ABSTRACT
This chapter covers perspectives offered by the political economy approach, sociomaterialism, Foucauldian theory, the phenomenology of embodiment, and surveillance and privacy theories, explaining what each has to offer in understanding the social, cultural and political dimensions of digital health technologies. The political economy perspective is one of the most influential and longstanding in critical approaches to health and medicine. It has its roots in Marxian analyses of the relationship between social class, the means of production and the capitalist economic system. Medical discourses and practices are positioned as obfuscating the social and political causes of ill health, including socioeconomic disadvantage, by focusing instead on individual patients' lifestyle. Exponents of the political economy perspective have identified a power asymmetry in the doctor–patient relationship. Foucauldian perspectives adopt a different approach to power relations from that put forward by the political economy approach. The sociomaterial theoretical perspective focuses on the entanglements of humans and other non-human actors.
