This review explores entanglements of the theoretical and affective impacts of an art exhibition called Caring Futures which was part of an interdisciplinary research project. The review is a qualitative analysis of the exhibition, and is interspersed with our experiential, affective, and creative reflections and responses to the exhibition. Creative and imaginative approaches inspire us as researchers and supported our interactions with this exhibition in ways that opened new spaces for knowledge production. Our experiences highlight the value of arts-based methodologies for exploring questions of vulnerability and care. Foregrounding subjective and affective responses is risky in scientific work and confronts conventional boundaries for academic knowledge production. Honoring meetings between art and research(ers) can productively challenge taken-for-granted norms involved in undertaking academic research.

Dagens helse- og omsorgssektor kjennetegnes av økt teknologibruk. Artikkelen diskuterer funn fra en intervjustudie om erfaringer og forventninger pårørende har til teknologiens rolle i samspillet mellom pårørende, beboere på sykehjem og helsepersonell. Datamaterialet består av åtte semistrukturerte intervju med pårørende i ulike omsorgsrelasjoner til sykehjemsbeboere. Selv om myndighetene anerkjenner pårørende som en brukergruppe for velferdsteknologi, finner vi at pårørende ikke opplever å bli involvert i spørsmål om teknologibruk på sykehjem. De pårørende fungerer likevel som pådrivere og har konkrete forslag til teknologiske løsninger i sykehjemmet. Samtidig understreker de at teknologibruk ikke må gå på bekostning av trygge og gode omsorgstilbud. De pårørende trekker frem manglende kommunikasjon og samarbeid, lav bemanning og varierende kompetanse blant helsepersonell som barrierer for å nyttiggjøre seg av velferdsteknologi. Våre funn viser at pårørende er en ubenyttet ressurs i utvikling og implementering av teknologi, men også at teknologi kan påvirke forståelser av hva (god) omsorg kan og skal være.

Healthcare work is guided by care ethics, and any technological changes, including the use of robots and artificial intelligence (AI), must comply with existing norms, values and work practices. By bridging technological literacy and AI ethics, this study provides a nuanced definition and an integrative conceptualization of care robot literacy (CRL) for contemporary care work. Robotized care tasks require new orientation and qualifications on the part of employees. CRL is considered as one of these new demands, which requires practitioners to have the resources, skills and understanding necessary to work with robots. This study builds on sociotechnical approach of literacy by highlighting a dynamic relationship of care robotization in which successful human–technology interaction relies on exchanges between the technological and the social. Our findings from directed content analysis and theoretical synthesis of in-demand technological literacy and AI ethics in care work emphasize competencies and situational awareness regarding both using the robot and communicating about the care robot. The initial conceptualization of CRL provides a conceptual framework for future studies, implementation and product development of care robots, drastically differing from studying, implementing and developing robots in general. In searching for technologically sound and ethically compliant solutions, the study advocates for the future significance of context-specific CRL as valuable addition to the terminology of ethical AI in healthcare.

Teknologi og digitalisering har blitt en selvfølgelig del av den norske velferdsstaten, og blir ofte presentert som en løsning på framtidas utfordringer, særlig i helse- og omsorgssektoren. Men hva står på spill i slike tekno-optimistiske fortellinger? I denne artikkelen leser jeg statlige utredninger knyttet til teknologi, velferd og omsorg opp mot forfatter Cathrine Knudsens science fiction-univers i romanene Av menneskehånd (2017) og Den siste hjelperen (2018). Jeg argumenterer for at en samlesing av disse ulike formene for framtidsfortellinger kan gi ny innsikt i hvordan framtidsfortellinger rammer inn muligheter og utfordringer for framtidas velferdsstat i spenningsfeltet mellom teknologibruk, omsorgsarbeid og etikk.

How do we understand care, humanity, and vulnerability under new technological regimes? Do concepts of care change with increasing technology use? With these questions in mind, we curated the art exhibition Caring Futures at Sølvberget gallery in Stavanger, Norway in autumn 2022. Produced as part of the interdisciplinary research project “Caring Futures: Developing Care Ethics for Technology-Mediated Care Practices” at the University of Stavanger, the exhibition became a creative site for articulating and visualising questions of future care and the entanglement between technological and social aspects of contemporary healthcare regimes, particularly in a Nordic welfare state. In this article, we introduce the exhibition and highlight some of the art projects that specifically grapple with ethical issues in ageing as well as the topic of enhancement, genetics, and bioethics. Our aim is to discuss how technology changes how we relate to our bodies, and our perception or tolerance of what is normal or expected. Care under new technological regimes holds the power of making us want to acquire the desirable, of improvement, but so far, the knowledge of social and individual costs is scarce. Thinking with and through art is a way of generating new knowledges of what is at stake for questions of health, care, and welfare in our times.

Integrative transformative learning in a feminist perspective asks students to engage in potentially troublesome and unsettling debates, to confront their own privilege and situated knowledges, and to experiment with conventional boundaries for knowledge production. We introduce the idea of the “tentacular classroom” grounded in the work of Haraway on tentacular thinking to show the ways in which the learning encounter, figured as a tentacular organism, allows for co-production and multiplicity in knowledge production. Through two illustrative examples from gender studies classrooms, we show what is at stake when unruly tentacles become involved in disrupting the boundedness imposed on teaching and learning in the neo-liberal university context. We conclude that a tentacular classroom entails confrontations with troublesome knowledges but also with troublesome unlearning as well, leading teachers and learners to an alternative point of departure for the learning encounter.

--- Submitted: 24 October 2023 Published: 22 December 2023

Nyere helse- og omsorgspolitiske dokumenter løfter fram livshistorier som en viktig kilde til kunnskap i eldreomsorgen, og et relevant verktøy for profesjonelt omsorgsarbeid på sykehjemmet. Men hvilke utfordringer og muligheter ligger i livshistorier som omsorgsverktøy i praksis? Denne artikkelen er basert på et tverrfaglig samarbeidsprosjekt mellom forskere innenfor praksisfeltet, sykepleierstudenter, samfunnsvitere, helsevitere og humanister. Vår hensikt er å få ny kunnskap om utbredelse av livshistorier som omsorgsverktøy på sykehjem, og hva som karakteriserer slike verktøy. Ved hjelp av en kartleggingsstudie om livshistorier som et verktøy for dokumentasjon og kommunikasjon ved sykehjem i en region på Vestlandet, fant vi stor variasjon i utforming av skjemaene som brukes til å dokumentere pasientenes livshistorie. Gjennom en komparativ nærlesning av skjemaenes stilistiske utforminger og kommunikasjonsformer, drøfter vi implikasjonene av det vi ser som en utfordrende sammenblanding av instrumentelle og relasjonelle hensikter ved bruk av livshistorier i profesjonell omsorg.

BackgroundIntroducing new technologies into healthcare practices may challenge professionals' traditional care cultures. The aim of this review was to map how the 'ethics of care' theoretical framework informs empirical studies of technology-mediated healthcare. MethodA scoping review was performed using eight electronic databases: CINAHL with full text, Academic Search Premier, MEDLINE, the Philosopher's Index, SocINDEX with Full Text, SCOPUS, APA PsycInfo and Web of Science. This was followed by citation tracking, and articles were assessed against the inclusion criteria. ResultsOf the 443 initial articles, 18 met the criteria and were included. We found that nine of the articles used the concept of 'ethics of care' (herein used interchangeably with the terms 'feminist ethics' or 'relational ethics') insubstantially. The remaining nine articles deployed care ethics (or its equivalent) substantially as an integrated theoretical framework and analytical tool. We found that several articles suggested an expansion of ethics of care to encompass technologies as part of contemporary care. Furthermore, ethics of care contributed to the empirical research by recognising both new relationships between patients and healthcare professionals as well as new ethical challenges. ConclusionEthics of care is sparsely used as a theoretical framework in empirical studies of technology-mediated healthcare practices. The use of ethics of care in technology-mediated care brings new dilemmas, relational tensions and vulnerabilities to the foreground. For ethics of care to be used more explicit in empirical studies, it is important that it is recognised by research community as an adequate, universal ethical theory.

Introduction The world’s population is ageing. As older persons live longer and increase in number, society faces a greater disease burden and, in public welfare, a corresponding resource deficit. New technology is one solution to this deficit but there is scarce knowledge about ethical aspects of such innovations in care practices. In CARING FUTURES, we address this scarcity by interrogating how new technology in care can become ethically sound and, correspondingly, how ethics of care can become more technology aware. Our concern is to protect quality care for the future. Methods and analysis CARING FUTURES advances transdisciplinarity through knowledge exchange around technology-mediated care and ethics of care, involving key stakeholders. We rely on established and innovative methods to generate experience-near and practice-near knowledge. Through this empirical research, we seek to expand understanding of technology-mediated care and to enrich ethics of care theory. Ethics and dissemination Empirical studies have been approved or await approval by national ethics committees. CARING FUTURES is designed to create societal impact through Knowledge Transfer Events targeting stakeholders in health, care and welfare, and Educational Packages for students of care—providing knowledge-exchange forums for future academics and practitioners of care. The project’s societal impact is also ensured in that participating researchers are also practitioners and/or educators of care personnel for the future. Project findings will be disseminated through scientific publications and conference presentations. Through communication in both traditional and digital media platforms, we engage in dialogues between researchers, user groups, policy makers and the wider public.

Sammendrag De siste årene har ulike typer av fantastisk og fabulerende fiksjon – her med en samlebetegnelse kalt spekulativ fiksjon – beveget seg fra utkanten av populærkulturen til mainstream media. Parallelt med denne utviklingen er det en økende interesse for hvordan medievaner påvirker holdninger og kunnskapsproduksjon. I denne artikkelen diskuterer jeg spekulativ fiksjon som særskilte fortellingspraksiser som kan bidra til å utfordre etablerte fortellinger eller forestillinger om verden, og på den måten fungere som en etisk-politisk arena for verdensgjøring på nye premisser. Gjennom å trekke forbindelseslinjer fra eventyrfortellinger til dagens spekulative fiksjon, slik som TV-seriene Game of Thrones og Black Mirror, peker jeg på hvordan spekulative fortellingspraksiser kan bidra til alternative verdensgjøringer på den ene siden, og til å rette søkelyset mot pågående verdensgjøringer i vår egen tid på den andre.

Både posthumanisme og transhumanisme er innganger til å problematisere grensene mellom teknologi, natur og mennesker i en tid der menneskene påvirker planeten jorden på helt fundamentale måter. Den menneskelige påvirkningen er så stor at det argumenteres for at jorden nå er inne i en ny geologisk tidsalder, navngitt som den «antropocene» tidsalder. I denne artikkelen gjør vi rede for transhumanisme og posthumanisme som ulike posisjoner i nye diskusjoner om menneskets rolle og ansvar i det antropocene. Vi drøfter prinsipielle etiske, vitenskapsteoretiske og politiske forskjeller mellom dem. Transhumanisme handler om radikal «forbedring» av mennesket gjennom utnytting av teknovitenskapelige nyvinninger, mens posthumanisme i større grad handler om mennesket i relasjon til det ikke-menneskelige, slik som teknologi, klima og dyr. Med vekt på feministisk vitenskapskritikk og feministisk økologi argumenterer vi for at posthumanisme er et viktig tenkeverktøy for å problematisere, forstå og utfordre menneskets tradisjonelle posisjon og rolle i antropocen tidsalder. I motsetning til transhumanisme, som representerer en vedvarende menneskesentrert posisjon, er posthumanisme, og da særlig feministisk posthumanisme, en teoretisk posisjon som ser utover forestillingen om et universelt menneske og fastholder en mindre hierarkisk tilnærming til hvordan mangfoldige arter, kropper, økosystemer og teknologier står i relasjon til hverandre.

According to the Swedish science fi ction TV series Äkta människor (Real Humans, SVT and Matador fi lm 2012-2014), humanoid robots called “hubots” are replacing the human workforce in care work and assembly line industries. Against the backdrop of current debates about immigration and citizenship in the Nordic countries, this article does a close, contextual reading of the series, exploring how the hubots infl uence work and family life. We are particularly interested in how hubots tie in with the cultural circulation of aff ect in relation to Otherness and how responses towards the “not-quite” human or dehumanized Other are negotiated in present-day Nordic cultural imaginaries. What kinds of aff ects are at stake in how Äkta människor takes up and interacts with debates about immigrant workers and the “not-quite” human? To answer these questions, the article develops the notion of “aff ective imaginaries” as an analytical tool for understanding the exchange between popular culture and political debate.

Sammendrag I regjeringens Demensplan 2020 legges det vekt på hvordan demensomsorgen skal ivareta personer med demens sin individualitet. Som strategi foreslås en økt bruk av «livsarket», en kort tekst som gir en oversikt over en persons viktige livserfaringer og preferanser. Sammenhengene mellom ønsket om å kjenne en persons livshistorie og det å kunne utøve tilpasset omsorg møtes i livsarket, og gir en pekepinn om idealer for vår tids forståelser av offentlig omsorg. Samtidig åpner bruk av livsarket opp for kritiske refleksjoner om fortellingspraksiser, fortolkning, representasjon og selvframstilling. I denne artikkelen diskuterer vi livsark som fortellende sjanger, og på hvilke premisser livsfortellingen får en sentral plass i senmoderne krav til individualisert omsorg. Vi trekker veksler på Eli Sol Vallersnes' debutroman Høstreise (2000) for å kontekstualisere denne diskusjonen. Vårt utgangspunkt er at fortellinger om levd liv og fortellinger om omsorg møtes i livsarket, og at det derfor kreves en etisk diskusjon om hva omsorg er og hva den tar utgangspunkt i, knyttet til forslaget om økt bruk av livsarket i demensomsorgen.

According to the Swedish science fiction TV series Akta manniskor (Real Humans, SVT and Matador film 2012-2014), humanoid robots called "hubots" are replacing the human workforce in care work and assembly line industries. Against the backdrop of current debates about immigration and citizenship in the Nordic countries, this article does a close, contextual reading of the series, exploring how the hubots influence work and family life. We are particularly interested in how hubots tie in with the cultural circulation of affect in relation to Otherness and how responses towards the "not-quite" human or dehumanized Other are negotiated in present-day Nordic cultural imaginaries. What kinds of affects are at stake in how Akta manniskor takes up and interacts with debates about immigrant workers and the "not-quite" human? To answer these questions, the article develops the notion of "affective imaginaries" as an analytical tool for understanding the exchange between popular culture and political debate.

This article explores knowledge about the breast in lived experience, addressing a gap in empirical research on a highly gendered cultural trope and embodied organ. We present findings from a study that used a free-associative psychosocial methodthe Visual Matrixin order to stimulate expressions of tacit aspects of the breast, aiming to generate an understanding of relations between embodied and enculturated experiences. Our data revealed how an aesthetic of the grotesque in one matrix allowed the mainly female group to use humour as a creative psychic defence against culturally normative and idealized aspects of the breast. This was expressed through symbolizations, affectively delivered in an exuberant mode, emphasizing the breasts potency and its potential for nurturance and weaponization. Through this feminine poetic, life and death became inseparable yet ambiguous dimensions of breasts. The breast's life-affirming qualities included the sensual, the visceral, and the joyfula material-semiotic knowing. This was incontrast to a second matrix, which expressed a more ambivalent and troubled response, and in which associations were weighted towards the spectacular breast of an ocular-centric culture that privileges hetero-masculine looking. We discuss differences between the two matrices in terms of psychosocial tensions between embodied and enculturated experiences.

Studies and writings on the monster have a long historical trajectory, but currently we are witnessing an unprecedented resurgence of interest in the figure of the monster. Not only has popular culture given rise to ever-increasing representations of monstrosity, but also the media and politicians are repeatedly evoking the dreaded monster through descriptions of fearful ‘foreigners’ and ‘terrorists’ who supposedly endanger our daily lives. They roam the in-between, making borders and boundaries tremble and shatter; whether these be borders of nation states or bodies, or categories of race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, self and other. Rapid technological and scientific developments make the monster rear its head: bodies are explored and modified by biotechnologies to an extent that challenges our understandings of what is human, what is animal and what is something completely different. Within the areas of communication and tele-technologies, systems and networks are developed to take on an uncanny sense of agency, where their movements and actions cannot be predicted or necessarily traced. The monster lurks in all of these details: a hybrid creature of popular culture and politics, technology and biology, fact and (science) fiction. In this sense, the monster seems to embody a promise of disturbances and change, as Donna Haraway argued in her 1992 text “The Promises of Monsters”. The renewed interest in the monster has given rise to what is referred to as Monster Studies: a new and increasingly popular interdisciplinary area of research, art, medicine, political science, psychology, computer science, and literature that invites us to think with and through the figure of the monster. This cultural and academic interest in monsters and the monstrous led to the founding of The Monster Network – an interdisciplinary and international community aiming to unpack the complexities that haunt our times as an academic, cultural, ethical and political task. The Network connects those with an interest in monsters and the monstrous. The aim of the Network is to spark international collaborations between artists and scholars by organizing conferences, workshops, publications, symposia and public events as well as creating a space for discussions and information on all things monstrous.

This article explores how the science-fictional figure of the metamorph can serve as a feminist figuration, a tool for rethinking structures for determining sameness and difference. The article offers close readings of selected metamorphs in contemporary science fiction and connects these imaginaries/imageries to recent feminist debates about representation, materiality, and agency. I suggest that contemporary metamorphs in visual science fiction open up space for a consideration of changeability and flexibility rather than fixity when issues of identity and ontologyof being in the worldare at stake. In light of the current political situation, where mass migration to Europe is foregrounding the fundamental differentiation between Self and Other, this article invites a discussion of the ethics at stake in the potentially transformative encounter between "us" and "them", and the political potential of rethinking representation and signification through the figure of the metamorph.