Non-Normative Bodies in Sociotechnical Practices of Engineering Care Robotics

• In Event: Creative Misfits - I: Crafting Misfits: Technosocial Constructions of Disability

Abstract

Contemporary societies are characterized by processes of technology development that takes place in the labs of engineers who can be described as mostly young and abled bodied males. In consequence, their design decisions are mainly targeted at young abled bodied males. However, recently a new target group emerges: the elderly. Growing interest in developing assistive technologies like care robots mark a shift of focus. The new target group differs strongly from the developers: instead of young, male and able bodied, they are old, majorly defined as female and embody what could be framed as generic disabled bodies.
Notably, the goal is not to do the elderly justice, but increasing market revenues. Nevertheless, the described shift inevitably changes the way technology is developed: a move from anticipating the uniform, standardized and abled body to acknowledging bodies that are categorized as ‘misfitting”. We argue that this fitting is constitutive of new socio-material practices of engineering between the elderly and the developers.
Drawing on empirical examples of robotic development, we will discuss the ways in which this new socio-material setting means that the elderly are gaining a certain amount of power in this processes. New possibilities of (re)shaping the meanings of "disable" and "able” arise from this constellation. While these processes also imply that the ‘misfitted’ bodies becomes (more) fitted, the material, embodied specificities also enable resistance. We will explore this constellation by contrasting depictions of the “smart active elderly” with the empirical reality of care robotic projects.

Authors

• Arne Maibaum, TU Berlin

• Philipp Graf, Technische Universität Berlin