Smart Somatic Citizens : Responsibilisation and Relations in the Empowered City(sense) Project

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to investigate how processes of subjectification constitute the empowered citizen/patient in the discourses on smart cities. Descriptions of smartphone apps which use environmental sensor data are analysed through discourse analytic approach to governmentality. More specifically the thesis investigates the empowered citizen in relation to responsibilisation and relations to knowledge and power. The study finds that the citizen-subject is responsibilised and the relations knowledge are reformulated and redistribute responsibility. Data and the derived knowledge is represented as a form of empowerment. The citizen-subject is constituted as a manager of their own health, and a catalysts for changing the environment. Emphasising the importance of data and putting the user at the heart of data collecting further contributes to the responsibilisation. However, as the information from the data streams is transferable it also redistributes responsibility in the network of individuals who have access to it. The way of knowing the self and the environment is augmented to include a codified interface, which conditions the relationship. A distributed network of sensors allows the citizen-subject is able to simultaneously read the environment in multiple locations. Relations in knowledge production are also found to be altered.