Bright Baffour Antwi
PhD fellow at the University of South-Eastern Norway (USN)
Bright's research interest is in historical, sociocultural, and phenomenological aspects of digital self-tracking and quantification in fitness practices. This interest has led him to explore the near-exclusive emphasis on quantification at the expense of qualitative elements of fitness practices and human movement.
Tell us about your project!
My project applies an ethnographic lens to provide insights into the adoption of smartwatches in new cultural spaces where self-tracking technologies are less widely incorporated into fitness practices. With a series of individual interviews and participant observations with fitness enthusiasts in fitness centres and outdoor running spaces in Ghana, the study explores people’s experiences and engagements with digital self-tracking technologies.
I explore the paradoxical facets of how self-tracking technologies shape individual experiences and thoughts about their moving bodies. Drawing on Foucauldian concepts of the technologies of the self and panopticism, I examine whether digital self-tracking technologies can inspire them to new forms of freedom (technologies of the self), self-knowledge, and entertainment in their everyday fitness practices. However, could the surveillance gaze (digital panopticism) and performance metric features on smartwatches become more impactful than the experience (turning freedom to control)?
“I explore the paradoxical facets of how self-tracking technologies shape individual experiences and thoughts about their moving bodies”
— Antwi on his research project “The digitalisation of fitness practices: Self-tracking technologies and the shaping of a new fitness identity”