Co-production and Smart Environmentality: Smart Eldercare in Urban China

Abstract

The Chinese government has recently promoted community-based eldercare supported by digitally programmed “smart” health and safety devices placed in homes to address the perceived pressure of a rapidly aging population. This is envisioned as a solution to the growing need for eldercare that simultaneously enables aging in place, facilitates digitally mediated population governance, and provides a safety net for older adults residing in the community. However, the top-down practices of smartening older adults’ homes have encountered a series of frictions in their implementation. By examining the frictions in smart eldercare programs, this paper highlights older adults’ varied capacities to modify, resist, or misuse smart eldercare devices. In so doing, they collectively co-produce the smart environmentality that shapes the aging population. This study re-conceptualizes smart eldercare within a ‘smart environmentality’ framework, highlighting its co-production by the elderly and stakeholders through collaboration. It contributes to the literature on biopolitics and critical aging studies by revealing the interactions of digital governance, glitch politics, and co-production.