Roberts, Celia and Mort, Margaret and Milligan, Christine (2012) Calling for Care: ‘Disembodied’ Work, Teleoperators and Older People Living at Home. Sociology, 46 (3). pp. 490-506. ISSN 0038-0385
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
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.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Journal or Publication Title: | Sociology |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | call centres ; care ; care work ; older people ; telecare |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology |
| Departments: | Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences > Sociology Faculty of Health and Medicine > Medicine Faculty of Health and Medicine > Health Research |
| ID Code: | 54193 |
| Deposited By: | ep_importer_pure |
| Deposited On: | 18 May 2012 13:53 |
| Refereed?: | Yes |
| Published?: | Published |
| Last Modified: | 26 Mar 2013 17:06 |
| Identification Number: | |
| URI: | http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/54193 |
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