Miquel Domènech

Autonomous University of Barcelona | UAB · Departamento de Psicología Social

With a total budget of €4,838,400, TOUCH (Towards the generation of excellent young doctoral researchers in inter-sectoral & transdisciplinary approach) will be able to bring on board 24 PhD students enrolled in a strategic UAB area: mental health and well-being. The new programme involves several university departments, the CORE in Mental Health...

According to the scientific and technical literature, there is a continuous and significant increase of the importance of robots in the economy and society. Most of those robots are produced to cover industry needs, thinking of the robot as a substitute for human beings. They are supposed to improve the quality of work by taking over dangerous, ted...

Objective To analyze the process of assisted death provision in Catalonia and identify the main tensions, difficulties, and/or sources of discomfort related to professional practice. Method A qualitative study was conducted based on interviews (n = 29) and focus groups (n = 19) with professionals who participated in the euthanasia process. The sel...

According to the scientific and technical literature, there is a continuous and significant increase of the importance of robots in the economy and society. Most of those robots are produced to cover industry needs, thinking of the robot as a substitute for human beings. They are supposed to improve the quality of work by taking over dangerous, ted...

Drawing from a range of disciplines and case studies, this volume examines the latest health and genetic technologies, explores the representation, communication, and internalization of health knowledge and reveals the economic and cultural inequalities that result from these technologies.

The approval of the Spanish Law for the Regulation of Euthanasia in March 2021 entails a profound social change that has direct implications for professional practice at all levels of care. There is no information available about the experiences of the professionals participating in the process of implementing the law in our country, nor any guide...

The development of care robots has been accompanied by a number of technical and social challenges, which are guided by the question: “What is a robot for?” Debates guided by this question have discussed the functionalities and tasks that can be delegated to a machine that does not harm human dignity. However, we argue that these ethical debates do...

In 2019, news of the opening of a waste incinerator sparked a socio-environmental controversy in a village in the Pyrenees in Catalonia (Spain). With the aim of influencing local public policies and taking part in the decision making around the project, a group of neighbors formed a citizen platform called the Cercs Anti-incineration Platform (PAIC...

Technology has been holding out the promise of facilitating greater autonomy and improving care for people in a situation of dependency. This trend is expected to grow and this is happening precisely at a time of expansion of the so-called Independent Living paradigm. In this context, however, disability activists are generally suspicious of approa...

The oscillation between the promise and the disappointment of biobanks as techno-scientific infrastructures for contemporary biomedical research is frequent in the literature. In this article, we analysed how the precariousness of biobanks is leading to shifts in the focus of biobanking in Spain, where there are calls for some practices to be reart...

Public libraries have proven for centuries to be infrastructures both stable enough as reference centers for access to knowledge yet plastic enough to respond to the social changes of the communities they serve. In these present times of transformation, during which digitalization and the intensive use of technologies are modifying the way in which...

In the scenario of growing polarization of promises and dangers that surround artificial intelligence (AI), how to introduce responsible AI and robotics in healthcare? In this paper, we develop an ethical–political approach to introduce democratic mechanisms to technological development, what we call “Caring in the In-Between”. Focusing on the mult...

In this paper, we analyse patients’ perspectives on the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic systems in healthcare. Based on citizens’ experiences when hospitalised for COVID-19, we explore how the opinions and concerns regarding healthcare automation could not be disassociated from a context of high pressure on the health syste...

In this paper we explore how the definition of life takes on an essential character in the ethical debates around health technologies, with life thus being manufactured in the tensions and conflicts around the use of such artifacts and devices. We introduce concepts from science and technology studies (STS) to approach bioethics, overcoming the dua...

In this paper, we explore how the definition of life takes on an essential character in the ethical debates around health technologies, with life thus being manufactured in the tensions and conflicts around the use of such artefacts and devices. We introduce concepts from science and technology studies (STS) to approach bioethics, overcoming the du...

The ‘participatory turn’ in science and technology governance has resulted in the growth of initiatives designed to engage lay people in consultation and decision-making on controversial matters. Almost from the start there has been both enthusiasm and serious critique of these exercises, from scholars and activists. The gaps and challenges are wel...

Las tecnologías digitales han irrumpido en la vida de las personas con diversidad funcional con la promesa de ofrecer más autonomía y accesibilidad con logros ciertamente remarcables. La diversidad funcional intelectual, sin embargo, ha sido un campo en el que tales desarrollos han sido más modestos y presenta aún ciertas incertidumbres. La cuestió...

This paper explores some issues that emerged in research about a participatory design process with children to develop a pre-prototype of a social robot for hospitalized children. Using as an anecdotic inspiration, the coincidence of the designing of two turtles as social-robot prototypes, one by roboticists and the other one by children, this chap...

It is widely assumed that the key component of public engagement with science is deliberation. However, determining concrete political recommendations for a given issue is a complex process throughout which several processes of translation occur, not all having to do with the discursive realm. This article supposes experimentation focused on puttin...

Freezers with biospecimen deposits became biobanks and later were networked at the pan-European level in 2013 under the Biobanking and BioMolecular Resources Research Infrastructure—European Research Infrastructure Consortium (BBMRI-ERIC). Drawing on document analysis about the BBMRI-ERIC and multi-sited fieldwork with biobankers in Spain from a sc...

In this paper we analyze imaginaries about care robots using a set of interviews with roboticists. The study of imaginaries – from a notion close to that of Castoriadis’s radical imaginary – is used as a tool to unravel ethical, political and social concerns that care robots entail. From the analysis of the interviews, our results highlight that im...

[Published in: UniverCity Action Lab e-magazine. Retrieved from: https://www.ucitylab.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Magazine-Ucity_march20-online-1.pdf] The design process of an open, collaborative and innovation lab is not just a methodological issue. On the contrary, the design process in itself can set a relevant precedent for future collaborati...

Beyond the utopian or dystopian scenarios that accompany the progressive introduction of robots for care in daily environments, their use in the medical field entails controversies that require alternative forms of ethical responsibility. From this general objective, in this article we propose a series of reflections to articulate an ethical framew...

Beyond the utopian or dystopian scenarios that accompany the progressive introduction of robots for care in daily environments, their use in the medical field entails controversies that require alternative forms of ethical responsibility. From this general objective, in this article we propose a series of reflections to articulate an ethical framew...

[Citizen-centered laboratories: third spaces for social innovation. Learnings from the Library Living Lab in Barcelona] Published in: CLIP de SEDIC: Revista de la Sociedad Española de Documentación e Información Científica, ISSN-e 2659-2983, nº 80 (jul-dic), 2019. Retrieved from: https://clip.sedic.es/article/laboratorios-ciudadanos-terceros-espa...

La inmersión en la sociedad del conocimiento trajo consigo el peligro de restringir el tratamiento de las temáticas tecnocientíficas a un proceso de obtención de consenso entre personas expertas y de alejar a la ciudadanía de la participación política. La necesidad de un mayor diálogo entre ciudadanía lega y expertos fue señalada por la Comisión de...

This paper analyzes children’s imaginaries of Human-Robots Interaction (HRI) in the context of social robots in healthcare, and it explores ethical and social issues when designing a social robot for a children’s hospital. Based on approaches that emphasize the reciprocal relationship between society and technology, the analytical force of imaginar...

[Prototyping bio-objects: parafilm, coffee filters and other (enrolled)materials for self-diagnosis]. Intermediate Conference of the CIT18: Technology, humans and vice-versa. Organized by the Spanish Federation of Sociology, Research Committee on the Sociology of Knowledge, Science, Technology and Innovation.

With knowledge societies, the role of expert knowledge has grown to cover all areas of social life. When it affects deliberative processes and political decision-making, this role questions the quality and nature of contemporary democratic systems owing to the distance it sets up between citizenship and public matters. The demand for a democratisat...

Avec les sociétés de la connaissance, le rôle des savoirs experts s’est renforcé dans tous les domaines de la vie sociale. Quand ils touchent les processus délibératifs et la décision politique, leur rôle questionne la qualité et la nature des dispositifs démocratiques contemporains, compte tenu de l’éloignement de la citoyenneté qu’ils produisent...

Con las sociedades del conocimiento, se ha ido consolidando el papel cada vez más importante del conocimiento experto en todas las esferas de la vida social. Cuando ello ha alcanzado a los procesos deliberativos y de toma de decisiones políticas, ha llegado a poner en cuestión la calidad y la naturaleza de los dispositivos democráticos contemporáne...

Metro Sul do Tejo (MST) is a public Light rail system operating in Almada, Portugal. The line opened in 2008 with the aim of improving mobility in the city, reducing pollution, noise and traffic congestion, and reducing the use of private transport. The concession contract provided for the payment of compensations (to be paid by the State) if the e...

This paper describes an on-going research aiming to design and deploy a robotic-pet based intervention integrated to the Child Life program in a paediatric hospital. The purpose is to provide in the personalized health-care network a supplement of smart company to alleviate feelings of anxiety, loneliness and stress of long-term inpatient and their...

Caring for the elderly is turning to forms of community care and home care. Telecare is one of those emergent modalities of caring. This article will explore the meanings that older people give to the experience of staying at home in later life by using telecare. Discourse analysis is used to examine a set of focus groups and interviews with teleca...

Numerous discourses on “good aging” provide different perspectives on what older people are, what they can and ought to do, and where they should be. Policy texts often present such discourses together, as if they were aligned. In our study, we found that that these two discourses sometimes also clash under the current, concrete strategies that hav...

In this paper we offer an ethnographic interpretation of how different home telecare services in Spain respond practically to their aim of providing older people with social links to prevent isolation trends being detected in a changing, widespread context of family care. These services seek to grant their users an infrastructure of connection and...

This paper offers an ethnographic interpretation of how in a changing context of family care different Spanish home telecare services provide older people with social links to prevent their isolation, granting them ?connected autonomy?: the promotion of their autonomy and independent living through connectedness. To do so, services need to craft a...

This article reports on ethnographic research into the practical and ethical consequences of the implementation and use of telecare devices for older people living at home in Spain and the United Kingdom. Telecare services are said to allow the maintenance of their users’ autonomy through connectedness, relieving the isolation from which many older...

In order to know how Catalonian citizens account water controversies in Spain, we analyzed six focus groups carried out in Catalonia in 2006. A concept of ‘urban social identity’ is used for our interpretations, having been adapted to highlight its interactional character. Tracking the spatial categories used in the discussions, we identified the v...

ContextTelecare and telehealth developments have recently attracted much attention in research and service development contexts, where their evaluation has predominantly concerned effectiveness and efficiency. Their social and ethical implications, in contrast, have received little scrutiny. Objective To develop an ethical framework for telecare sy...

This article examines the processes of technical mediation within familial care networks based on a study of home telecare targeted at older people. Supported by contributions from the actor-network theory as part of the social psychology of science and technology, these processes of technical mediation are analyzed using a qualitative approach. Th...

How can we guarantee the security of our means of transport? How can we strengthen that of our communications? How can we keep our ideology or our market safe? Etc. In this context, the press has recently been asking whether it is possible to be 100% certain that a person is not concealing a dangerous item on passing through an airport control. Non...

In order to know how Catalonian citizens account water controversies in Spain, we analyzed six focus groups carried out in Catalonia in 2006. A concept of 'urban social identity' is used for our interpretations, having been adapted to highlight its interactional character. Tracking the spatial categories used in the discussions, we identified the v...

Este artículo presenta un análisis discursivo de la identidad de lugar en usuarios de teleasistencia domiciliaria. Dicho análisis es parte de los resultados de dos proyectos de investigación interesados por el cuidado de las personas mayores y dependientes en España. Los datos analizados se extraen de un conjunto de diez grupos de discusión llevado...

This article presents a discourse analysis of place-identity in home telecare users. This analysis is part of the results of two research projects concerned with the care of old and dependent people in Spain. The data analyzed come from a set of ten focus groups conducted in Catalonia in 2009 (n=62). Drawing from tracking the participants' use of a...

This paper seeks to offer an alternative account of Human Resources Information software (eHR) informed by a critical/postcolonial view on information systems. In so doing, it aims to explore the possibilities for managing people that information brings when Human Resources Management practices are transferred from “developed” to “developing” count...

New Technologies and Emerging Spaces of Care provides the latest practice-oriented qualitative research and innovative conceptual discussions of how health and health care systems are currently dealing with complex transformations and varied reforms. Exploring and analysing the social and cultural impact of new technologies, this book examines the...

The practice of developing and creating Free Software has been the centre of attention for studies related to economics, knowledge production, laws and the intellectual property framework. However, the practice that constitutes the initiative of Free Software also means a call to rethink current forms of political action and the in-depth meaning of...

La gestión sostenible del agua ha aparecido en España como el centro de una controversia de primera magnitud. En ella, la participación ciudadana es un eje fundamental. A partir del análisis de grupos de discusión realizados en seis ciudades de Cataluña, este trabajo reflexiona sobre la percepción de la participación en los debates sobre el agua. S...

In this article, we analyse how the Internet is used to bring visibility to water affairs. We focus on the way different organisations exploit the Web in order to participate in the debates about water policy in Spain and to define the topics concerned. To do this, we have drawn up an issue network articulated around an alternative and sustainable...

This paper is an introduction to the monograph titled Diasporas and Transitions in the Actor-Network Theory. Drawing a parallel with ethnomethodology, its pages present the main features of this theory, a way to figure out its origins and a description of its present. The text ends with a brief look at the state of art of actor-network theory in Sp...

Este texto es una presentacion del monografico Diasporas y transiciones en la teoria del actor-red. Sus paginas presentan las principales caracteristicas de esta teoria, una manera de entender sus origenes y una descripcion de su presente estableciendo un paralelismo con la etnometodologia. El texto finaliza con una valoracion del estado de la teor...

Sustainable water management has become the focal point of a highly important issue in Spain. Citizens' participation in this controversy it is fundamental. Having carried out the analysis of several focus groups in six Catalonian cities (Spain), this study reflects on the perception of participating in discussions on water. Five actors mentioned i...

Este texto es una presentación del monográfico Diásporas y transiciones en la teoría del actor-red. Sus páginas presentan las principales características de esta teoría, una manera de entender sus orígenes y una descripción de su presente estableciendo un paralelismo con la etnometodología. El texto finaliza con una valoración del estado de la teor...

In what way is »care« a matter of »tinkering«? Rather than presenting care as a (preferably »warm«) relation between human beings, the various contributions to the volume give the material world (usually cast as »cold«) a prominent place in their analysis. Thus, this book does not continue to oppose care and technology, but contributes to rethinkin...

This paper deals with the transformation that water policy in Spain has undergone in recent decades. The erosion of a strongly united hydraulic policy community has given way to a widespread and plural network in which modern hydrological policy is under discussion. In this network, a new discourse about sustainability (the «New Water Culture») bri...

The practice of developing and creating Free Software has been the centre of attention for studies related to economics, knowledge production, laws and the intellectual property framework. However, the practice that constitutes the initiative of Free Software also means a call to rethink current forms of political action and the in-depth meaning of...

The practice of developing and creating Free Software has been the centre of attention for studies related to economics, knowledge production, laws and the intellectual property framework. However, the practice that constitutes the initiative of Free Software also means a call to rethink current forms of political action and the in-depth meaning of...

En este trabajo nos acercamos a la transformación que la política de aguas española ha sufrido en las últimas décadas. La erosión de una cohesionada comunidad de política hidráulica ha dado paso a una red extendida y plural en la que se debate la política hidrológica contemporánea. En esta última, un nuevo discurso sobre la sostenibilidad (la "Nuev...

En este trabajo nos acercamos a la transformación que la política de aguas española ha sufrido en las últimas décadas. La erosión de una cohesionada comunidad de política hidráulica ha dado paso a una red extendida y plural en la que se debate la política hidrológica contemporánea. En esta última, un nuevo discurso sobre la sostenibilidad (la «Nuev...

Growing attention is being paid to the increasing incidence of expert and lay citizen encounters in the processes of technological implementation. This poses the problem of the nature of participation, now a quite common topic in the field of science and technology studies. We offer firstly a brief review of the main issues regarding participation...

La teoría del actor-red ha popularizado la noción de “traducción” como herramienta de inteligibilidad de las conexiones que se establecen entre dispositivos tecnológicos y seres humanos. No obstante, el concepto se enfrenta a dos graves problemas. En primer lugar, no resuelve la cuestión de cómo es posible que diversas traducciones mantengan cierta...

In this paper we explore from a topological perspective how immediate care is enacted in a home telecare service and critically discuss how immediacy is defined. One approach is to conceive immediate care delivering as dependant on how disciplined the home telecare service inscriptions are and therefore on how uneventful and smooth the assistance i...

n this article we argue that the concept of emotion has mutated into mere consumption, and we explore the processes of subjectification involved. We start by outlining the transformation of an industrial society into a post-industrial one. We then show the usefulness of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘assemblage’, insofar as it problematizes the...

Este artigo se propõe a entender que a emoção, nos dias de hoje, é o próprio consumo e os processos de subjetivação atravessados nessa relação. Para isso, começa mapeando as transformações de uma sociedade industrial para uma sociedade pós-industrial, e a captura da vida por parte do capitalismo. Aponta, ainda, como a idéia de agenciamento, de Dele...

The article aims to show the importance of FOUCAULT within social studies of science and technology. It also illustrates how a Foucauldian analysis can be useful for studies of science, technology and society focused on power effects. To accomplish these objectives we analyze the emergence of a specific techno-scientific innovation: the electronic...

For some considerable time now, the practice of developing and creating Free Software has been the centre of attention for studies related to economics, knowledge production, law and the legal and intellectual property framework. However, the practice that constitutes this initiative also means a call to rethink current forms of political action an...

Der Beitrag zielt darauf, die Relevanz FOUCAULTs für die Analyse der Erforschung moderner Technologien zu verdeutlichen: Er will die Fruchtbarkeit der FOUCAULTschen Diskursanalyse im Hinblick auf die Machteffekte von Diskursen im Bereich neuer Technologie illustrieren. Dies erfolgt am Beispiel der Analyse der elektronischen Überwachung. Dazu werden...

La teoría del actor-red es una de las perspectivas más idiosincrásicas que han aparecido en las últimas décadas en la tradición del pensamiento social. Ha sido formulada y desarrollada básicamente por tres autores: Bruno Latour, Michel Callon y John Law, y, en cierta medida, constituye la culminación del análisis social contemporáneo sobre la cienc...

La implementación de muchas de las innovaciones posibilitadas por las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC) ofrece un contexto privilegiado para analizar cómo el control social, en consonancia con las transformaciones experimentadas por nuestra sociedad, también está sufriendo una transformación radical. En este trabajo se analiza e...

From several social sciences disciplines, for more than ten years, we are claiming about the necessity of a material semiology. Reality is eminently symbolic, but that feature is not only exclusive of textual and discursive realms. It has to do with objects and things, as well. How can we interpret objects and things? How can we manage those? What...

Hace más de una década que diversas disciplinas de las ciencias sociales vindican la necesidad de una semiología de lo material. Sin duda, la realidad social es eminentemente simbólica, pero tal simbolismo no se ciñe exclusivamente a lo textual, discursivo o lingüístico. Existen prácticas más allá de esta dimensión que producen sentido y significad...

Como una aportación más a la inteligibilidad de la violencia, vamos a presentar aquí algunas aportaciones que ha realizado la Psicología Social al entendimiento de los comportamientos agresivos y de la violencia social. Lo hacemos desde nuestra ubicación disciplinar y académica porque es la que conocemos mejor, pero también porque nos va permitir i...

Como una aportación más a la inteligibilidad de la violencia, vamos a presentar aquí algunas aportaciones que ha realizado la Psicología Social al entendimiento de los comportamientos agresivos y de la violencia social. Lo hacemos desde nuestra ubicación disciplinar y académica porque es la que conocemos mejor, pero también porque nos va permitir i...

Este texto sostiene que lo virtual no es algo nuevo, algo que observamos como resultado de la proliferación de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación. Por el contrario, “virtual” es una noción con una larga historia. La palabra proviene del latín "virtualis”, vocablo derivado de "virtus": fuerza, potencia. En la filosofía escolástica,...

The hypothesis of this paper is that the virtual, at least in the way we define it, is not something new, something that we observe as a result of the proliferation of new ICT's. Rather, the concept of the virtual has a long history. The word virtual comes from latin "virtualis", derived from "virtus": force, potency. In scholastic philosophy the v...