'There's only so much data you can handle in your life': accommodating and resisting self-surveillance in women's running and fitness tracking practices. Issue 1 (1st January 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Esmonde, Katelyn
• Is Part Of: Qualitative research in sport, exercise & health. Volume 12:Issue 1(2020)
• Page Start: 76
• Page End: 90
• Publication Date: 2020-01-01
• Subjects: Quantified self -- Foucault -- surveillance -- sociology of sport -- technologies of femininity; Sports sciences -- Research -- Methodology -- Periodicals; Exercise -- Research -- Methodology -- Periodicals; Health -- Research -- Methodology -- Periodicals; 613.71
• DOI: 10.1080/2159676X.2019.1617188
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2159-676X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The widespread use of Fitbits, Garmins and Apple Watches is emblematic of the 'Quantified Self' (QS) movement, where participants utilise digital self-tracking devices to generate a broad range of data on their health and fitness for the purposes of self-improvement. Gendered expectations for beauty and health have led to women becoming disproportionately represented amongst fitness tracker wearers, as weight loss and self-discipline for the purposes of beauty are often considered women's endeavours. To examine the gendered ways in which wearable technologies are utilised in fitness practices, I look to 'running interviews' and semi-structured interviews with 10 women who identify as self-tracking runners to better apprehend the ways in which self-surveillance through a fitness tracking device is both accommodated and resisted. Drawing on a Foucauldian conceptual framework of surveillance, discipline and technologies of femininity, I describe four strategies of resistance to datafication: labelling some data as excessive, not tracking every run or every day, invoking one's humanity and fallibility as a way of limiting disappointment from unfavourable data, and re-valuing feelings over data. While these self-trackers have undergone this process of problematisation and deemed this level of self-surveillance to be an important part of what they see as a healthy lifestyle, they do not fully accept practices of dataism, optimisation and technologies of femininity, entirely.