ANTHMETHGRP4-2425-RUI-ZHU

[Last modified: December, 9 2024 03:45 AM]

background

Wearable self-health monitoring devices usually refer to a type of devices which are wearable and have the function of data collection and dealing and can quantify users’ physical information. In the qualitative research on wearers of wearable health monitoring devices, there is no lack of attention to this self-health monitoring behavior. On the one hand, it affirms the technical discipline and media interaction in the process, and on the other hand, points out the essence of cybernetics behind the datalization of the body. Some studies pointed out the possible privacy problems of such monitoring behaviors, social control and technical failure and other social risks. However, these studies pay less attention to the “digital body” and “technical body” shaped by the wearer and their interaction with the physical body.

Compared with those who must monitor their health conditions in real time due to health problems, the concepts and behavioral logic of those who actively choose to wear health monitoring devices without necessity better reflect the results of the combination of the new body concept with digital and information technology.

After wearing intelligent monitoring devices, on the one hand, a digital body constructed by the monitoring results is born. On the other hand, the physical body is reduced from the subject to the object to be recognized, and the body combined with technology becomes the Cyborg, achieving the subjective status in the cognitive process. There are complex relationships among physical body, technology and digital body: digital body is constructed by monitoring results; The physical body becomes the object of cognition; The technical body takes the lead.

Problems

What is the specific process by which users of wearable health monitoring devices use devices to “quantify themselves” and construct new Cyborg bodies?

How do these body agents interact with each other?

What are the experiences and feelings that come with it?

How does self-monitoring during this period relate to the discipline and control of society?

Methods

Generation of network ethnography: I will enter wearable device APPs, online community, etc. to record the interaction process of wearers through the digital identity generated by wearable health monitoring devices and expand the field to the whole virtual community.

Actual field research: The actual field data were completed by semi-structured in-depth interviews with the wearers during the tracking period. However, in my opinion, long-term observation is still an irreplaceable research method, so the author will still follow the wearer relatively closely.

Quantity methods: Use statistical auxiliary qualitative techniques to collect a larger sample pool for descriptive statistics, analyze the time, quantity, use, psychology, etc. of their wearing, and roughly obtain user portraits. After summarizing the questionnaire, qualitatively survey about 20-30 device users.

OF COURSE UNDER THE ADMISSION OF ETHIC COMMUNITY.

questionaire

What devices do you use?

How long have you been using for your device?

Why do you try to use it?

Please describe your beginning.

What do you use it for?

Do you mind your devices’ outlook?

How often do you look at your device?

Do you link your devices with digital APPs?

Have you joined any communities?

What is your mood when you use your device?

[Last modified: December, 2 2024 04:04 AM]

What ethical issues (if any) arise from this project? How should they be addressed?

First, the subjects in group (a) of this project are not yet adults, so asking for their opinions is a high-risk act. The study may have been conducted with a guardian’s permission, or respondents may not have had full autonomy. Second, asking mothers of young children about breasts may be sensitive and offensive because this study involves the sensitive issue of sex. Full informed consent is therefore required, and the right of (b) group members to withdraw at any time is reserved, and they should not be offended. Finally, in the context of the encouragement of breastfeeding, the debate about public breastfeeding, and the public sexualization of breasts through advertising and other media, this premise determined that the study was conducted with a certain non-value neutrality. The implications of this premise should be considered.

What data protection issues, if any, have arisen from this project?

With regard to data protection, since the issues discussed in this project are very sensitive and because of the private nature of an individual’s physical feelings, the interviewee should be kept confidential and informed consent sought.

Are there any issues around power/coercion?

The issue itself does not involve public power and violence, but it presupposes a context of “the encouragement of breastfeeding, the debate about public breastfeeding, and the public sexualization of breasts through advertising and other media.” According to Foucault’s theory, this kind of public opinion can also be seen as a manifestation of the subtle action of power.

Are ‘vulnerable’ individuals involved? Could the topic be considered sensitive? 

The study apparently involved underage students. And mothers of young children are also a vulnerable group. The topic touches on physical and sexual content that is often considered sensitive.

Should this be approved by the Anthropological Ethics Committee? Or should it go to UCL REC? Is it considered low risk or high risk?

I think this study, although high-risk, could be approved by the anthropological Ethics Committee.

If I were a member of the anthropological Ethics Committee, in order for this research to meet ethical standards, I believe that researchers need to pay attention to the following points throughout the process.

1. It is recommended that the age of group (a) be raised to 18 years or older, as research on sensitive issues involving minors and students would be subject to high ethical risks, and their opinions could not be said to be those of persons responsible for full civil capacity.

2. In the process of selecting research objects, attention must be paid to informed consent, information confidentiality and the right to withdraw throughout the process.

3. When designing questionnaires and interview outlines, be careful not to offend sensitive issues. 

4.In addition, it is recommended to pay special attention to not adding a lot of content about physical experience in the group interview (which is likely to be private and not convenient for collective discussion in the group).

[Last modified: November, 25 2024 07:52 AM]

I tried to record the scene on the street in front of the teaching building. I marked its location on Google Map.

I noticed that Two young men were smoking. The smell is very offensive to the nose. They were speaking Chinese, so I could understand them. The topic they are discussing is “six fire facilities”. It could be their coursework.

Cold wind was like knives breeze. I felt pain and hypothermia in my neck and face.

http://多模态 – 维基百科，自由的百科全书 — Multimodality – Wikipedia

Street sound? -cars horns, engines, brakes, passengers talking, “six fire facilities” talking, bells hanging from pedestrians’ backpacks, steel pipes falling to the ground, “urban chaos”. Everyone was still in a hurry, but perhaps because of the weather and the fact that it was Friday, the tone of voice was lighter and the manner of walking was more cheerful.

 

Little sunshine, bright noon, skewing sun: A typical sunny winter day in London. The sun is not overhead, so it is not strong, especially if it is blocked by tall buildings.

Sky? The sky was clear. It’s hard for me to describe that blue. I think the weather in London is very special: it’s always very, very clear. I have never seen London half-sunny. That blue is as vibrant as bright red and emerald green in such a winter.

I noticed the Christmas lights up in the street. Does Christmas start so early in London?

Dry, no rains, but not dry so. There is little of the pure dry cold of my hometown in London. The cold air is hard and heavy, mixed with the smog of burning coal, and can make the whole respiratory system dry and tingling like a half-gas frozen knife.

In addition to the pictures I took, I also recorded an audio of the street sounds. You can hear steel pipes falling (there are tall tower cranes under construction nearby), the roar of car engines, the friction of roads being rolled over, ambulances roaring past, pedestrians talking and laughing.

 

I didn’t go out too far because it was so cold. My hands were frozen and it hurt.

I think multimodality is a way to use multiple media and ways to tell a story. With each new medium, there are changes in the encoding of the information it carries, in the way the author selects and cuts the information (which reflects the author’s subjective processing), and in the way the reader is expected to be triggered to receive and think about the information. My writing is based on other modalities, so I’m trying to describe colors and things on pictures, how my skin and respiratory system feel, the sounds I hear, and so on. But the rhetoric of these words in order to make them perceived by the reader cannot be compared with their own directness and clarity.

[Last modified: November, 18 2024 07:25 AM]

Here I want to talk about embrace. Since I came to London 4 months ago, I haven’t be hugged anymore. On seminar, we talked about body touching in everyone’s own culture. In China, young girls stick together. They hold each other’s hand and lie on their companion’s leg. Some of them even touch each other’s bully, chest or hip, which will be judged as lesbian’s behaviour in UK. But in China, the frequency and intimacy of physical contact between young women does have the ambiguity of friendship and sex relationship. I still hug my mother, maybe it’s a baby thing. But in other culture, touch maybe impolite or unclean to others, or will be stigmatized to be a symbol of mess sex relationship.

In China, touch is a way to feel beloved, especially among young girls. They usually lived a painful childhood in cold family without love from fathers, which led to another unfortunate fate when they meet another man and fall in love with him. They asked for love they lack, but love is anything but can’t bug to get. Is touching and hugging a substitute for intimacy and love?

Some research illustrated that human skins are thirsty. This is not only a psychological deficiency, but also has a physiological basis. Lack of touch stimulation can lead to a decrease in the production of certain substances in the brain, which can affect a person’s sense of security and mood.

A lot of adults need physical contact, and that’s why. Even though they have been out of their mother’s arms for a long time, the desire to be held is still a deep need for many people.

I don’t know why it’s so hard to get hugs in London. Is it because people don’t want to hug strangers or treat me like a friend? Many students expressed their views, they said that Londoners are cold, they are in a hurry and have no time to care about others. Some find the freedom of the big city here: they escape the pervasive control of their small towns and communities and become invisible to the flow of people. Others feel the atomization of modern civilization: a kind of eternal solitude with oneself.

After class, my Japanese classmates gave me a hug. We held each other tight. Although we were both heavily dressed, so we could not feel each other’s body temperature, but the strength of the hug in its own right conveyed a certain strength to me. My other Chinese friend took off my hat and rubbed my hair. I lay in her arms and held her as if I were in China. This makes me feel that I am not a lonely yard in this city, and I am about to have my new family and friends from scratch.

[Last modified: November, 4 2024 06:07 AM]

My work has an assumption about discipline and control, which is included in politics in a board sense. I planned to study about Chinese people, because I am sure that their condition is mainly decided by Chinese politic atmosphere, which is named repression. People relying on wearable monitoring services show they are thirsty to being detected, as which gives them sense of safety, especially embodied. In this aspect, it is totally different with UK conditions, which the sense of loss is caused by modern disorder, or in other words, freedom. So the study takes a largely liberal stance and questions the boundaries of government action and public power.

My position is also on liberal stance, which means I am conflicting power. I know that the relationship between individual power and public power is not the opposite, they are not absolutely opposed, but this situation does not apply to China. For China, every advance in public power comes at the cost of nibbling and squeezing individual rights, creating repression and fear. Under such a premise, as an anthropologist, it is not difficult to grasp the psychology of people in this process: such self-control is not only the exercise of unconscious struggle and application of power, but also the result of being affected by power. In this process, the position of the anthropologist, that is, the “I”, is not fully included in the group, but a tear is made in the web of power. The relative freedom and wandering state of the observer is a model of freedom and reminds them of the situation of the monitored (in a double sense).

[Last modified: October, 28 2024 12:09 AM]

I think the most frequent word I use in my note is “control”. I was in a hurry to verify there was a strong evidence of controlling or monitoring during the use of wearable devices. I kept asking her questions about controlling. I paid great attention on her feelings when she’s wearing her Apple Watch, such as, do you fell anxiety or a sense of being monitored? Have you joined any exercise groups on the APP? How often do you check it? Would you check your OOTD to fit your arch? Questions like that. I assumed there must be power relationship between wearers and devices, even inner contractions between the ideal self and reality, but I failed.

At least, the first one in my cohort didn’t give out the result I wanted. She just used it to detect her heartbeat during cycling. But I caught a sense of leisure: she certainly wanted to escape from what I assumed that wearers should do.

I planned to draw a picture of her device, but she said she had already stopped wearing it 2 years ago. So I only drown a draft under her description. My note mainly consisted of words and sentences. That’s the way I most familiar with, and through which I can catch most information. Before I start my interview, I decided a plant page into 6 parts. 4 small and 2 big parts. I wrote down some key questions I prepared in 4 blocks, and wrote down some subtitles in one of the 2 bigger block. Then in the last block I wrote some promote thinking. In fact, I didn’t credibly know what I would get before my interview, so the information in each block was flowing. There’s also no clearly limits. I used lines just to keep it tidy and easy to be looked through.

I am writing this short page without checking my note, because I have already kept them in my mind. The most impressive part I remember are the 4 questions blocks. But I have already forgotten most of the interview part. Long sentences are not easy to be memorized, but small blocks and some key terms are good. Questions are also easier to remember than statements.

The main story I want to tell is about…a life story, or life history. From this time’s interview, I can tell a story of my cohort about how did she got her Apple Watch, why, when, and how did she use it, and finally quit it. I wanted to pay more attention about how she felt during the whole period.

[Last modified: October, 21 2024 12:07 AM]

Be a friend or a stranger?

Being an observer, or a participating observer, especially in medical field, means getting closer touch with my interviewees, which divides to to paths: one is being friends with them, while the other is staying an objective distance with them. Both of them have advantages and disadvantages. To myself, I prefer making friends with them, or at least, being familiar with them. Because I am not good at talking with strangers, especially when I have to dig out some secrets of their mind and behaviour as an anthropologist. I assume interviewees hold the same opinion with me. I think being “one of them” give both of us a sense of security. I share some of my thoughts and interests, or the same puzzles with them, even those dark side, like my own diseases. In order to enter that field, I can only “become them” first, become the person with whom they share identity and position. When I want to let them talk about themselves, myself must be opened to own their trust. I give myself a role that I am “on your side”, being prepared to talk and listen.

But it is not enough at all if I only deal with my friends. Information from strangers is as important as those from friends, because they give me an objective view. Sometimes I need their cool talking. And their is another thing to be cared about that too much empathy causes me stress. I usually ask friends to introduce their friends (snow ball method) to form the “stranger” part.

About moral role

As my opinion, too much empathy causes me stress. Of course, moral role is important. I think every research should come from moral concern, especially medical anthropology. Anthropology is a subject caring about human condition. However, I don’t think as an anthropology I have to take over all responsibilities. I am just researchers. The most important moral role of me is to start with morality and to end with morality. After my research, I must pay attention to people’s wellbeing, during my writing. But during my research, the moral role must be hide carefully. The way I see, think, care and express (ethnography writing) is a moral expression in itself.

I once tried to “save” my mentally ill subject. But I found that I would be dragged into the mire. And once I hold the purpose of “saving”, I am no longer a qualified researcher. I would develop a morbid dependency with them, and I myself would break down from carrying too much stress. I think I, at least as researche at this point, am just bystanders. I have no obligation, qualification or ability to change.

[Last modified: October, 14 2024 05:47 AM]

In fact, I changed my mind on my topic and plan. I had been thinking about it for several days, and what happened on Friday made me make the decision.

I was suddenly ordered to go into my field. How ever, I never had a sense of where my field should be. I thought they were all individuals, but how could i just found a patient at once? So I met two classmates and thought about their suggestions, and finally came to mental health centre. When I came into my field, which was, student welfare centre, I found how idiot I was. I waited there for an hour, but no one came, unlikely. And I didn’t know why that I dared not coming in and found staff to talk with her/him about my purpose.

Now I thought even myself was a great example of my focus of shame, that I didn’t want to be judged as a mental health patient student. “I may once a patient, yes, most time I came into centres and hospitals like this. But today is not. Today I am an observer, a researcher, an anthropologist. I come to study about you. All in all, I want to cut-off myself from the label of patients, at least today.” I acknowledge that was what hidden in my mind. Even I myself am afraid be labelled as a patient.

I decided to observe those “escapers”, but how could I come to a mental health center for my purpose? Those who escaped from treating were all hiding about their disease. They might never ask for help from institutes. I assumed that they would be afraid to any official organizations, because they wondered if they would be discriminated after they exposed to others. Yes, it was a wrong way. Of course. Especially after my talk to that friend.

It was not too bad that I only found a friend talked about the problem on class.  I did a short interview with him during the seminar, and he and some of other classmates shared some of the difference between UK patients and Chinese ones, with which was I’d been familiar. He, and a optimistic mister, and another classmate, who once worked as a doctor, told me that when I talked to them UK people, I would found they were unhappy, too, but they were more unhappy with loneness, social issues, or other problems in interpersonal relationship. Or they lost their meaning of life, feeling empty. It was different from my image. It was different from Chinese issues. Chinese were more crazy than them. They were afraid about their future and their past, suffered from great gravity from living. They were abused form childhood by their parents and teachers, mentally and physically. But their illness were hidden. UK patients had more choices, while Chinese patients had none. That’s what I discovered.

 

[Last modified: October, 6 2024 11:15 PM]

Background

Interested in medical anthropology and mental diseases, I tried to do observation   research in young Chinese mental disorder patients. I worked as a companion when they went to hospital, and a listener when they need pouring out. I did researches on their behaviour, such as staying up late and hair loss anxiety. I myself has been stuck in mental disorder and treated in Chinese hospitals, but I know not everyone has consciousness of how to deal with their disease correctly. Their ways of being treated are informality, for example, they prefer self treatment, psychological counselor and simple insomnia medication to being hospitalized, alienists and prescription drugs for psychosis. In a word, they are escaping of being treated.

After research, according to my interviewee and to my point of view, those escaping behaviours are in account of their frustration and distrust in the health care system. This “system” not only refers to the methods and procedures of treatment (they are undoubtedly hostile to psychotropic drugs and suspicious of current treatment options), but also includes the facilities: they often do not receive proper social support, leave and treatment as patients should be. Instead, they are not understood and stigmatized. Mental illness is associated with a person’s willpower and character: they are often seen as weak, selfish and lazy.Even they themselves did not think they had a disease. As a result, expressing mental illness and seeking treatment becomes discouraged.

Problems

England is an alien environment for me. I don’t know how patients deal with their disease here. But judging from the literature I’ve searched so far, many people are still looking for “a hidden community”* for their treatment and support. As a health care system known around the world for its modernization, I wanted to know how patients interacted with and embedded their care behaviors in local health care and social support systems. Mental problems differ from other somatization disorders because the patient’s subjectivity plays a crucial role in treatment. How do they perceive their illness? How does their culture view patients with mental illness? What kind of social support can they get?Do they trust the health system and medicine? And so on.

Method Design

First, the interview for the patient’s life history is necessary. But interviews alone are not enough.

I needed to reach into a patient community and enter the hospital for participatory observation.

On the other hand, I need quantitative and statistical methods to help me get data to support my argument about the “social environment”.

The questionnaire is still being edited. Because I still need more literature and preliminary observations to decide what I should ask and how. But in general, I will conduct semi-structured interviews with them, ask them to tell their life stories, and pay attention to their views and attitudes.

Accessibility

The oral story and my observations will ensure that this study has a traditional ethnography. The patients will be a special and heterocultural social group. But I had a hunch that my biggest problems would be breaking into these communities and gaining access to hospitals for observation.

Reference

*Campbell, G. M., Williamson, V., & Murphy, D. (2023). “A Hidden Community”: The Experiences of Help-Seeking and Receiving Mental Health Treatment in U.K. Women Veterans. A Qualitative Study. Armed Forces & Society, 0(0). https://doi-org.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/10.1177/0095327X231182140

[Last modified: October, 1 2024 06:28 PM]

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