The Habit of Care: Technologies of Living and Laboring Cyborgs Within the larger discourse around digital cultures, much attention is given to care. Care infrastructure includes physical infrastructure of access to remote spaces, regulatory and policy environments to control the digital spaces, redesigned geographies to house the new populations created by the ICT industries, and is discussed in disciplines as varied as Artificial Intelligence and Climate Change. Care Technologies find obvious resonances with the Foucaultian idea of ‘Technologies of the Self’, reminding us of the normative nature of measurement, cognition, discipline and punishment that is an inherent part of care. The responses to Care Technologies and the Labor of Caring are not uniform. Some clearly identify the emergence of Care Technologies as a new form of alienation of labour, leading to discrimination and inequity. Others celebrate the ways in which the penetrative nature of the digital – from deep space probes to the sub-molecular conception of the human – allow us to imagine social interactions and our relationships with our own bodies in new ways. In all the discourse around Care, there is silence about its form, function and nature. While attention is given to infrastructure, labour, politics, production and the intelligibility of care practices, we haven’t yet tried to fathom the conditions and generation of care, relegating it to the realm of the private and the subjective. Combining practice and theory, in different parts of the Global South, and inspired by gender and sexuality studies, this panel looks at Care as a Habit. We focus on the ‘care of technologies’, showing how the forced separation of care and technology needs to be revisited to look at conditions of being human, being social and being political. Working through diverse geographical and political contexts, the panel illustrates the tensions in understanding and engaging with Care and why there is a need to find new vocabularies and relationships to deal with this area. The speakers in this panel specifically focus on the following themes: Care, Affect and Nationalism (Nishant Shah) Labor and Care (Yeonju Oh) Care, Spirit and Memory (Kara Andrade) Care and the Globalizing of “Subaltern” Labor through the politics of Micro and the production and circulation of affect (Radhika Gajjala)

1. HABIT OF CARE
TECHNOLOGIES OF LIVING & LABORING CYBORGS
Tuesday, October 15, 13

2. Panelists
Chair:
Dr. N'Dri Assie-Lumumba, Professor
Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University
Speakers:
Dr. Radhika Gajjala, Professor
School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University
radhik@bgsu.edu
Dr. Nishant Shah, co-founder and Research Director
Centre for Internet and Society
nishant@cis-india.org
Tuesday, October 15, 13

3. Panelists
Dr. Yeon Ju Oh, Research Associate
Multi-plAtform Game innovation Centre (MAGIC) at Nanyang Technical
University, Singapore
oyeonj@ntu.edu.sg
Kara Andrade, Journalist and Entrepreneur
kara@hablacentro.com
Tuesday, October 15, 13

4. Care and Globalizing (Chair)
Care, Affect and Nationalism (Nishant Shah)
Labor & Care (Yeonju Oh)
Care, Spirit & Memory (Kara Andrade)
Care & the Globalizing of “Subaltern” Labor (Radhika Gajjala)
Tuesday, October 15, 13

5. Tuesday, October 15, 13

6. Dr. Nishant Shah
Dr. Nishant Shah is the co-founder and Research Director at the Centre for
Internet and Society, Bangalore, India. He is an International Tandem Partner at
the Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University, Germany and a
Knowledge Partner with the Hivos Knowledge Programme, The Netherlands. He
was the principle researcher for a research programme that produced the
four-volume anthology ‘Digital AlterNatives With a Cause?’, examining the
ways in which young people’s relationship with digital technologies produces
changes in their immediate environments.
Tuesday, October 15, 13

7. Taking Care of Things
Habits, Technologies, Affect and Governance
Nishant Shah
@latelyontime
Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore
Tuesday, October 15, 13

8. Human Technology Relationships
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9. Technology as Infrastructure
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10. Positive Images of Growth
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11. Anti-Technology Stances
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12. Technology As Discrete, Human As Sacred
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13. Affect of Technology
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14. Affect of Technology
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15. Affect & Affectation
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16. The Charkha
Technology of reconstructing the moral and the material
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17. I do regard the spinning-wheel as a gateway to my spiritual salvation, but
I recommend it to others only as a powerful weapon for the attainment of
swaraj and the amelioration of the economic condition of the country.
– M.K. Gandhi
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18. TECHNOLOGY
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19. Tagore: Demonic Machine
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20. The discussion, so far, has proceeded on the assumption that the largescale production of homespun thread and cloth will result in the
alleviation of the country's poverty. My complaint is that by the
promulgation of this confusion between swaraj and charkha, the mind of
the country is being distracted from swaraj.
– Rabindranath Tagore
Tuesday, October 15, 13

21. Value in the Usage
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22. Affect of Technology is Care
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23. The State Cares for Technology
Individuals use technologies to care.
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24. Intimate Technologies
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25. Hamara Bajaj
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26. Sumeet Mixer Grinder
Technologies we care for.
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27. Technology – Human – Care
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28. Yeon Ju Oh Bio
Yeonju Oh is research associate at Multi-plAtform Game Innovation Centre at
Nanyang Technological University. She is currently working on development of
video games to promote civic engagement, an interdisciplinary research
project funded by Media Development Authority, Singapore. She co-edited
Cyberfeminism 2.0 and has been researching women in technology, the
relationship between gender and new media technologies, and feminist
knowledge production.
Tuesday, October 15, 13

29. My Nanny is a Robot
Yeon Ju Oh
Multi-plAtform Game Innovation Centre (MAGIC)
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Tuesday, October 15, 13

30. Gender
Social
Status
Positionality
Age
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Locatio
n

31. 1998 AIBO
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2007 Kittybat
In
Development
Family Nanny

32. • Deceived Relationship
• Emotional/Psychological Damage. Sharkey & Sharkey (2010)
• Social/ethical issues as a integral part of new technologies
• Voluntary efforts to minimize risks
• Robot nanny as augmentation of care
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33. The cared-for
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The one caring

34. Ethics of Care
The cared-for
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The one caring

35. What Does a Robot Nanny Mean To Women?
• Robotic care vs. Minimal care
• Segmentation & quantification of care
• Expansion of the scope of care work
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36. Who Decides the Criteria?
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37. “South Korea has had remarkably high incidence and prevalence rates of
physical violence against children, yet the problem has received only
limited public and professional attention until very recently.”
- Sharkey and Sharkey
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38. Care work by
middle-class
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Migration of
women from
developing
Women with lower
economic status in
developing

39. Global Chain of Care Work
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40. Family Planning
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41. Family Planning
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42. Tuesday, October 15, 13

43. What we do as academics
Who we are & what we think
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44. Kara Andrade
Kara Andrade is an Ashoka fellow working in Central America. She is cofounder of HablaCentro LLC and Not For Profit which develops curriculum to
help people in Latin America become more digitally literate and civically
engaged; conducts trainings in the use of digital tools to create more
informed citizens; and connects collaborators to opportunities so they can
sustain themselves economically through informed global citizenship and
storytelling.
Tuesday, October 15, 13

45. Healthy Living
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46. Trends
Individual Spiritual Needs => Networked spirituality
To practice online (sometimes practices you do individually)
To share a spiritual experience online
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47. Faith in Second life (2007)
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48. World Religion Day
January 20, 2013
Interfaith Panel on “Religion as a Source of Social Change”
Place: UUtopia Library of World Religions, Second Life.
The panel had 5 or 6 reps of different religious and interfaith groups in
Second Life, chosen in an effort to achieve balance and diversity of viewpoints.
Tuesday, October 15, 13

49. Livestreaming of Mecca Pilgrimmage
Tuesday, October 15, 13

50. San Francisco Zen Center
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51. Christian Bloggers
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52. Radhika Gajjala
Radhika Gajjala (PhD, University of Pittsburgh, 1998) is Professor of Media and
Communication at Bowling Green State University. She has published books on
Cyberculture and the Subaltern (2012), has co-edited collections on
Cyberfeminism 2.0 (2012), Global Media Culture and Identity (2011), South
Asian Technospaces (2008) and Webbing Cyberfeminist Practice (2008).
Currently, she is working on research on microfinance online, digital
financialization to P2P lending and borrowing based in social media and
neoliberal entreprenuership with a focus on “women’s work”, value and tacit
practices/contributions in transitioning economic times through an
(auto)ethnographic focus on craft communities (book in-progress as of 2012
Fall). She is also a member of the Fembot Collective and FemTechnet and is
co-editor of “ADA: Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology.”
For more information: www.cyberdiva.org
Tuesday, October 15, 13

53. Care and Globalizing (Radhika)
“Subaltern” Labor through politics of micro and the production and the
circulation of affect.
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54. Care and Globalizing (Radhika)
Richard Sennet (2006) talks about the fragmenting of people’s lives in
response to the fragment of big institutions.
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55. Care and Globalizing (Radhika)
Resulting Care concerns:
“How to manage short-term relationships, and oneself, while migrating from
task to task, job to job, place to place.”
Prof. Richard Sennett. The Culture of the New Capitalism (Kindle Locations
34-35). Kindle Edition.
Tuesday, October 15, 13

56. Care and Globalizing (Radhika)
Resulting Care concerns:
“how to develop new skills, how to mine
potential abilities, as reality's demands shift.”
“How to let go of the past….past service in particular earns no employee a
guaranteed place.”
Tuesday, October 15, 13

57. Sennet (2006)
“This trait of personality resembles more the consumer ever avid for new
things, discarding old if perfectly serviceable goods, rather than the owner
who jealousy guards what he or she already possesses.”
Prof. Richard Sennett. The Culture of the New Capitalism (Kindle Locations
42-44). Kindle Edition.
Tuesday, October 15, 13

58. Pinch and Swedberg (2008)
“Exchange is entered into not only because of a desire to consume, but also to
make a profit.”
“Exchange is also a form of distribution that tends to mobilize both parties to
a transaction.”
Tuesday, October 15, 13

59. Care as Transaction: Care Exchange
• Coding affect into market exchange and reciprocity
• What does this mean for Care work?
• Care systems need efficient, replicable machinic care providers (Gajjala, inpress, Introduction to Special issue of Television and New Media)
Tuesday, October 15, 13

60. Machinic Subjectivity - Kalindi Vora
“Technologies of virtual surveillance and the constant threat [of mobility and
abandonment] ..not only create a stressful work environment but also produce
a “machinic subjectivity” where workers must reorganize themselves as
subjects to protect their personalities …”
Tuesday, October 15, 13

61. Machinic Subjectivity – Caring
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62. Yunus and MLK will save the world
Online Microfinance rescues developed world youth from fears and
anxieties about “the poor.”
www.kiva.org
Tuesday, October 15, 13

63. Yunus and MLK will save the world
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64. Yunus and MLK will save the world
Samasource
www.samasource.org/company/the-blog/microwork/
Tuesday, October 15, 13

65. Take Home Points
We each need to include one take home point:
1. Care, Affect and Indian Nationalism (Nishant Shah)
2. Labor, Care and Robots (Yeonju Oh)
3. Care, Spirit and Memory (Kara Andrade)
4. Care and the Globalizing of “Subaltern” Labor through the politics of Micro
and the production and circulation of affect (Radhika Gajjala)
Tuesday, October 15, 13

66. Interactive Session (30 minutes)
Roundtable and Q&A or Q&A and separate groups by theme
Use Twitter hashtags for questions: #wssf2013care
Kara will transcribe audience questions
Tuesday, October 15, 13