‘There’s only so much data you can handle in your life’: accommodating and resisting self-surveillance in women’s running and fitness tracking practices

by | May 15, 2019 | Research Publications

Author(s):

  • Katelyn Esmonde

Abstract:

The widespread use of Fitbits, Garmins and Apple Watches is emblematic of the ‘Quantified Self’ (QS) movement, where participants utilise digital self-tracking devices to generate a broad range of data on their health and fitness for the purposes of self-improvement. Gendered expectations for beauty and health have led to women becoming disproportionately represented amongst fitness tracker wearers, as weight loss and self-discipline for the purposes of beauty are often considered women’s endeavours. To examine the gendered ways in which wearable technologies are utilised in fitness practices, I look to ‘running interviews’ and semi-structured interviews with 10 women who identify as self-tracking runners to better apprehend the ways in which self-surveillance through a fitness tracking device is both accommodated and resisted. Drawing on a Foucauldian conceptual framework of surveillance, discipline and technologies of femininity, I describe four strategies of resistance to datafication: labelling some data as excessive, not tracking every run or every day, invoking one’s humanity and fallibility as a way of limiting disappointment from unfavourable data, and re-valuing feelings over data. While these self-trackers have undergone this process of problematisation and deemed this level of self-surveillance to be an important part of what they see as a healthy lifestyle, they do not fully accept practices of dataism, optimisation and technologies of femininity, entirely.

Documentation:

https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2019.1617188

References:
  • Andrews, D. L. 1993. “Desperately Seeking Michel: Foucault’s Genealogy, the Body, and Critical Sport Sociology.” Sociology of Sport Journal 10 (2): 148–167. doi:10.1123/ssj.10.2.148. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Bordo, S. 2003. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (10th Anniversary Edition). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]
  • Boyd, D., and K. Crawford. 2012. “Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a Cultural, Technological, and Scholarly Phenomenon.” Information, Communication & Society 15 (5): 662–679. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Carlén, U., and N. Maivorsdotter. 2017. “Exploring the Role of Digital Tools in Running: The Meaning-Making of User-Generated Data in a Social Networking Site.” Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 9 (1): 18–32. doi:10.1080/2159676X.2016.1180636. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Cole, C. L. 1993. “Resisting the Canon: Feminist Cultural Studies, Sport, and Technologies of the Body.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 17 (2): 77–97. doi:10.1177/019372359301700202. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]
  • Connected Intelligence, N. P. D. 2015. Consumers and Wearables Report. http://connected-intelligence.com/our-research/wear [Google Scholar]
  • Crawford, K., J. Lingel, and T. Karppi. 2015. “Our Metrics, Ourselves: A Hundred Years of Self-Tracking from the Weight Scale to the Wrist Wearable Device.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 18 (4–5): 479–496. doi:10.1177/1367549415584857. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Didžiokaitė, G., P. Saukko, and C. Greiffenhagen. 2018. “The Mundane Experience of Everyday Calorie Tackers: Beyond the Metaphor of Quantified Self.” New Media & Society 20 (4): 1470–1487. doi:10.1177/1461444817698478. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Drew, D. L., and J. M. Gore. 2016. “Measuring Up? the Discursive Construction of Student Subjectivities in the Global Children’s Challenge™.” Sport, Education and Society 21 (3): 374–395. doi:10.1080/13573322.2014.923833. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Dworkin, S. L., and F. L. Wachs. 2009. Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness. New York: New York University Press. [Google Scholar]
  • Esmonde, K. 2018. “Tracing the Feedback Loop: A Foucauldian and Actor-Network-Theory Examination of Heart Rate Monitors in a Physical Education Classroom”. Sport, Education and Society 1-13. doi: 10.1080/13573322.2018.1432480 [Taylor & Francis Online], [Google Scholar]
  • Evans, J., and P. Jones. 2011. “The Walking Interview: Methodology, Mobility and Place.” Applied Geography 31 (2): 849–858. doi:10.1016/j.apgeog.2010.09.005. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Fotopoulou, A., and K. O’Riordan. 2017. “Training to Self-Care: Fitness Tracking, Biopedagogy and the Healthy Consumer.” Health Sociology Review 26 (1): 54–68. doi:10.1080/14461242.2016.1184582. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. Brighton: Harvester Press. [Google Scholar]
  • Foucault, M. 1990. The History of Sexuality: Vol. I. An Introduction. New York: Random House. [Google Scholar]
  • Foucault, M. 1995. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]
  • Foucault, M. 2003. “The Subject and Power.” In The Essential Foucault, edited by P. Rabinow and N. Rose, 126–144. New York: New Press. [Google Scholar]
  • Foucault, M. 2004. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College De France 1978–1979. New York: Picador. [Google Scholar]
  • Haggerty, K. D., and R. V. Ericson. 2000. “The Surveillant Assemblage.” The British Journal of Sociology 51 (4): 605–622. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Kosecki, D. 2018. “One of your most requested features is here! Introducing female health tracking.” Fitbit Blog, May Accessed 20 Accessed June 20 June 2018. https://blog.fitbit.com/female-health-tracking/ [Google Scholar]
  • Kusenbach, M. 2003. “Street Phenomenology: The Go-Along as Ethnographic Research Tool.” Ethnography 4 (3): 455–485. doi:10.1177/146613810343007. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]
  • Lemke, T. 2011. Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction. New York: New York University Press. [Google Scholar]
  • Lupton, D. 1992. “Discourse Analysis: A New Methodology for Understanding the Ideologies of Health and Illness.” Australian Journal of Public Health 16: 145–150. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Google Scholar]
  • Lupton, D. 1995. The Imperative of Health: Public Health and the Regulated Body. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. [Google Scholar]
  • Lupton, D. 2012. “M-Health and Health Promotion: The Digital Cyborg and Surveillance Society.” Social Theory & Health 10 (3): 229–244. doi:10.1057/sth.2012.6. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Lupton, D. 2016. The Quantified Self. Malden, MA: Polity. [Google Scholar]
  • Lynch, R., and S. Cohn. 2016. “In the Loop: Practices of Self-Monitoring from Accounts by Trial Participants.” Health 20 (5): 523–538. doi:10.1177/1363459315611939. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Markula, P. 2003. “The Technologies of the Self: Sport, Feminism, and Foucault.” Sociology of Sport Journal 20 (2): 87–107. doi:10.1123/ssj.20.2.87. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Markula, P., and M. Silk. 2011. Qualitative Research for Physical Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]
  • Markula, P., and R. Pringle. 2006. Foucault, Sport and Exercise: Power, Knowledge and Transforming the Self. New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]
  • McLaren, M. A. 2002. Feminism, Foucault, and Embodied Subjectivity. Albany, NY: SUNY. [Google Scholar]
  • Millington, B. 2018. Fitness, Technology and Society: Amusing Ourselves to Life. New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]
  • Nafus, D., and J. Sherman. 2014. “This One Does Not Go up to 11: The Quantified Self Movement as an Alternative Big Data Practice.” International Journal of Communication 8: 1784–1794. [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Palmer, C. 2016. “‘Research on the Run: Moving Methods and the Charity “Thon”’.” Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 8 (3): 225–236. doi:10.1080/2159676X.2015.1129641. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Pantzar, M., and M. Ruckenstein. 2017. “Living the Metrics: Self-Tracking and Situated Objectivity.” Digital Health 3: 1–10. doi:10.1177/2055207617712590. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Pink, S., M. Ruckenstein, R. Willim, and M. Duque. 2018. “Broken Data: Conceptualising Data in an Emerging World.” Big Data & Society 5 (1): 1–13. doi:10.1177/2053951717753228. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Pink, S., S. Sumartojo, D. Lupton, and C. H. La Bond. 2017. “Mundane Data: The Routines, Contingencies and Accomplishments of Digital Living.” Big Data & Society 4 (1). doi:10.1177/2F2053951717700924. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Rail, G. 2008. “Canadian Youth’s Discursive Constructions of Health in the Context of Obesity Discourse.” In Biopolitics and the ‘Obesity Epidemic’: Governing Bodies, edited by J. Wright and V. Harwood, 141–156. New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]
  • Rose, N. 2007. The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]
  • Ruckenstein, M., and M. Pantzar. 2015. “Beyond The Quantified Self: Thematic Exploration Of a Dataistic Paradigm.” New Media & Society 19 (3): 401-418. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Sanders, R. 2017. “Self-Tracking in the Digital Era: Biopower, Patriarchy, and the New Biometric Body Projects.” Body & Society 23 (1): 36–63. doi:10.1177/1357034X16660366. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Smith, B., and K. R. McGannon. 2018. “Developing Rigor in Qualitative Research: Problems and Opportunities within Sport and Exercise Psychology.” International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology 11: 101–121. doi:10.1080/1750984X.2017.1317357. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Smith, G. J. 2018. “Data Doxa: The Affective Consequences of Data Practices.” Big Data & Society 5 (1): 1–15. doi:10.1177/2053951717751551. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Smith, G. J. D., and B. Vonthethoff. 2017. “Health by Numbers? Exploring the Practice and Experience of Datafied Health.” Health Sociology Review 26: 6–21. doi:10.1080/14461242.2016.1196600. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
  • Van Dijck, J. 2014. “Datafication, Dataism and Dataveillance: Big Data between Scientific Paradigm and Ideology.” Surveillance & Society 12 (2): 197–208. doi:10.24908/ss.v12i2.4776. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]
  • Williamson, B. 2015. “Algorithmic Skin: Health-Tracking Technologies, Personal Analytics and the Biopedagogies of Digitized Health and Physical Education.” Sport, Education and Society 20 (1): 133–151. doi:10.1080/13573322.2014.962494. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]