• Home
• Study
• Study Information
• Modules
• Module Information

Technology, Health and Technohealth

Module description

Technologies cannot be separated from the social contexts they emerge out of, act on, shape, and are shaped by. Never ‘neutral’ their creation, envisioned use, and the problems they are intended to solve bring to the fore different socio-cultural values. It is difficult to imagine health and healthcare without technology and studying technologies allows another route into exploring health, society, and socio-cultural ideas (for example in relation to bodies, environments, gender, race, risk, the future…) Through lectures, seminars, and core readings, we will consider what different technologies normalise, make possible, and foreclose, how we ‘do’ technology (particularly in relation to health and medicine), and how technology, in turn, ‘does’ us. You’ll further engage with these ideas through your portfolio assessment to consider fictional depictions of technology, implications for research/policy, and your personal reflections. 

No pre-requisite and co-requisite modules are required. The module is suitable for non-specialist students.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module uses technology as a lens to investigate and raise questions about the social world and health and medicine in particular. It seeks to introduce you to key scholarship in the anthropology, sociology and social studies of technology and technoscience as well as to the researching of technologies in practice. Across a range of different topics we will consider how technologies themselves raise questions about what is valued, when and where, what is done about this and by whom, the generation of data and what can/cannot be recorded, as well as how (else) to conceptualise and study technologies. The module is research-led and will include examination of research projects undertaken on these topics. The module is also designed to enable students to think through how social research is undertaken in practice and how this contributes to the generation of theory. You will develop research, writing, critical thinking, and presentation skills through your participation and engagement with the module lectures, seminars, readings and portfolio tasks.  

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Critically discuss contemporary conceptualisations of technologies and their limitations
• 2. Identify and examine how technologies come from, act on, shape, and are shaped by different socio-cultural contexts

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Appraise embedded values and assumptions within technologies and what these tell us about important socio-cultural understandings (such as ideas about risk, gender, race and the future)
• 4. Appreciate and understand key anthropological and other social science approaches, theory, and methods and how they might be applied to the study of technologies

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Work independently and as part of a group using critical thinking to undertake discrete tasks
• 6. Understand some of the key issues in conducting social research and the conclusions these may lead us to
• 7. Gain insight into the embeddedness of particular sociocultural ideas within the everyday and aspects of life that we see as neutral, ‘normal’ or ‘culture-free’, which will be of advantage in an increasing range of professional settings

Syllabus plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:  

?  

• Care and (un)caring technologies
• Technoscience and posthuman relations
• Technologies of monitoring and surveillance
• Health systems and infrastructure as technologies
• Techno-futures and the promise of new technologies
• Technologies in research and practice

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment. 

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to redo the assessment(s) as defined above. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%. 

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology, 2022 (Especially the Introduction by M.H. Bruun & A. Wahlberg Pp1-33). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore
• Pols, J., 2012, Care at a Distance: On the Closeness of Technology. Amsterdam, NL: Amsterdam University Press. 
• Mol A., 2002 The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press
• Mol A, I. Moser, & J. Pol (eds) Care in Practice: On Tinkering in Clinics, Homes and Farms. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 7–25.
• Benjamin, R. 2019 (ed). Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life. Durham: Duke University Press
• Weiner, K. & C. Will, 2018. Thinking with care infrastructures: People, devices and the home in home blood pressure monitoring. Sociology of Health & Illness 40(2):270-282.
• Ruckenstein, M. and N.D.Schüll, 2017, The datification of health. Annual Reviews of Anthropology 46:261–78
• Martin, A, N. Myers, N. & A. Viseu. The Politics of Care in Technoscience. Social Studies of Science 45.5 (2015): 625–641.
• Haraway DJ (1997) Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• Paterson, M. “Why Are So Many Robots White?” The Conversation. 26 January 2024 https://theconversation.com/why-are-so-many-robots-white-213336

Key words search

Technology; health; bodies; medicine; technoscience; care; STS; real-world; research;