Health and/in Technologies. Biomedicine, gender, platform and self-tracking

This dissertation concerns the study of the digital biomedicine ground-ed in everyday self-tracking practices through the theoretical lens of Science and Technology Studies, Feminist Technoscience Studies and Sociology of medicine. The dissertation is divided into two parts. Part One presents the theo-retical and methodological issues related to the central topic of the re-search. It disentangles the theoretical underpinnings that sustain the analysis – with particular regard to the recent debate on new materialism in feminist theory. Additionally, this part undertakes the discussion on the performative character of methods in shaping empirical and situated practices whereby I have carried out my research. Part Two discusses the research findings, collected through an empirical research that focuses on two distinct issues in two empirical fields. The first analytic inquiry concerns the analysis of health platforms and apps for menstrual tracking, exploring how the supposed ‘neutrality’ of design performs genderless sociomaterial objects, that is without gender, rather than gender-free, i.e. free from gender constraints and stereotypes. With the second analytic inquiry I carried out some interviews to investigate the enactment of lay and expert knowledge situated into everyday practices. Regarding the first field, I have analysed the two main Health platforms developed by the major competitors in the market of the Big Five: Health Apple and Google Fit. In this case, I investigated the gender script of the two apps developed with purposes of monitoring wellbeing by Google and Apple and to investigate the biomedical classification of premenstrual syndrome inscribed in the materiality of apps able to datafy menstruation. With the second empirical field, I questioned the engagement of women in self-tracking practices. I carried out thirty interviews with women who use wearables for the management of wellbeing and for the digital tracking of their menstrual cycle. This second line of research aims to draw attention to how women intra-act with bioknowledge suggested by the wearables and apps used. The analysis, which draws upon feminist theoretical sensibilities on science and technology, calls into question two forms of engagement. This involvement sees overlapping knowing-in-practices which, enacted by plural patterns of engagement between the body and material knowledge, have been categorized as follows: a functional engagement with the bioknowledge inscribed in sociomaterial objects and an affective engagement with the knowledge suggested by sociomaterial objects. Finally, this dissertation provides a reflection on the period of health emergency that we are experiencing due to the Covid-19 pandemic out-break. Particularly the focus is on the development of the app for contact tracing: Immuni.