Older People in a Connected Autonomy? Promises and Challenges in the Technologisation of Care

Abstract

This paper offers an ethnographic interpretation of how in a changing
context of family care different Spanish home telecare services provide
older people with social links to prevent their isolation, granting them
“connected autonomy”: the promotion of their autonomy and
independent living through connectedness. To do so, services need to
craft a network of “contacts”. Different versions of the term figuration are
employed to describe the practical materializations of the forms of
relatedness put in place by such services: what roles become available
and explicitly supported; what other figurations of relatedness (e.g.,
kinship, friendship, neighbourliness) they come across; what happens
when these different figurations of relatedness meet. In doing this, our aim
is to allow space to reflect ethically on the practical relational promises
and challenges of these forms of technologized care of older people.