This paper introduces Intimate Entanglements by proposing three interrelated shifts that result from juxtaposing experiences with different world-making practices at the intersection of care, technoscience and theoretical engagements with affect theory and science and technology studies (STS). The first shift positions intimacy as not only relevant in STS but also as a more general epistemic concern of social scientific enquiry. The second shift is an exploration of the heterogeneous materiality of the intimate and, in particular, of its morethan-human constituencies. The third shift both reclaims and speculates about other politics of relations, including practical challenges (not only conceptual) to the way we do research. The paper shows that the beings entangled, the materialities involved, the affects conveyed and the extension of the intimate all come to matter when science and technology is critically analysed, and that they challenge the traditional limits and geographies of the intimate. It also argues that this has important political implications for science and technology, because it counters the invisibilisation of affect and all the "intimate work" usually associated with the emotional, domestic, and even infrastructural, and contests the ready-made framing of the intimate as naturally bound to the interpersonal, corporal and private, which the authors argue is a way to make visible the politics of relations that scientific and technological settings silently enact.

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possibility of disembodied care arises in which the users feel that their control over their needs could increase, while at the same time any vestige of disciplining their lifestyle disappears. Nevertheless, this is not an ideal scenario for users and caregivers, nor is telecare, in practice, a disembodied care. On the one hand, users and caregivers insist that even though telecare is transforming the way care is delivered, this would not be possible by removing hands-on caretelecare is not a substitute (Percival and Hanson, 2006;Mort et al., 2008). And on the other hand, as Armstrong (1995) and Brown and Webster (2004) have suggested, although the increasing relevance of information in e-health and telecare might imply the possibility of a deinstitutionalization of care delivery and an informatization of the body (see Nettleton, 2004), this does not necessarily result in a disembodied care. 4 Indeed, as we are going to show, specific forms of being an autonomous user are embodied in the functioning of these informational technologies.Our aim is, specifically, to discuss how autonomy is embodied through the use of a telecare device. What kind of bodies are autonomous bodies? How are they constructed? By means of what practices and materials have they been built up? And by trying to answer these questions, we would also like to critically discuss the idea of autonomy that is implicit to telecare advertisements and policies that foster telecare as a new care solution: autonomy is achieved when disciplining interventions over the body and its habits are not necessary to live safely. In fact, as we suggest in what follows, the use and appropriation of a telecare system implies not only embodiment processes and struggles within it, but also the enactment of different bodies and the emergence of competing definitions and practices of being autonomous when using telecare.We draw on phenomenology, especially on The Phenomenology of Perception by Merleau-Ponty (1962), where body is defined not as an external object or a mental construct, but as a mediator that situates us as a being-in-the-world. Additionally, we draw on other phenomenological contributions concerning how pain (Leder, 1990) and disability (Seymour, 1998) are embodied. Contributions from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) are also taken into account as they enable us to think about the body as a heterogeneous compound where technological and human elements are equally important and as an entity that extends further the individual self. As Moser has said, 'the most recent generation of ANT has moved from "outer nature" to "inner nature", to subjectivity and embodiment, and has demonstrated that inner nature is no less inner than outer nature is outer' (Moser, 2006: 376). Thus our aim is to explore from a relational or material semiotic perspective how autonomy is embodied by telecare users.To illustrate our point we use empirical material extracted from our fieldwork in a 12-month ethnographic research study in a Catalan Telecare Service. During the study period w...

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 people suffer amid rising demands for care. However, engaging with Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature on “user configuration” and implementation processes, we argue here that neither services nor users preexist the installation of the service: they are better described as produced along with it. Moving beyond design and appropriation practices, our contribution stresses the importance of installations as specific moments where such emplacements take place. Using Etienne Souriau’s concept of instauration, we describe the ways in which, through installation work, telecare services “bring into existence” their very infrastructure of usership. Hence, both services and telecare users are effects of fulfilling the “felicity conditions” (technical, relational, and contractual) of an achieved installation.