Kees van der Pijl (ed) The International Political 
Economy of Production, Volume for Handbooks of Research on International 
Political Economy series, eds. Benjamin J. Cohen and Matthew Watson 
(Cheltenham: Edward Elgar).

Interview with Imperica (2014) ‘Wearable Politics’ 
http://www.imperica.com/en/features/phoebe-moore-wearable-politics

Blog post ‘Self tracking and the Quantified Man’ 
http://phoebevmoore.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/self-tracking-and-the-quantified-man/


Dr Chris Till:

Tracking data subjects: Digital self-tracking, networked labour and 
resistance.

This intervention will theoretically explore the strategies used to 
engage people in self-tracking of exercise and health through digital 
devices and applications, corporate wellness strategies and public 
health programmes and the potential resistances which they form. 
Self-tracking practices are increasingly widespread and are generating 
ever greater volumes of commercially valuable data which I have 
previously suggested approaches populations as a thermodynamic mass of 
potential energy. The techniques used to stimulate engagement will be 
compared and analysed in relation to their constitution of productive 
subjects through encouraging particular relations to the self. Further, 
it will be proposed that these practices are in the process of 
constituting networked relations of labour with the potential for new 
forms of collective resistance distinctive to the current era. 
Analytical categories used for the assessment of health and productivity 
data will be analysed for their role in subjectification which enables 
relations of control as well as resistance.


Existing work in this area:

Till C. Exercise as Labour: Quantified Self and the Transformation of 
Exercise into Labour. Societies. 2014; 4(3):446-462.

http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/4/3/446

Blog Post ‘Are Google making money from your exercise data?: Exercise 
activity as digital labour’

http://wp.me/p3OsRU-5A




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