Telecare research: (Cosmo) politicizing methodology

Growing attention is being paid to the increasing incidence of expert and lay citizen encounters in the processes of technological implementation. This poses the problem of the nature of participation, now a quite common topic in the field of science and technology studies. We offer firstly a brief review of the main issues regarding participation through deliberative participatory methods, pointing out their main strengths and weaknesses. Then, we propose Participatory Action Research as a way of improving and strengthening participation, especially in the field of telehealthcare. This is illustrated through an example extracted from our research with older people and telecare devices. Finally, participation is analysed as the critical issue in order to underpin the democratisation of research as a whole, offering the practice of cosmopolitics as a key to achieve such an end. (C) 2009 Association ALTER. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.