Social Norms of Touch

Abstract

This chapter discusses social norms with attention to their significance for researching and designing digital touch communication in a global world, notably gendered and cultural touch norms. It explores how social and cultural norms shape the ways that people (and machines) touch. Touch norms are shaped, regulated and enforced through social, economic, familial and legal mechanisms, they organise our experiences and expectations. Understanding of the touch norms that people, including digital touch researchers and designers, bring to their interactions with others provides a route into understanding the sociality that shapes digital touch. We discuss the significance of these given the expectations of the user, their touch repertoires, and the social cultural role that norms play in the take up and use of mediated digital touch communication devices and systems and environments. The chapter concludes that reflexive engagement with touch norms can provide insights and inspiration for thinking about, researching and designing digital touch communication, and help to address how cultural and gendered norms of touch might be engaged with, to constrain and reproduce or open-up the meaning potentials of digital touch.

Expressive entities: An Exploration and Critical Reflection on Poetic Engagementsj with Technology

“…In the field of social robotics, intimacy and touch is a widely studied subject (Jewitt et al 2020)] and this installation acts as a social robot that touches participants. We build upon uncomfortable interactions (Benford et al 2012) that stimulate powerful emotions, and the strange and unease feelings instigates the meaning of digital objects in every day, and the longstanding tradition within the interactive arts of deliberate discomfort to stimulate and provoke the participant.…”

“…While it serves as a tactile code of communication that enables people to engage with each other and the world, it may be taken to be a tacit prohibition. 'Touch' is considered as a cultural practice, and it is considered to be deviant as a social norm (Jewitt et al, 2020). Although the act of 'footsie' in our real life can be interpreted as a flirtatious and enjoyable gesture, showing intimacy and affection, the caressing, tapping, or rubbing from furniture might be considered uncomfortable and unfriendly.…”