This editorial introduces the special issue Living with Smart Technologies: The Changing Dynamics of Digitalized Domesticity, which examines how digital technologies are becoming embedded in everyday domestic life and how they reconfigure its socio-cultural dynamics. Developed in connection with the SMARTUP project, the issue approaches the smart home not primarily as a technological artefact but rather as a socio-cultural phenomenon through which everyday domestic life, meanings, and power relations are reshaped. Bringing together the perspectives of sociology and cultural studies, the editorial foregrounds the challenges related to smart domesticity, the plural meanings of "smartness," and the ways smart technologies intersect with axes of difference. In introducing the contributions, the editorial departs from technocentric accounts; instead, it asks how domestic technologies reorganize routines, household coordination, labor, and power relations at home. It also calls for a critical assessment of smartification beyond mere functionality. Such an assessment would remain attentive to the failures and trade-offs of smartification and to its capacity to unsettle assumptions about both homes and technology.
This article examines the role of technodigital objects in the homes of older adults (66+) in Warsaw, focusing on how smart and non-smart objects shape "aging in place." Using Participatory Action Research- including in-depth interviews, VR experiments, and participant photography-the study explores how seniors use "wise" and nostalgic objects together or instead of smart technologies. The research highlights the interplay between "smart" and "wise" concepts of home. By analyzing appliances, medical devices, and nostalgic items, we demonstrate how generational habitus and accumulated wisdom coalesce with smart technologies in technodigital domesticity. Ultimately, the paper provides a nuanced framework for understanding the corporeal-material aspects of aging, showcasing the interplay of nostalgia and wisdom with smart technologies at home.
This article examines how communal technologies affect collaborative practices, like sharing resources and space, in urban cohousing. It explores how digital and physical infrastructures facilitate cooperation and support community life. Drawing on qualitative research in three community-oriented residential buildings in Helsinki, Finland, it demonstrates that communal living is sustained by the interplay of shared spaces, community practices, and digital platforms, each creating opportunities for collaboration. Using the institutional pillar framework, the study highlights how formal structures and informal norms together shape collaborative lifestyles. Findings reveal that residents' participation was motivated more by economic benefits and social connections than environmental concerns, indicating the central role of community dynamics in mainstreaming collaborative consumption. While digital platforms facilitate communication, coordination, and access to resources, they cannot substitute face-to-face interaction. Trust, reciprocity, and shared identity emerged primarily through embodied encounters, suggesting that digital tools should be seen as support for community rather than substitutes.
This paper analyses how traditional gender divisions are negotiated, reinforced, or redefined in digital kinwork. Drawing on two qualitative projects, we examine how platformization intersects with gender and generational roles in practices of care, coordination, and recognition. We first provide an overview of common digital kinwork practices, then explore the gendered divisions that shape them, and finally show how platforms redistribute expertise and structure micro-power within family relations. Our findings reveal that digital platforms function as infrastructure for family life, with women often being the first to adopt messaging apps and social platforms, unlike past patterns where men led in technology use. Yet their expertise is framed as caregiving rather than prestige. We argue that digital kinwork extends beyond intimacy and connection, encompassing micro-power, the distribution of recognition, boundary-setting, and the negotiation of ambivalent relations of care and control.
Smart technologies have become an integral part of everyday life, creating the need for a better understanding of how they are used across diverse sociocultural contexts and social groups. We draw on data from a representative survey (2023-2024) of 2,098 students in Poland and the UK to explore differences in smart technology use. Students in the UK are significantly more likely to use smart technologies than their peers in Poland. Regression analysis shows higher usage among men, and among individuals with greater trust in AI, better English skills, a stronger sense of social pressure, and belief in human responsibility for AI. Trust and perceived social control emerge as the strongest predictors. We argue that classic domestication theory should be revised to include transparency, accountability, and social legitimacy as key conditions for integrating smart technologies into students' lives.
