‘A Much Better Person’: The Agential Capacities of Self-Tracking Practices

An increasing number of elements of people’s everyday lives have become quantified via their encounters and interactions with digital technologies. Many devices and software are now available for people to engage in detailed monitoring of their bodies and routines. In response to high levels of media attention to the phenomenon of ‘the quantified self’ (Lupton, 2013; Ruckenstein & Pantzar, 2017) and the expansion of the promotion of self-tracking in social domains such as medicine and public health, the workplace, the insurance industry and schools (Lupton, 2016a), a growing literature exploring the socio-cultural dimensions of self-tracking has emerged. Contributors to this scholarship (for example, Crawford, Lingel, & Karppi, 2015; Fox, 2017; Lupton, 2013; Lupton, 2016b, 2016c; Moore & Robinson, 2015; Ruckenstein & Pantzar, 2017) have identified some central themes and discourses which provide the meaning and context for these practices. They have demonstrated that the ideals of entrepreneurial selfhood, where states of empowerment are ascribed and derived from independently managing and optimising one’s health, wellbeing and physical fitness, emotional equilibrium, social relationships, financial affairs and work productivity, are central to concepts and practices of contemporary self. Indeed, they can be used as performances or (following Foucault) technologies of selfhood.