The Quantified Self - by Deborah Lupton (Paperback)

About the Book

With the advent of digital devices, self-tracking practices have spread into an array of social domains. The Quantified Self movement has emerged to promote 'self-knowledge through numbers'. Lupton analyses dimensions of contemporary self-tracking and identifies the concepts of selfhood and the value of data that underpin them.

Book Synopsis

With the advent of digital devices and software, self-tracking practices have gained new adherents and have spread into a wide array of social domains. The Quantified Self movement has emerged to promote 'self-knowledge through numbers'.

In this groundbreaking book Deborah Lupton critically analyses the social, cultural and political dimensions of contemporary self-tracking and identifies the concepts of selfhood and human embodiment and the value of the data that underpin them.

The book incorporates discussion of the consolations and frustrations of self-tracking, as well as about the proliferating ways in which people's personal data are now used beyond their private rationales. Lupton outlines how the information that is generated through self-tracking is taken up and repurposed for commercial, governmental, managerial and research purposes. In the relationship between personal data practices and big data politics, the implications of self-tracking are becoming ever more crucial.

Review Quotes

Shortlisted for the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize 2017

"Lupton's book is an excellent primer for readers interested in data surveillance, self-tracking cultures, and the increasing push to metricize aspects of personal experience that were previously not considered in statistical terms. Lupton's insight that no one alive today is exempt from becoming subjectedto digatization lends her project great immediate urgenc."
The British Society for Literature and Science

"The Quantified Self offers an excellent overview of the breadth and depth of issues related to self-tracking cultures. It is not only a useful resource for scholars and practitioners focusing on the value of quantified data with regard to health and bodily practices, but also an invitation to use self-tracking research in new kinds of political initiatives. Ultimately self-tracking is defined as a means of communicating and challenging dominant interests and aims."
Minna Ruckenstein, University of Helsinki

"Lupton's book is a fascinating read and I highly recommend it to researchers and practitioners who wish to gain a comprehensive account of self-tracking practices. Along with the commonly discussed topics of motivation and data representations, Lupton sheds light onto less explored topics, such as data-surveillance, while offering various theoretical foundations to support her arguments. Her writing is both visionary and provocative, and the book is a must read for researchers and practitioners of the Quantified Self movement."
Florian 'Floyd' Mueller, Director, Exertion Games Lab, RMIT University

"Impressive and comprehensive overview of the way in which people are tracking their lives using digital technologies"
Times Higher Education

"The Quantified Self is a careful, evenhanded survey of a trend that is on the cusp of seeming so ubiquitous that we'll soon forget how utterly specific the problems associated with this aspect of our sci-fi future are to the wealthy countries."
Inside Higher Education

About the Author

Deborah Lupton is Centenary Research Professor at the University of Canberra