Calling for Care

Disembodied' Work, Teleoperators and Older People Living at Home

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2322237
AutoresCelia Roberts (0000-0002-6103-3514, Lancaster University), Maggie Mort (0000-0003-0188-324X, Lancaster University), Christine Milligan (0000-0002-8675-7244, Lancaster University)
Año2012
Volumen46
Número3
Páginas490-506
Fecha de publicación2012-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0038-0385 • E-ISSN: 1469-8684
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0038038511422551
OpenAlexW2143499712
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas39
Referencias citadas20

The provision of 'distant' care to older people living at home through telecare technologies is often contrasted negatively to hands-on, face-to-face care: telecare is seen as a loss of care, a dehumanization. Here we challenge this view, arguing that teleoperators in telecare services do provide care to older people, often at significant emotional cost to themselves. Based on a European Commission-funded ethnographic study of two English telecare monitoring centres, we argue that telecare is not 'disembodied' work, but a form of care performed through the use of voice, knowledge sharing and emotional labour or self-management. We also show, in distinction to discourses promoting telecare in the UK, that successful telecare relies on the existence of social networks and the availability of hands-on care. Telecare is not a substitute for, or the opposite of, hands-on care but is at its best interwoven with it

Business · Care work · Dehumanization · European commission · European union · Face (sociological concept) · Health care · Older people · Political science · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · Telecare · Telemedicine · Work (physics) · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Emotional Labor in Professions · Engineering · Medicine · Nursing · Psychology · Work-Family Balance Challenges · Gerontology