- Description
Description
Robots Won't Save Japan addresses the Japanese government's efforts to develop care robots in response to the challenges of an aging population, rising demand for eldercare, and a critical shortage of care workers. Drawing on ethnographic research at key sites of Japanese robot development and implementation, James Wright reveals how such devices are likely to transform the practices, organization, meanings, and ethics of caregiving if implemented at scale.
This new form of techno-welfare state that Japan is prototyping involves a reconfiguration of care that deskills and devalues care work and reduces opportunities for human social interaction and relationship building. Moreover, contrary to expectations that care robots will save labor and reduce health care expenditures, robots cost more money and require additional human labor to tend to the machines. As Wright shows, robots alone will not rescue Japan from its care crisis. The attempts to implement robot care instead point to the importance of looking beyond such techno-fixes to consider how to support rather than undermine the human times, spaces, and relationships necessary for sustainably cultivating good care.
Author: James Adrian Wright
Publisher: ILR Press
Published: 02/15/2023
Pages: 198
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.02lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.63d
ISBN13: 9781501768040
ISBN10: 1501768042
BISAC Categories:
- History | Asia | Japan
- Political Science | Public Policy | Social Services & Welfare
- Social Science | Technology Studies
About the Author
James Wright is a Research Associate at the Alan Turing Institute. Follow him on Twitter @jms_wright.
