Digital Health Technologies As Sites of Subjectivation: Algorithmic Care, Self-Governance, and the Making of New Health Subjects

The digitalisation of healthcare represents more than a mere technical transformation. It is a profound reconfiguration of illness, care and patienthood. eHealth technologies, encompassing AI-driven therapeutic tools, gamified health platforms, biofeedback wearables and algorithmic care assistants, signal a potential paradigm shift in the very structure of healthcare. Normative models of the 'healthy subject' thereby address users as self-monitoring, data-generating and responsible individuals, opening up new areas of negotiation between patients, carers, clinicians and algorithmic systems. Concurrently, this 'datafication' gives rise to heightened objectification and social distancing of individual health conditions.

This session examines eHealth technologies as sites of subjectivation: how digital health tools and AI-based interventions produce, presuppose and transform health subjects. It thereby provides novel insights into the subjectification of the quantified patient, the resilient child and the self-regulating adult, while examining how individuals accept, engage with or resist these technological interpellations. Theoretical frameworks addressed include subjectification theory, science and technology studies (STS) and the sociology of digital health.

We invite contributions that address the following questions: What subject positions are inscribed in eHealth technologies, and how are they negotiated by users? How do non-human actors (algorithms, biofeedback sensors and AI companions) reshape therapeutic relationships and care networks? How are professional identities reconfigured through the integration of algorithmic systems into clinical practice? What practices of acceptance, resistance and reappropriation emerge in digital health contexts?

Empirical and theoretical contributions from a diverse range of health contexts are warmly welcomed, including mental health, chronic illness, child and adolescent health, and rehabilitation.