Mika Pantzar

National Consumer Research Centre · Faculty of Social Sciences University of Helsinki

Beyond the Quantified Self This article investigates the metaphor of the Quantified Self (QS) as it is presented in the journal Wired (2008-2012). Four interrelated themes – transparency, optimization, feedback loop, and biohacking – are identified as underpinning the definition of a new digital self and the diffusion of a dataist paradigm. By sugg...

Objective: Self-tracking technologies have created high hopes, even hype, for aiding people to govern their own health risks and promote optimal wellness. High expectations do not, however, necessarily materialize due to connective gaps between personal experiences and self-tracking data. This study examines situations when self-trackers face diff...

This paper evaluates self-tracking practices in connection with ideas of objectivity via exploration of confrontations with personal data, particularly with reference to physiological stress and recovery measurements. The discussion departs from the notion of ‘mechanical objectivity’, seeking to obtain evidence that is ‘uncontaminated by interpreta...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how back-office service staff cope with the intricacies of administrative work. Design/methodology/approach – The paper applies the research approach of “at-home ethnography” in a university back-office. The primary method of data collection was participant listening in the field, either in formal...

A long-term research focus on the temporality of everyday life has become revitalised with new tracking technologies that allow methodological experimentation and innovation. This article approaches rhythms of daily lives with heart-rate variability measurements that use algorithms to discover physiological stress and recovery. In the spirit of the...

This article investigates the metaphor of the Quantified Self (QS) as it is presented in the magazine Wired (2008–2012). Four interrelated themes—transparency, optimization, feedback loop, and biohacking—are identified as formative in defining a new numerical self and promoting a dataist paradigm. Wired captures certain interests and desires with t...

Techno-Anthropology recognizes the intertwining of technology with aims, needs, practices, and skills; ‘the techno’ and ‘the anthro’ are not only interconnected, but historically co-constituted. In this paper developments in ‘personal analytics’ are examined with the aim of proposing epistemological and methodological directions for techno-anthropo...

Techno-Anthropology recognizes the intertwining of technology with aims, needs, practices, and skills; 'the techno' and 'the anthro' are not only interconnected, but historically co-constituted. In this paper developments in 'personal analytics' are examined with the aim of proposing epistemological and methodological directions for Techno-Anthropo...

As a result of digital and mobile technology, various kinds of monitoring practices are moving back and forth knowledge hierarchies. The analytics of bodily and mental functions is no longer the privileged domain of professionals. This essay focuses on the ways in which everyday analytics, heart-rate monitoring in particular, becomes embedded and n...

This study examines how administrative staff in the back-office aim to maintain the continuity and flow of their tasks that is critical for producing appropriate administrative results in time. Based on an ethnographic study of administrative work, the results suggest that administrative staff in a back-office environment prepare for information te...

The authors conducted a curiosity-driven study to explore what a vast body of self-tracking data could reveal about the rhythms of everyday life. The authors instructed thirty-six research participants to engage in self-tracking for a week. They measured their physiological stress and recovery 24/7 for this period. In addition to that the participa...

The article describes how the boundary between necessary and unnecessary consumption items was defined in Finland in the years following World War II. On the basis of extensive comparative data, it focuses on the history of two items: the washing machine and the cellular phone. The data consist of press coverage and material published by manufactur...

A substantial amount of subjectivity is involved in how people use language and conceptualize the world. Computational methods and formal representations of knowledge usually neglect this kind of individual variation. We have developed a novel method, Grounded Intersubjective Concept Analysis (GICA), for the analysis and visualization of individual...

In this article, we introduce the concept of pathways of wellbeing and examine how such paths can be discovered from large data sets using the self-organizing map. Data sets used in the illustrative experiments include measurements of physical fitness and subjective assessments related to diagnosing work stress.

Everyday life is defined and characterised by the rise, transformation and fall of social practices. Using terminology that is both accessible and sophisticated, this essential book guides the reader through a multi-level analysis of this dynamic. In working through core propositions about social practices and how they change the book is clear and...

In this article, we introduce a method to make visible the differences among people regarding how they conceptualize the world. The Grounded Intersubjective Concept Analysis (GICA) method first employs a conceptual survey designed to elicit particular ways in which concepts are used among participants, aiming to exclude the level of opinions and va...

Alvin Toffler's classic book Future Shock (1970) argued that in our world of ever-quickening change, the human mind is threatened by shattering. Almost forty years after its publication, the book still feels fresh. Based on interviews with experts, the book became a bestseller in the field of futures studies, and defined futures studies for many de...

Building on the work of those who have highlighted the role of consumers and lead users we focus on innovations not in products but in what people do. In developing a method of conceptualising the emergence and reproduction of practice we argue that innovation is not a one-off moment but a continuous on-going process. Specifically, we suggest that...

In this article we argue that rush hours, hot spots and experiences of time squeeze are temporal manifestations of relations between practices. In describing these relations we explore the relevance of a range of metaphors, including those of organic, self-sustaining networks. In contrast to time-use studies, which suggest that social rhythms follo...

We now live in a designed world and we need to develop a better understanding of how to discuss and critique its design components. The essays presented here – selected from the preeminent journal, Design Issues – are intended to enhance our collective understanding of the wide reach of design in the contemporary world. The book is structured to co...

Finding ways in which communities of experts can benefit from each other is a question shared by the machine learning community and social sciences alike. Considerable research in machine learning methods has shown that communities of experts can provide consistently better classifications and decisions than single experts in various tasks and doma...

Recruitment and Reproduction: The Careers and Carriers of Digital Photography and Floorball The claim that social practices have a relatively durable existence in space and time, and that their persistence depends upon their recurrent reproduction through necessarily localised performances is theoretically plausible, but what of the detail? How do...

Purpose Consumers are sometimes unexpectedly resistant toward radically innovative product concepts, and it is often argued that this is due to their difficulties in understanding the novel products. Thus, marketing research has focused on new ways to make consumers familiar with new product concepts. The purpose of this study is to present the arg...

The starring point for this article is the changing spectrum of goods and services, in the product variety as seen by the eyes of the individual facing the supply in the market. Apart from the fact that product variety is an interesting research object in itself, it would appear to have a distinct connection with numerous sketches characterising th...

The paper presents an interpretation of Finnish advertising for edible fats and imagery related to the fats during this century. The material comprises copies of Kotiliesi magazine at 5-year intervals from 1923 to 1992. The advertising reflects the history of a changing relationship of references to the competing fat products, showing at the same t...

This paper is the first attempt to integrate contemporary discussions on the choice, role and significance of food in people's everyday lives. It goes beyond the purely economic-quantitative dimensions of food and relates them to the income factor. It is a revised version of a paper which first appeared in Finnish in Discussion Papers No. 33 publis...

Multimedia rich mobile broadband services are expected to be used widely in the near future. To become commercially successful, meaningful uses for them need to be invented. We approached the takeup of such novel mobile services from the perspective of user innovations. Mobile phones with video capability were handed out to test users in order to d...

The idea that artifacts are acquired and used in the course of accomplishing social practices has important implications for theories of consumption and innovation. From this point of view, it is not enough to show that goods are symbolically and materially positioned, mediated and filtered through existing cultures and conventions. Twisting the pr...

The introduction and marketing of third-generation mobile services has not been enough to make them a commercial success. User involvement and user innovations are apparently needed before such success can be achieved. We handed out mobile phones with video capability to test users to see what kind of meaningful contexts they might find for watchin...

for comments, Radiolinja for data, and people I have studied for allowing me to use their messages as data.

At first sight, digital photography- which involves taking and sometimes also manipulating, storing, viewing and displaying digital images- and floorball, an indoor sport in which players equipped with light-weight sticks try to hit a small ball into the opposing team's goal, have barely anything in common. One is an essentially solitary activ...

This article examines the promotion and legitimization of bank saving in Finnish magazines during the 1950s. While trying to educate Finnish citizens to save, articles and advertisements ended up outlining a general model for the good life, structured by the ethos of thrift. At the household level, thrift meant a plurality of activities, not only p...

Traditionally, producers faced a binary choice when channeling new technologies into consumers' everyday lives. They pushed new science-based technology or adapted to often unimaginative market pull. The former isolated design from consum-ers, the latter from technology. The emerging information society aggravates the tra-ditional trade-off into a...

The article is an integrative, theoretical paper addressing the problem of sustainable consumption. It provides the insights of two conceptual frameworks on the conditions for and limits to sustainable consumption. Existing consumer research on environmental issues is reviewed. It is argued that consumer research is not focusing on the right issues...

In this article the organizing process of the US economy of the nineteenth century is reinterpreted through a specific evolutionary model, the repli‐cative model of evolution. In this model socio‐economic systems already existing are related to themselves through positive feedback, and the self‐organizing properties of the systems are direct conseq...

This article contrasts the standard model of consumer choice of economics with three different theoretical perspectives – biological, ecological and cultural – in the context of food choice and origin of preferences. Biological and ecological frameworks seem to be in accordance with economic theory assuming stable preferences, while cultural theori...

An interview with the President of the Republic of Finland Mauno Koivisto

An Interview with Professor John K. Galbraith

The argument of this paper—'an ecology of goods'—could be summarized as follows: Goods exist only in relation to each other. Goods form groups, and in time higher organizational levels, groups of groups, i.e. networks of artifacts emerge. Mass consumption society is the most developed manifestation of this organizing process. The process of associa...

The progressive or pathological nature of routinization has been recognized by several scholars. This paper emphasizes the dual nature of routinization in managerial practice. The traps and potential are simultaneously present. The article briefly reviews the literature where routines have been recognized either as progress or pathology. It gives s...

Arvioimme tässä kirjoituksessa suomalaisesta talouspolitiikasta käytyä keskustelua retoriikan näkökulmasta: kiinnitämme erityisesti huomiota talouspolitiikan dualistiseen ajatteluun ja metaforiin. Tavoitteenamme on osoittaa, että yhtä lailla kuin talouspolitiikan kieli ja sen sisältämät symboliset mallit kuvaavat »todellisuutta», ne samalla myös lu...

An evolutionary view of socio‐economic systems is elaborated. The concept of path‐dependent processes and the role of evolutionary theory in social science is reviewed. A particular evolutionary perspective, that of ‘general evolutionary theory,’ is outlined. Autocatalytic processes and hierarchies, as well as biological on ‘general evolutionary th...

A remarkable period of transition in business organization, which we call the formative period of American business enterprise manifested itself in the United States of America in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The most obvious indication of change was the appearance of large integrated enterprises; administrative coordination began to...

The early organizing process of the American railroads could be periodized as follows: Railroad technology become perfected by the 1860s, the national network become perfected by the 1880s, and self‐sustaining railroad systems by the 1900s. The evolutionary path seems to be largely dictated by the “perfection” of stable configurations of “lower lev...

When studying the mechanisms by means of which feminine categories appropriate for the existing gender system are produced and preserved, reference has been made to the social division of labour, to the ideology of family life, the educational system and government activities. Little attention has been paid to consumption and consumption objects as...

The “choreography of everyday life refers to the existence of rules of daily life, correspondingly to those of dances: the rules impose order upon individual behavior beyond the level of pure improvisation. The fact that acts of everyday life repeat themselves supports the idea that there exist some mechanisms generating order to daily practices. T...

This paper studies aspects of choice behaviour in modern society. In traditional societies the norms and standards that guided food choice were more fixed and permanent than in our society. Today the ecological rhythm is almost meaningless, social class no longer provides any clear guide-lines and the commercialization of food is increasingly erodi...

The creation of a user and identification of needs; user configuration is an essential element of the innovation process and not merely the final part of the process. The outcome of consumer configuration is a kind of manuscript according to which the consumer is assumed to act when he or she confronts a new commodity. Technology research refers to...

FUTURA Vol.6 Nr.3, 79 - 88