Smart Home Masculinities

ABSTRACT

Existing research has shown dominant smart home imaginaries to be gendered visions of technologically deterministic lives of affluent young white men and middle-class hetero-normative white cultures. Instead, we argue, a more realistic, plausible and ethical approach to smart home design needs to originate from the different starting point of gender diversity and equality in the home. To demonstrate this, we situate smart home design within the dominant masculine and colonising narratives of industry and science. We then develop a design anthropological analysis of the everyday experiences as reported by four middle-class white Australian men living in heteronormative family households. We propose that existing masculinist imaginaries of smart home futures are not only limited because they fail to account for the diverse experiences and aspirations of heterogeneous households but because they also fail to recognise the messiness, contingency and processual nature of the social, material and experiential circumstances of the very heteronormative households they appear to be aligned with. A feminist approach to the smart home would need to be designed from and with gender-equal relations in the very site of the home.

KEYWORDS:

• Smart homes
• future imaginaries
• everyday masculinities
• digital housekeeping
• Australia
• feminist design anthropology

Acknowledgements

First, we thank all our research participants, since without them this article would not have been possible. The research discussed in this article is supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Projects funding Scheme (‘Digital Energy Futures’ project number LP180100203) in partnership with Monash University, Ausgrid, AusNet Services and Energy Consumers Australia. The ethics for the Digital Energy Futures project were approved by Monash University’s Human Research Ethics Committee.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [Grant Number LP180100203].

Notes on contributors

Sarah Pink

Sarah Pink is Professor and Director of the Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Monash University, Australia. Sarah is a design and futures anthropologist, a methodological innovator and documentary filmmaker, specialising in questions related to the relationship between people, environment and emerging technologies in possible futures. She is an advocate for bringing together academic and engaged scholarship and interdisciplinary collaboration towards a future-focused approach to social science research and practice. Her gender-focused research includes her books Women and Bullfighting (1997) and Home Truths (2004). Her recent works include the books Design Ethnography (2022), Energy Futures (2022) and Emerging Technologies / Life at the Edge of the Future (2023) and the documentaries Smart Homes for Seniors (2021) and Digital Energy Futures (2022).

Yolande Strengers

Yolande Strengers is Professor of Digital Technology and Society in the Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Monash University, Australia, where she leads the Energy Futures research program. Yolande is a digital sociologist and human–computer interaction scholar who investigates the inclusion and sustainability outcomes of smart and emerging technologies. Her work on gender and technology is informed by feminist science and technology studies. She has investigated the effects of the feminisation of digital voice assistants and robots (The Smart Wife, MIT Press, 2020 with Dr Jenny Kennedy) and identified the ideal masculine energy consumer, “Resource Man”, who shapes energy policy and industry interventions (Smart Energy Technologies in Everyday Life, Palgrave Macmillan 2013). Yolande has published extensively on smart homes, including gendered industry visions and imaginaries; digital housekeeping and the changing division of labour; and gendered interest, uptake and use of smart home technologies. She is also a vocal advocate for gender equity in STEM and is advancing collaborations between the social sciences and the field of artificial intelligence.

Rex Martin

Rex Martin is Research Fellow at the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University. Drawing on sociology, human geography and ethnography, Rex's work explores the everyday experiences and knowledge of people living with renewable energy technologies and tools, including solar PV, battery storage and energy feedback. His research explores smart (energy) technologies, lay knowledge, gendered ‘energy housekeeping’, and experiences of changing weather and climate.

Kari Dahlgren

Kari Dahlgren is Research Fellow in the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University. Kari is a social anthropologist and ethnographer with a PhD from the London School of Economics. Her work is situated at the intersection of environmental and digital anthropology, with a particular interest in the anthropology of energy, climate change, and transition and how these fields are entangled with digital technologies and future imaginations of technological change. Kari’s research speaks to the possibilities and limitations of imagining and crafting futures and contributes to the building of diverse and sustainable digital futures.