The Digitisation of Welfare: a Strategy towards improving Citizens’ Self-care and Co-management of Welfare

Nicole Thualagant, Ditte-Marie From

Publikation: Bidrag til bog/antologi/rapportBidrag til bog/antologiForskningpeer review

Abstract

Technologies of measurement and self-monitoring of health data have become part of a metric everyday life in Denmark. As part of a change in Nordic Welfare society, Danish citizens are increasingly experiencing a digitisation of welfare services. This chapter explores the rationales behind the eGovernment strategy of Digital Welfare 2016-2020 in regards to health and discusses how this strategy encourages self-measurement and self-improvement through discourses of improvement at both state and citizen levels. By illustrating how performativity is embedded in current conceptions of health, this chapter emphasize how strategies of digitisation lean on a bio-citizenship where individuals with poor health capacities become depended, not on a supporting welfare system, but paradoxically on own self-management skills in order to receive health services. Based on the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse (SKAD) analysis, this chapter scrutinizes central documents on the strategy of digital welfare. Our exploration provides a critical insight in the current digitisation of health care by illustrating how new virtues of citizenship are demanded in the digital era in relation to digital health, and furthermore represents a current challenge for Danish welfare, i.e. the slippery road between technology as empowering and technocratic governing.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
TitelMetric Culture : Ontologies of Self-Tracking Practices
RedaktørerBtihaj Ajana
Antal sider20
UdgivelsesstedBingley U.K.
ForlagEmerald Group Publishing
Publikationsdato2018
Sider37-56
Kapitel3
ISBN (Trykt)978-1-78743-290-1
ISBN (Elektronisk)978-1-78743-948-1
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2018

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