Towards a sociology of healthcare robots

Abstract

We propose a sociological approach to healthcare robots that emphasises the heterogeneous ethics of mutual labour and the complex definitions of care that emerge through robot design/deployment. This argument is the product of a narrative literature review that examined assistive robots deployed in care settings. We found that although the deployment of healthcare robots has redefined the concept of care, as featured in geography, legal studies, and philosophy, it rarely appears in sociological inquiry. There are three fields that this approach to a sociology of health and illness complements. These are (1) phenomenology and the new approaches to touch and recognition in embodied relations with robots, (2) biopolitics, where the governance of life is conceptualised as a conjunction between the biological and artificial and (3) the reconfiguration of healthcare labour around mutuality, where robots both maintain and are maintained by the human. We end by suggesting that the increased implementation of robotics into care work provides a broader sociological opportunity for addressing how boundaries of ‘human’ can be rethought alongside new healthcare technologies.