Prelims

Half Title Page

The Quantification of Bodies in Health

Title Page

The Quantification of Bodies in Health: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

EDITED BY

BTIHAJ AJANA

King’s College London, UK

JOAQUIM BRAGA

University of Coimbra, Portugal

Simone Guidi

National Research Council, Italy

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2022

Editorial matter and Selection © 2022 Btihaj Ajana, Joaquim Braga, and Simone Guidi.

Individual chapters: © 2022 the authors Published under an exclusive license by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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ISBN: 978-1-80071-884-5 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80071-883-8 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80071-885-2 (Epub)

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

About the Contributors

Btihaj Ajana is Professor of Ethics and Digital Culture at the department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London. She is a former Marie Curie Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies. Her academic research is interdisciplinary in nature and focuses on the ethical, political and ontological aspects of digital developments and their intersection with everyday cultures. She has written on the effects of technology on issues of identity, embodiment, governance and cultural representation. She is the author of Governing through Biometrics: The Biopolitics of Identity (2013) and editor of Self-Tracking: Empirical and Philosophical Investigations (2018) and Metric Culture: Ontologies of Self-Tracking Practices (2018). Ajana is also a filmmaker and uses film as a way of exploring social issues while bringing scholarly ideas to wider audiences. Her most recent films include Quantified Life (2017), Surveillance Culture (2017), and Fem’s Way (2020).

Joaquim Braga is a Researcher and Professor at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Coimbra. He is also a Member of the Research Unit Institute for Philosophical Studies. His research activity covers the fields of Aesthetics, Picture Theory, Philosophy of Technology, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy, with a special interest in symbolic thought. His works include, among others, Die symbolische Prägnanz des Bildes. Zu einer Kritik des Bildbegriffs nach der Philosophie Ernst Cassirers (2012), Rethinking Culture and Cultural Analysis – Neudenken von Kultur und Kulturanalyse (2013), Leituras da Sociedade Moderna. Media, Política, Sentido (2013), Símbolo e Cultura (2014), Bernard de Mandeville’s Tropology of Paradoxes: Morals, Politics, Economics, and Therapy (2015), Antropologia da Individuação. Estudos sobre o Pensamento de Ernst Cassirer (2017), Conceiving Virtuality: From Art to Technology (2019), Teoria das Formas Imagéticas. Ensaios sobre Arte, Estética, Tecnologia (2020).

Laura Corti is a PhD Candidate in Science and Engineering for Humans and the Environment at Campus Bio-Medico University in Rome. She is part of the Research Group Qua-Onto-Tech (Qualitative Ontology and Technology) at the University of Florence and of the Research Unit Philosophy of Science and Human Development at the Campus Bio-Medico University. Currently, her research is focussing on the philosophical issues of introducing qualities, such as sensation or emotions, into expert and robot systems. Her main research topics are post-phenomenology, philosophy of science and ethics of AI and Robotics.

Alessandro De Cesaris is a Post-doc Research Fellow at the University of Turin. He is also scientific collaborator at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris (Department of Humanisme numérique). He coedited a collective volume on Hegel’s logic (2020) and wrote essays in Italian, French, English and German on his main research interests: Classic German Philosophy, Media Theory and Anthropology of Technology. His current research project is focussed on the notion of ‘hypermodernity’ and on the socio-technical imaginaries connected to the Information Revolution.

Lorenzo De Stefano is a Teaching Assistant in Theoretical Philosophy and in Ethics and Theory of Big Data at the Department of Humanistic Studies, University of Naples Federico II. His research interests focus on metaphysics, phenomenology, philosophical anthropology and philosophy of technology. He holds a PhD in Philosophical Sciences from the University of Naples Federico II and was a Visiting Researcher at Eberhard Karls Universität of Tübingen, Albert-Ludwigs Universität of Freiburg and Johannes Gutenberg-Universität of Mainz. His current research interests are concerned with the anthropological, ontological and ethical aspects of emerging technologies.

Zeena Feldman is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Culture in the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London. Her research examines the ways digital communication technologies impact analogue concepts – for instance, belonging, mental health and food. She has published widely, including in the European Journal of Cultural Studies, Information, Communication & Society, Celebrity Studies, TripleC, The Independent, OpenDemocracy and The Conversation. She is Co-editor, with Deborah Lupton, of Digital Food Cultures (2020) and Editor of Art & the Politics of Visibility (2017). She runs the Quitting Social Media project, which explores digital overload and detox.

Simone Guidi is a Researcher at the CNR-ILIESI (Italy). In 2019–2020, he was an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the University of Coimbra and is a Full Member of the same University’s Instituto de Estudos Filosóficos. He received his PhD in Philosophy from the University Sapienza of Rome. His research deals with the History of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy, and particularly with the genesis of the Cartesian mind-body dualism. He is the Managing Editor of the international journal of philosophy Lo Sguardo. He received the Italian National Scientific Qualification (ASN) as Associate Professor and as Full Professor of History of Philosophy.

Amanda Karlsson is currently working as an External Lecturer at the Institute of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University in Denmark. She recently completed a PhD project on women’s engagement with period-trackers. She has a background in media studies and her research interests revolve around the socio-technical practices of everyday life and the effects of technologies on these. She focusses on topics such as the quantification of bodies through digital technologies, how various digital technologies ascribe meaning to life transgressions and how we come to understand these entanglements and intertwinements of digital communication, privacy, embodiment, gender and data.

Rachael Kent is the Founder of Dr Digital Health consultancy and corporate wellbeing (https://www.drdigitalhealth.co.uk/), and a Lecturer in Digital Economy & Society Education at the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London. Having empirically researched the impact of digital technology on mental and physical health for over 15 years, her first book ‘The Health Self: Digital Performativity and Health Management in Everyday Life’ is forthcoming with Bristol University Press. Her research regularly appears in press and podcasts including BBC News, Forbes Magazine, The Independent, Runners World, BrainCare, Metro UK and Metric Life.

Ana Carolina Minozzo is a PhD Researcher at the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London and holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Psychoanalytic Psychology and Psychosocial Studies at the same university. Her research crosses the fields of medical humanities, continental philosophy, eco-feminism and psychoanalytic theory in relation to diagnoses and experiences of anxiety in and outside of the clinic. She is also a Clinical Practitioner in the field and part of the Psychosis Therapy Project (PTP) in London, UK.

Phoebe V. Moore is Associate Professor of the Futures of Work at the University of Leicester, School of Business. She is a globally recognised expert in digitalisation and the workplace. Her most recent book The Quantified Self in Precarity: Work, Technology and What Counts (Routledge 2019) is a ground-breaking piece, analysing the use of wearable tracking technologies in workplaces and the implications for human resources and working conditions. She is a Policy Advisor and Commissioned Author who works with several institutions in the European Union including the European Safety and Health Agency; the European Parliament; the United Nations International Labour Organization; and the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development on the integration of big data, artificial intelligence systems, and old and new technologies into workplaces and spaces, and the risks and benefits these pose for working people.