Medication as Infrastructure: Decentring Self-care

Drawing on science and technology studies (STS), and specifically the concept of infrastructure as conceptualised by Bowker and Star (2000; Star 1999), this paper argues and empirically demonstrates that self-care may be considered a practice that is thoroughly sociotechnical, material, distributed and de-centred. Comparing the practices related to medication in the treatment of asthma, type 2 diabetes and haemophilia, we show that in practice there is no ‘self’ in self-care. More specifically, the ‘self’ in self-care is an actor who is highly dependent on, and intertwined with infrastructures of care, in order to be self-caring. Infrastructures of care are the more or less embedded ‘tracks’ along which care may ‘run’, shaping and being shaped by actors and settings along the way. Obtaining prescriptions, going to the pharmacy, bringing medication home and administering it as parts of daily life are commonplace activities embedded in the fabric of life, especially for those living with a chronic condition. However, this procurement and emplacement of medication involves the establishment and ongoing enactment of infrastructures of care, that is, the connections between various actors and locations that establish caring spaces and caring selves. Locations and actors are included as allies in treating chronic conditions outside the clinical setting, but these infrastructures may also be ambiguous, with respect to their effects; they may simultaneously contribute to the condition’s management and neglect. Particularly precarious is management at the fringes of healthcare infrastructure, where allies, routines and general predictability are scarce. We conclude by arguing that these insights may induce a greater sensitivity to existing infrastructures and practices, when seeking to introduce new infrastructures of care, such as those promoted under the headings of ‘telemedicine’ and ‘healthcare IT’.