Staying Out

After Life Imprisonment ◽

10.18574/nyu/9781479806928.003.0010 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Marieke Liem

Keyword(s):

Social Support ◽

Life Course ◽

Self Efficacy ◽

Aging Out ◽

Strong Sense ◽

Sense Of Agency ◽

Sense Of Control ◽

Support Structures ◽

And Control

Chapter ten delves deeper into the factors the interviewees mentioned as key to staying out. These included aging out of crime, a healthy fear for the conditions of parole, and self-efficacy, or having a sense of choice and control over one’s life. Non-incarcerated interviewees, as opposed to re-incarcerated individuals, reflected a strong sense of agency in their narrative. The process of desistance is thus not the result of societal forces, as emphasized by life-course theorists. Nor does it seem to be a resolution of an individual to change, as the vast majority of interviewees said that they underwent a transformation leading to a better version of themselves. What seems to be crucial for lifers in being successful in staying out on parole is a combination of social support structures, having regained a sense of control, and a strong awareness of the restraints that govern their day-to-day life.

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Digital Care: Agency and Temporality in Young People’s Use of Health Apps

Engaging Science Technology and Society ◽

10.17351/ests2016.119 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 2 ◽

pp. 248 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Susanna Helen Trnka

Keyword(s):

Young People ◽

Technology Use ◽

Sense Of Agency ◽

Mental Wellbeing ◽

Temporal Relations ◽

Unintended Effects ◽

Sense Of Control ◽

Health Apps ◽

And Control ◽

Care Agency

This paper draws from interviews with 21 young New Zealanders, ages 16-24, to examine how health apps shape young people’s experiences of themselves as agentive subjects in relation to their physical and mental wellbeing. Focusing on the intended and unintended effects of health apps, I examine how digital care technologies recast the spatiality and temporality of healthcare, enabling new ways of constituting and tracking health, expanding possibilities of interactive exchanges with others, and redistributing a sense of agency and control. In many ways, the forms of self-governance that health apps engender are no different from other moves to promote increased self-responsibility that are cultivated as part of advanced liberalism. However, I argue that by collapsing the spatial and temporal relations of technology use, health apps not only heighten opportunities for adopting self-responsibility, but also, as many young people attest, promote the feeling that there is no escaping from them. The result is that for many young people having a sense of control and responsibility over their health comes to be calibrated against not only the inherent inter-sociality of care (i.e. young people’s desires to both give and receive care to and from others), but also the health and fitness “demands” seemingly made upon them by technology itself.

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