New book now out: The Internet of Animals: Human-Animal Relationships in the Digital Age

This Sociological Life

This book has now been published. It is available from the Polity website here. A video of me giving a talk about the book is here.

Here is the list of contents:

Introduction

1 Conceptualizing Humans, Animals and Human–Animal Relations

2 Animal Enthusiasts, Activism and Politics in Digital Media

3 The Quantified Animal and Dataveillance

4 Animal Cuteness, Therapy and Celebrity Online

5 Animal Avatars and Zoomorphic Robots

Conclusion: Reimagining Human–Animal Relations

Below is an excerpt from the Introduction chapter, explaining the main themes and issues discussed in the book:

The Internet of Animals is the first book to bring together perspectives from across the humanities and social sciences to consider how digital technologies are contributing to human-animal relationships at both the micropolitical and macropolitical levels. It builds on and extends a growing interest in social and cultural inquiry in: i) the digitization and datafication of humans and…

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Arguing on Facebook about COVID: a case study of key beliefs, rationales and strategies

This Sociological Life

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, social media platforms have become well-known for both disseminating misinformation and conspiracy theories as well as acting as valuable information sources concerning the novel coronavirus and governments’ efforts to manage and contain COVID. Facebook in particular – the world’s most popular social media site – has been singled out as a key platform for naysayers such as anti-vaccination exponents and ‘sovereign citizens’ to express their resentment at containment measures such as lockdowns, quarantine and self-isolation regulations, vaccination mandates and face-covering rules.

What rationales and beliefs underpin these arguments? How and to what extent are they contested or debated on Facebook? What rhetorical strategies are employed by commentators to attempt to persuade others that their views/facts are correct?

To explore these questions, I chose a case study of a short video (2 minutes 5 seconds long) shared by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Facebook on…

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Face masks in the wild: a photographic collection

This Sociological Life

Last April, my co-authored book The Face Mask in COVID Times: A Sociomaterial Analysis was published (written with Clare Southerton, Marianne Clark and Ash Watson when we were all part of the Vitalities Lab that I lead at UNSW Sydney). We feature several images of face masks in the books: a few of which we had taken ourselves.

As the title of the book suggests, and as part of my interest in COVID cultures and everyday life, I am quite fascinated about how face masks have become part of more-than-human worlds across the globe since the advent of the COVID-19 crisis. I’ve continued to notice how face masks have become ‘wilded’ through being thoughtlessly discarded (or sometimes deliberately placed) in public places and on other objects, assembling with other dimensions of things, place and space.

Here’s a catalogue of some of these images I’ve taken so far. These masks are…

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Vitalities Lab Spring 2021 Newsletter

As lockdown lifts in Sydney, we thought it would be a good time for another newsletter to reflect on the events of the last several months. Since our last newsletter, published in early February 2021, we’ve been busy at the Lab not just with academic work but dealing with kids at home and the work of trying to stay connected with family and friends during this period of isolation.

Throughout the year we’ve continued to reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic on our blog. Marianne wrote about her research examining fitness practices during COVID lockdowns, and Clare wrote about emotion during Sydney’s delta outbreak. 

The Vitalities Lab published in the Nature Careers Column

The Lab also wrote a number of pieces for media outlets, including a piece for Nature Careers about using creative research methods during the pandemic. Deborah published two articles on The Conversation, one about robots and AI in popular culture and another about social media and long covid. Clare and Marianne wrote another article for The Conversation about the shaming of people who test positive for COVID. 

With co-author Isabelle Volpe, Clare wrote an article for The Conversation analysing a recent moral panic about drug-related content on TikTok. On a topic that remains important, Deborah published an article for Crikey about Australians’ mental health during lockdown. 

This year, Vitalities Lab Associated Researcher Megan Rose completed her Asia Studies Fellowship at the National Library of Australia for her project titled “Turning anger into smiles: an exploration of relationship between Kawaii culture and feminist activism”. We can’t wait to hear more about this fascinating project!

Clare, Marianne and Deborah enjoying the lovely Ourimbah Campus of the University of Newcastle (pre-lockdown)

Although it seems impossible to imagine, before Sydney’s July COVID lockdown members of the Vitalities Lab were able to attend an in-person event at the University of Newcastle on 7th June. The event was a methods workshop —  Creative, Digital and Embodied Methods for Social Inquiry — organised by Dr Julia Coffey, and held at the beautiful Ourimbah Campus on the Central Coast. Deborah ran a workshop titled ‘A Speculative Archaeology of Contemporary AI’, encouraging us to engage with a digital device as if they were archaeologists encountering it in the future and imagining what it might have been used for. Marianne ran a hands-on digital photo diary workshop, where we got out into the stunning campus and took photos, and discussed what they elicited. Clare ran a creative writing workshop, where participants had to imagine from the perspectives of an algorithm that was sorting images on a social media platform. We had a great time at the workshop and thoroughly enjoyed all the thought-provoking presentations, as well as taking a chance to explore the bushland environment of the Ourimbah Campus. It was also rare opportunity for the Lab members to meet in person, as during the pandemic we have usually connected over Slack and Skype.

Another significant happening in the last few months was that our book The Face Mask In COVID Times: A Sociomaterial Analysis was published. It hit the shelves in April and we’ve had plenty of opportunities to appreciate the materiality of the face mask since, given we’ve been wearing them constantly in lockdown. We’ve had some great feedback on the book, including Marianne going on ABC Radio Sydney Afternoons with James Valentine to talk about it.

In April Deborah and her co-editor Karen Willis also published their edited book The COVID-19 Crisis: Social Perspectives, which offers a diverse and international collection of analyses of the pandemic. The book includes a chapter that Marianne co-authored with colleagues Holly Thorpe and Julie Brice titled ‘Physical Activity and Bodily Boundaries in Times of Pandemic’.

Deborah has been working as a Commissioner on the The Lancet and Financial Times ‘Governing Health Futures 2030: Growing Up in a Digital World’ Commission for the past two years. She was privileged to work with other Commissioners from around the world, including representatives from the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the OECD, the Wellcome Trust and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. On 25 October this report was published by The Lancet. It is provided free to access for 50 days from this date at this link.

Deborah’s award citation on the DASSH website

In other news, Deborah was awarded the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (DASSH) Award for Leadership in Excellence and Innovation (International category), 2021, based on her leadership in initiating and editing the crowd-sourced open access resource ‘Doing Fieldwork in a Pandemic‘. This resource, created in March 2020 when researchers were struggling with continuing their fieldwork in conditions of social upheaval and lockdowns, has gained a lot of attention worldwide and has been shared by many research groups and institutions globally. Deborah’s award citation can be found here.

Congratulations are also in order to Vitalities Lab member Ash Watson, who took up a new role as a postdoc in the ARC Centre for Automated Decision-Making and Society. Though Ash is no longer in the Lab, she hasn’t gone too far. She’s still working with Deborah in the Centre of Excellence and we are fortunate to still have lots of opportunities to collaborate.

We are also delighted to welcome a new PhD student to the Vitalities Lab – Cecily Klim. Cecily has officially started her PhD on a scholarship offered by the ARC Centre of Excellence. She will also be affiliated with and co-supervised by members of the Vitalities Lab, and we are very excited to have her joining us. She will be arriving in Australia soon from the UK and we wish her a safe and smooth international move.

Below we list other publications, presentations and other activity from Vitalities Lab members and associates that have occurred since our last newsletter.

Journal Articles

Book Chapters

  • Lupton, D. and Willis, K. (2021) COVID Society: introduction to the book. In Lupton, D. and Willis, K. (eds), The COVID-19 Crisis: Social Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 3-13.
  • Lupton, D. (2021) Contextualising COVID-19. In Lupton, D. and Willis, K. (eds), The COVID-19 Crisis: Social Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 14-24.
  • Thorpe, H., Brice, J., & Clark, M. Physical activity and bodily boundaries in times of pandemic. In Lupton, D. and Willis, K. (eds), The COVID-19 Crisis: Social Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 39-52.
  • Thorpe, H., Brice, J., & Clark, M.  Towards new materialist sport history. In Phillips, M.G, Booth, D. and Adams, C. (eds), Routledge Handbook of Sport History. London: Routledge.
  • Southerton, C. and Taylor, E. (2021) Dataveillance and the dividuated self: the everyday digital surveillance of young people. In Arigo, B. and B. Sellars (eds), The Pre-Crime Society: Crime, Culture, and Control in the Ultramodern Age. Bristol: Bristol University Press.

Grants and funding

  • 2021-2023 Medical Research Future Fund – Cardiovascular Health Mission: $549, 000 was awarded for the project ‘Cardiac AI: deep learning to predict and prevent secondary cardiovascular events’. Deborah is sixth chief investigator with Blanca Gallego Luxan, Louisa Jorm, Sze-Yuan Ooi, Jennifer Yu, Nigel Lovell and Juan Quiroz, Centre for Big Data Research in Health and Faculty of Engineering, UNSW Sydney and Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney)
  • Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications​ Competitive tender: $82, 500 was awarded to conduct a literature review of arts and mental health. Marianne Clark and Clare Southerton are investigators along with our Social Policy Research Centre colleague Ciara Smyth.
  • The Australian Sociological Association (TASA): Marianne and Clare, with Naomi Smith (Federation Uni), secured $1000 funding for a symposium titled A Better Body: Towards a Sociology of Wellness, which will be held in 2022.

Talks

  • On 18 February Megan presented a paper titled ‘Pivoting to digital ethnography: how Animal Crossing presented me with “New Horizons” for researching Japanese popular culture’ at the Beyond Japanese Studies: Challenges, Opportunities and COVID-19 symposium in Sydney.
  • On 19 February Clare gave an invited online seminar titled ‘#doctorsofTikTok: what health influencers on TikTok can tell us about health communication in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic’, at the Centre for Education Innovation Action Research (CEIAR), Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
  • On 3 March Marianne gave an invited presentation for Children & Childhood Seminar Series, Education and Social Research Institute (ESRI), Manchester Metropolitan University: ‘Maternal bodies, baby bodies and the fit motherhood assemblage’.
  • Marianne ran a creative methods workshop/guest lecture for the ‘Decolonising research methods’ course at UNSW on 29 March.
  • On 21 April Marianne gave a presentation for UNSW Centre for Social Research in Health Seminar Series: ‘Movement and meaning during COVID: insights from a digital photo diary study’.
  • Clare gave a seminar titled ‘Health #foryou: healthcare workers on TikTok’, for the Centre for Social Research in Health 2021 Seminar Series on 16 June.
  • Deborah gave a keynote on 24 June for the Health Promotion conference, National University of Ireland, Galway: ‘Everyday experiences of digital health: social dimensions’.
  • On 25 June Marianne gave a presentation for AusSTS Interdisciplinary Workshop: ‘Swimming, sensing and situatedness: moving to make meaning during COVID-19‘.
  • On 25 June Clare also gave a presentation for AusSTS Interdisciplinary Workshop: ‘Where does a digital ethnography end? Scrolling through TikTok during COVID’.
  • Deborah gave an invited seminar presentation on 6 July for the University of Birmingham: ‘Revisiting risk theory in COVID times’.
  • On 8 July, Deborah gave an invited webinar for UNSW Law School: ‘The Internet of Things in Australia: social impacts and issues’.
  • On 19 July Clare was a moderator for a panel discussion at ‘TikTok Methodologies’ – a TikTok Cultures Research Network event.
  • On 28 July Marianne gave a guest lecture for the ‘Technologies, Culture and Society’ course at UNSW, titled ‘Technology and the body: thinking with the cyborg and beyond’.
  • On 29 July, Deborah gave a keynote for 7th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2), Zurich: ‘More-than-digital experiences in more-than-human worlds: bringing together creative methods with sociomaterialism theory’.
  • Deborah was a convenor and presenter the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, Health methods workshops 1 and 2, held on 10 August and 17 August. With Ash Watson, she presented ‘Creative writing prompts and online workshops for eliciting more-than-representational dimensions of people’s digital experiences’.
  • On 12 August Deborah was an invited participant in a panel discussion on ‘Science, Society and the Australian State’, Deakin University.
  • On 2 September Deborah gave a presentation with Ash Watson for the Methods for Researching Automated Futures Symposium, Monash University: ‘Research-creations for speculating about automated futures’.
  • Deborah gave an invited presentation on 9 September for the Living With and Beyond Cancer Research Post-Pandemic – What Have We Learnt? event held by the National Cancer Research Institute, London: ‘Insights from doing fieldwork in a pandemic’.
  • 10 September Deborah gave an invited presentation for the event Devils in the Details: Making Sense of the Science of COVID-19 (Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine). Her talk was titled ‘Facemasks: historical and theoretical perspectives and use during COVID-19’.
  • On 23 September Clare gave an invited seminar ‘OB-GYNs of TikTok: #periodproblems, politics and platform affordances’, for The Australian Sociological Association (TASA)’s webinar series.
  • Megan presented a paper ‘私のカワイイ: Decora girls’ kawaii in the Harajuku context’ at the Japanese Studies Association of Australia Conference 2021 held from 29 September – 1 October, Queensland.
  • On 25 October, Deborah gave a keynote for an international webinar organised by the International Science Council in partnership with the International Sociological Association on ‘Researching and understanding COVID societies: sociology and beyond’.

Media appearances

Other activities and awards

COVID feelings and movement: Fear and lockdown in Sydney

Photo by Alexas_Fotos on Unsplash

Clare Southerton

As Sydney spends its first week in lockdown, perhaps unsurprisingly I’ve been thinking a lot about movement. Not just about getting out of my apartment (though that would be lovely), but about the relationship between feelings and movement during Australia’s most recent coronavirus outbreak. 

In her book, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Sara Ahmed considers the role of fear in the conservation of power, and argues that ‘emotions work to align bodily space with social space’ (p. 69). In this sense, emotions are structural rather than personal. Fear, she explains, ‘works to restrict some bodies through the movement or expansion of others’ (p. 69). 

Taking up idea to think about the pandemic in Australia, we can see the way fear has worked to reinforce existing social inequalities, reflected in whose movement is restricted and in what ways. Australian border control measures, which have cut millions of Australians off from family overseas and left thousands stranded overseas with no way to return home, reveal fear in action. Earlier this year, when asked about his continued refusal to open the borders, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison deflected by making reference to the 910 Australians who had died from COVID-19 — ‘every single one of those lives was a terrible tragedy’.  It’s very clear that stoking fear of death and risk of COVID here serves to reassure us that the harsh measures are unavoidable.

Despite a fear of COVID spread, this has not restricted the inflow of affluent people into Australia, with reports that the wealthy are routinely prioritised on limited flights or fly into Australia on private jets. News outlets have also reported on the number of international celebrities in Australia enjoying ‘relief’ from the pandemic.

Here in Sydney, at the NSW government press conference on Thursday, the Premier Gladys Berejiklian discouraged unnecessary movement by emphasising practices such as ordering groceries online and ordering takeaway food to be delivered, rather than collecting it yourself — all in order to restrict our movements. Similarly, as outbreaks dominate the headlines it’s common to see complaints on social media documenting public spaces that were ‘busy’ when we should be staying home or calling out people for failing to adhere to public health advice. 

A tweet from ABC Radio presenter Margaret Throsby

Comparing the sentiments in this tweet from ABC radio presenter Margaret Throsby with the language used to describe arrivals of wealthy celebrities on private jets (see this article for example), we can see a stark difference in emotional tone. Affluent overseas travellers entering Australia may be seen as queue-jumping, noted in the article as ‘given preferential entry’ but hardly seen as a threat to public safety, in the same way as people in busy areas in Sydney are framed above. Frustration, even anger may be directed at them, but rarely fear.

Now we might think that those who stay at home have their mobility restricted by fear. But it is not that simple. Who does not have the choice to reduce their movement? Who cannot work from home, for example? Hospitality workers, cleaners, tradespeople, for example, must continue to travel to and from work during a lockdown. In the course of this travel to and from work they will inevitably increase their points of contact and their risk — not by intention but by necessity.

Who packs and delivers the online grocery order? Who prepares and delivers the takeaway food? Who delivers the parcel with the online shopping order? There are people who must be mobile and at greater risk in order to sustain the safety of the privileged who stay home. 

Ahmed argues that fear works to restrict the capacities for movement for some bodies and increase the capacity for others. In this new COVID context, even as some appear to be more mobile their movement is restricted — in the service of those who have the privilege to stay safely at home. We can see the way the mobility of frontline workers is restricted and controlled as the movements of hotel quarantine cleaners are scrutinised in the press if they test positive for COVID, even if they did not realise they had the virus at the time and they broke no public health guidelines.

Returning to Ahmed’s work, we can think about the ways that fear works here to reinforce existing social hierarchies. She poses an important question that we should ask here:

‘which bodies become read as the origin of fear and as threatening “our” freedom?’

Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (p. 70-71)

 When we talk about COVID ‘rule breakers’ and people who pose a risk to the community, we’re often ignoring the ways that the risk is inevitably higher for some people because of the ways they are impacted by social inequalities. In addition to this increased risk, current COVID protocols routinely scrutinise the movements and practices of less privileged people — while the wealthy are afforded ways to bypass these measures or trusted to undertake these protocols without being watched. 

Photo by eggbank on Unsplash

This ‘Bondi cluster’, has, for many, shifted how much COVID risk we feel in our everyday lives. And in turn, that feeling of being more at risk shapes our everyday behaviour. We think more about washing our hands, we remind ourselves to bring a mask when we leave the house (especially after masks were mandated in many indoor settings in NSW), and we may be more conscious of socially distancing when we are out and about. While public health directives such as ‘stay at home’ orders are more rigid and enforced (e.g. do not leave your home unless it is for an essential reason), the feeling of fear and risk operates more like a soft and subtle circulating sense that inclines the community towards COVID-safer practices.

It’s hardly surprising that at times when we don’t feel that the virus is an imminent threat, safety protocols such as QR code check-ins may fall to the wayside. When the threat feels more present again we see these practices become more strictly enforced through public health directives but also more strictly adhered to by the public. In Canberra, for example, after many months of no COVID cases, a positive case visited some venues in the region. In the space of a week check-ins using the ACT Government’s ‘Check Inn CBR app’ doubled, in response to increased public health messaging and increased attention to the potential threat of the virus. 

It is important to remember, however, that even if these feelings of risk and fear may circulate at a collective level, they are experienced differently by different groups. Who gets to feel safe by moving less? Whose movements are most restricted? Who is afforded the privilege of movement without fear?

Expression of interest: applications for ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA)

The next round of the ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) scheme closes in November 2021, with funding beginning in 2023. Applications require a long lead time of development and mentor support.

If you are an early career researcher with an outstanding track record relative to opportunity who is currently around 3-4 years (but within 5 years by November 2021) post award of your doctorate (allowing for any career interruptions), and your background, interests and future research plans align with the Vitalities Lab, expressions of interest are now open for consideration for our sponsorship of your application. This opportunity to open to both domestic and overseas applicants.

If you wish to be considered, please email the following information to Professor Deborah Lupton by Friday 9 July 2021 (d.lupton@unsw.edu.au):

  1. A Word document with three headings: a) outlining some broad details of your proposed project (approximately 500 words); b) statement of alignment with the Vitalities Lab’s research and why you want to be based here to do your project (approximately 500 words); and c) a statement about your research strengths and impact (i.e. what you thinkg would make you competitive for a DECRA) (approximately 500 words).
  2. Full CV, including list of academic publications.

Professor Lupton will select a maximum of two potential candidates to mentor and support their applications. UNSW Sydney provides extensive additional support to the candidates to develop their applications before submission.

For further information about the work of the Vitalities Lab and to ensure that your project fits well, please closely review the content of this website and Deborah Lupton’s recent publication profile.

General information about the ARC DECRA scheme is available here.

Our new book is now out – The Face Mask in COVID Times: A Sociomaterial Analysis

We are excited to announce that our co-authored Vitalities Lab team book has just been released. Details are available on Amazon and our publisher De Gruyter’s website. For a companion volume, check out the book co-edited by Deborah Lupton with Karen Willis, The COVID-19 Crisis: Social Perspectives, also just released.

We argue in the book that among many other changes to private and public life, the COVID-19 crisis has brought the humble face mask into new prominence. In the post-COVID world, it has become a significant object, positioned as one of the most important ways that people can protect themselves and others from infection with the novel coronavirus by acting as a barrier (however imperfect) between their breath and that of others.

The COVID mask is rich with symbolic meaning, affective forces and embodied sensations as well as practical value in these times of uncertainty, isolation, illness and death. The COVID mask is simultaneously a medical, social and multi-sensory device. Its presence or absence on the human face bears with it cultural, political and moral meanings. As the COVID crisis has intensified, fluctuated and diversified, so too, have these meanings.

Each chapter addresses a discrete topic related to the sociomaterial dimensions of COVID face masks. Chapter 1 introduces the rationale for the book, addressing the question of why sociomaterial theories are so important to make sense of the meanings and practices related to the face mask in the age of COVID. It provides the context for understanding the face mask as a sociocultural artefact, discussing the history of the face mask (and other facial coverings, such as veiling practices) internationally. This chapter also provides an overview of the theoretical perspectives we are using in our analysis. We draw particularly on the vital materialism offered in the work of feminist new materialist scholars and Indigenous and First Nations philosophies as well as domestication theory.

Photo credit: Deborah Lupton

Chapter 2 focuses on micropolitical and macropolitical aspects, ranging across international disputes over medical mask production and supply, the role played by peak health organisations such as the WHO, mass media and social media coverage and social movements seeking both to support and agitate against mass masking. In Chapter 3, we address the ways that COVID masks become incorporated into human bodies and everyday practices, bringing domestication theory together with more-than-human perspectives.

Photo credit: Deborah Lupton

Chapter 4 moves us deeper into our analysis of the embodied sensory and affective experience of mask wearing, focusing particularly on breath and breathing with and through a COVID mask. The artefact of the hand-crafted COVID mask is examined in Chapter 5. We bring perspectives from social analyses of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) and crafting cultures to discuss the sociomaterialities of four different kinds of hand-crafted masks: the artisan mask, the home-made mask, the makeshift mask and the community drive mask. In Chapter 6, we turn our attention towards the concept of care and how this may be applied not only in the context of medical care and caring for oneself or other people by wearing a COVID mask, but the implications for the environment of careless use and disposal of masks.

The Epilogue brings together the threads of our arguments and provides some final thoughts on the COVID mask as a sociomaterial phenomenon.

Thinking about movement beyond health

Marianne Clark

Two people running on misty outdoor path covered in leaves.

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

As the weather shifts (almost imperceptibly if you ask this Canadian) from summer to fall here in Sydney, I find myself embracing new options for outdoor activities. Unlike my home country of Canada, where winter means donning layers (and layers) of fleece and down even for the shortest of walks, opportunities in Australia actually increase in the winter as the heat dissipates. As someone who loves moving, I’ve found getting outside regularly for a walk or dip in the ocean has helped make some days a bit easier over this past year. But, I also appreciate physical activity is not everyone’s cup of tea, nor are enjoyable and safe opportunities available to everyone for a range of reasons. 

I’ve written previously about the drawbacks of our social zeal for fitness and exercise, especially in the context of COVID 19. The widespread enthusiasm for fitness pulsing through our popular culture often overlooks the overlapping economic, physical, social and cultural factors that shape – and constrain –  people’s engagement. It’s also largely underpinned by ableist, classist, racialised and gendered assumptions about what constitutes physical activity, who and what bodies are able to participate, and where and how they do so. In other words, we often assume every/body CAN participate without taking into account how complicated it is. 

At the same time, social dialogue around physical activity makes a lot of assumptions around why people move. It often reduces activity to something that’s done in order ‘be healthy’ or to build an aesthetically pleasing body. In this framing, the ‘healthy’ body is read as the so-called beautiful body (and vice versa) and looking good and feeling good become conflated in one big proverbial mess. This unsatisfying equation overlooks the many other reasons people may or may not engage in different movement practices, and the multiple embodied, emotional and socially meaningful  experiences that might emerge.

Masculine presenting wheelchair user dances with femme presenting ambulatory dancer.
Disability scholars and integrated performance artists Lindsay Eales and Danielle Peers perform in Edmonton Alberta. Photo Credit: Marc J Chalifoux

I was recently reminded of how firmly entrenched these limiting ways of thinking about fitness actually are. Looking for a new physical outlet, I solicited a series of quotes for a personal trainer to design an outdoor program for me to follow on my own. My request, which specified I was NOT interested in setting goals or looking to lose weight, was met with a flurry of canned messages promising to help me ‘be my best self’ and full of generic (and cringeworthy) aspirational sound bytes worthy of their own critique. My original message expressed my interest in building better range of motion, engaging in skilful movement and having ‘fun’ (itself a problematic term but that’s another story), yet these themes were nowhere to be found in the responses I received. Instead, I was subtly reminded I should be striving to be fitter/buffer/slimmer in order to reach my ‘personal potential’. While (extremely) irritated at first, I realise this is a reflection of the broader ecosystem these professionals – all eking out a living in a competitive marketplace –  are working within. Many have likely been rewarded for their promises of helping people build beautiful better selves through exercise. 

But if we dig a little deeper, listen a little more carefully, there are other, important stories to tell. My interest in these ideas prompted my current research study on how Australians moved during COVID. I’m exploring how people re-created physical activity routines during various degrees of ‘lockdown’ and paying specific attention to the spaces, places, and technologies they used to make this happen. People’s movement practices are often connected to specific social and physical spaces such as fitness centres, dance and yoga studios, swimming pools, oceans, walking/running tracks and sports fields. But during COVID, access to these spaces has often been limited or even prohibited. 

In response, digital fitness options exploded, boasting their ability to help anyone move anytime, anywhere. But I was curious. I was curious about how people were using familiar spaces in and beyond the home in new ways to create new fitness routines and the role digital technologies actually played. I was also curious about the meanings these practices – and the spaces in which they were performed – held for people. How did relationships with one’s body and understandings of  ‘health’ change (or not) in these strange and stressful times? What ‘moved’ people to move, and what made it difficult?

A woman holds a phone and looks at digital self-tracking device on wrist.
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels

Participants were recruited via social media and invited to participate in an online interview involving a virtual tour of their physical activity space (e.g., lounge room, repurposed garage, favourite walking track). They were also invited to keep digital photo diaries to document any thoughts, reflections and feelings related to these themes. Analysis is still underway and forthcoming in manuscripts currently under review, but in sum, people’s photos and narratives emphasised that movement meant more to them than the pursuit of ‘health – largely understood as a collection of bodily metrics – or a particular bodily aesthetic. Instead, it was intricately related to and intertwined with their emotional and physical experiences of living in and through the pandemic. It also gave way to experiences of escape and connection as well as expressions of mourning and joy. In these stories, people moved not as a ‘healthy’ practice in order to comply with expert advice, but as a creative and improvised form of self-care and care for others during the pandemic. Movement was also a way to create a sense of routine and certainty in a very uncertain and precarious time.

There’s more to say (watch this space or follow me on Twitter!) but I’m hopeful results can offer more expansive ways of thinking about bodies, movement and health. There’s been optimistic murmurings that COVID might help us think differently about many aspects of our everyday lives.  Perhaps this is a great opportunity to challenge some of the instrumental and frankly, fairly uninspiring ways we think about movement and moving bodies. 

Vitalities Lab Newsletter 10 Summer 2021

2 February 2021

It is summer in Sydney and we at the Vitalities Lab are back in the office for another new year. After some collective downtime we have hit the ground running, riding the ripple effects of our globally tumultuous 2020 and beginning to make sense of the post-COVID world. One phenomenon that has certainly been on our minds (and bodies) since our last newsletter is the COVID face mask. Since early in the pandemic we have followed the face mask as a health technology and a cultural and political artefact. We wrote about this for The Conversation in October, and in December we submitted the manuscript for our forthcoming monograph with De Gruyter, The Face Mask in COVID Times: A Sociomaterial Analysis, to be published later this year.

In early December, we were delighted to attend our first in-person event since very early last year – Digital Intimacies 6: Connection in Crisis at the University of Technology Sydney, from December 6th to 8th. Kudos to the organisers who pulled off an excellent three-day hybrid symposium plus a number of satellite events. We had a strong Vitalities Lab showing at DI6, presenting our research across a number of papers. On Day 1, Deborah Lupton presented ‘Trust, risk and digital media: Australians’ experiences of the COVID-19 crisis’, Leanne Downing presented ‘The moments you missed: Exploring the digital intimacies of telehealth psychology consults during the COVID crisis’, Marianne Clark presented ‘Crisis and the body: the digital health entanglements of COVID-19’, and Ash Watson presented ‘Being together in crisis: digital co-presence and intimacy during COVID-19’. On Day 2, Clare Southerton presented ‘The affective atmospheres of lockdown TikTok’.

Clare also presented a paper with Giselle Newton, a PhD candidate at the Centre for Social Research in Health at UNSW, at the Cultures of TikTok in the Asia Pacific symposium titled ‘Everyday TikTok Talk: A method for a reflexive encounter with #donorconceived’. The symposium was hosted by Curtin University on December 7.

In December, Marianne Clark with colleagues Holly Thorpe and Julie Brice published Feminist New Materialisms, Sport and Fitness: A Lively Entanglement with Palgrave Macmillan, part of the New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures book series. This book offers the first critical examination of the contributions of feminist new materialist thought to the study of sport, fitness, and physical culture. 

Ash Watson published another edition of So Fi Zine, featuring creative submissions from authors around the world and a guest editorial by Ruha Benjamin. So Fi Zine is a sociological fiction zine, free to read online at sofizine.com.

Ash also launched her debut novel Into the Sea, in conversation with Shanthi Robertson as part of The Australian Sociological Association’s 2020 conference. You can watch a recording of the launch here, or grab a copy of the book here.

Below we list our recent publications,  presentations, and other activity not mentioned above.

Academic Publications

  • Lupton, D. (2021) Young people’s use of digital health in the Global North: narrative review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, available online at https://www.jmir.org/2021/1/e18286/
  • Watson, A. (2021) Writing sociological fiction. Qualitative Research, online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794120985677
  • Lupton, D. and Southerton, C. (2021) The thing-power of the Facebook assemblage: why do users stay on the platform? Journal of Sociology, online first. doi.org/10.1177/1440783321989456
  • Kirby, E., Watson, A., Churchill, B., Robards, B. and LaRochelle, L. (2021) Queering the Map: stories of love, loss and (be)longing within a digital cartographic archive. Media, Culture and Society, online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443720986005
  • Lupton, D. (2021) Self-tracking. In Abel, J. et al. (eds), Information: Keywords. Columbia University Press
  • Lupton, D. (2021) Afterword: future methods for digital food studies. In Leer, J. and Krogager, S.G.S. (eds), Research Methods in Digital Food Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 222-227
  • Watson, A. and Lupton, D. (2020) Tactics, affects and agencies in digital privacy narratives: a story completion study. Online Information Review, online first. doi.org/10.1108/OIR-05-2020-0174
  • Watson, A., Lupton, D. and Michael, M. (2020) Enacting intimacy and sociality at a distance in the COVID-19 crisis: the sociomaterialities of home-based communication technologies. Media International Australia, online first. doi: doi.org/10.1177/1329878X20961568
  • Lupton, D. (2020) Caring dataveillance: women’s use of apps to monitor pregnancy and children. In Green, L., Holloway, D., Stevenson, K., Leaver, T. and Haddon, L. (eds), The Routledge Companion to Digital Media and Children. London: Routledge, pp. 393-402
  • Lupton, D. (2020) The sociology of mobile apps. In Rohlinger, D. and Sobieraj, S. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Sociology and Digital Media. New York: Oxford, online first. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197510636.013.15
  • Brice, J., Clark, M., & Thorpe, H. (2020). Feminist collaborative becomings: an entangled process of knowing through fitness objects, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, DOI: 10.1080/2159676X.2020.1820560
  • Newman, C., MacGibbon, J., Smith, A. K. J., Broady, T., Lupton, D., Davis, M., Bear, B., Bath, N., Comensoli, D., Cook, T., Duck-Chong, E., Ellard, J., Kim, J., Rule, J., & Holt, M. (2020). Understanding Trust in Digital Health among Communities Affected by BBVs and STIs in Australia. Sydney: UNSW Centre for Social Research in Health. Available at http://doi.org/10.26190/5f6d72f17d2b5
  • Fox, B., Goggin, G., Lupton, D., Regenbrecht, H., Scuffham, P. and Vucetic, B. (2020) The Internet of Things. Report for the Australian Council of Learned Academies. Melbourne: ACOLA. Available at https://acola.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/hs5_internet-of-things_report.pdf
  • Robards, B., Watson, A., Kirby, E., Churchill, B., & LaRochelle, L. (2020). Queering the Map: Physical traces and digital places of queer lives. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2020. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2020i0.11319
  • Byron, P., McKee, A., Watson, A., Litsou, K. and Ingham, R. (2020) Reading for realness: porn literacies, digital media and young people. Sexuality & Culture, online first. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-020-09794-6

Other Publications

Workshops and Presentations

  • Ash hosted a public online workshop on September 9 on “Social Science Fiction” as part of Social Sciences Week Australia. The workshop was supported by The Sociological Review and the Vitalities Lab, UNSW. The recording is available here.
  • Deborah delivered the keynote for UNSW’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences HDR conference on September 16
  • On October 2, Deborah gave an invited seminar presentation for San Francisco State University
  • Deborah was an invited member of the panel for Bold Thinking – Risky Business: The Politics of Preparing for a Pandemic, hosted by La Trobe University on October 13
  • Deborah gave the keynote address for the Data-Driven Culture Conference at the University of Turku on October 23
  • Ash was invited to speak at a November 5 seminar on autoethnography for the Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher sessions run by The Australian Sociological Association
  • On November 6, Deborah gave an invited seminar presentation for the University of Minnesota
  • Deborah delivered a keynote for the Lockdown: Mental Illness, Wellness and COVID-19 conference, hosted by Curtin University and the University of East London on November 17
  • On November 24, Marianne presented a paper at TASA’s 2020 conference titled ‘How movement comes to matter: Exploring the sensory atmospheres and embodied affects of physical activity during COVID-19’
  • Also on November 24, Deborah was an invited member of a plenary panel on Sociology and COVID-19 at the TASA annual conference
  • Ash was the chair of a plenary titled Sociological Insight for the Now Normal, part of TASA’s 2020 conference, on November 25
  • Deborah gave a keynote at the TASA Social Theory and COVID-19 conference on November 27
  • On November 30 Deborah gave an invited presentation to the Australian Academic of Technology and Engineering on the ACOLA Internet of Things report
  • Marianne gave an invited lecture on December 1 for the University of Toronto titled ‘Introduction to Post Qualitative Research’

Media Appearances

Finally, since our last newsletter, Ash completed her term as Secretary of TASA, Clare became a founding member of the TikTok Cultures Network and Marianne was invited to join the Annals of Leisure Research as an Editorial Board Member.