Paper short abstract:

From a feminist STS and geographical perspective, I ask how digital technologies are transforming institutional care spaces and how these spaces configure care work. I explore, how socio-technical practices produce immediate care and thus challenge techno-solutionist approaches to the care crisis.

Paper long abstract:

Digital care technologies promise to solve the care crisis by transforming care work, making it more efficient and immediate for both caregivers and care recipients. Digital technologies are increasingly being used in institutional care spaces, but little is known about how technologies are transforming institutional care spaces and how these spaces configure care work with technology. Drawing on ethnographic observations of care work with technology and interviews with stakeholders in the elderly care and technology development sectors, I explore how digital technologies are intended to, and actually do, transform everyday care practices in assisted living spaces and care homes for older persons. To do this, I adopt a feminist STS understanding of a mutually co-constructive relationship between care and technology and a geographical perspective on the relationality of space and care. I show that digital technologies produce a desire for spatio-temporal immediacy, which is actively embedded by care workers who produce other kinds of immediacies. Extending the notion of technogeographies of care (Oudshoorn 2012), I argue that a focus on everyday care practices with technology can challenge notions of techno-solutionism and contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship between care, technologies and space.