This paper examines the everyday use of applications designed for Christian spiritual practices, ranging from Bible reading to prayer to meditation to forms of personal and collective worship. These applications are designed to prompt and reinforce particular behaviours on the part of users to support them in their devotional efforts. As a technology that sits between the external workings of (divine) power and reaffirmations of power through personal examination, these spiritual applications seem to exemplify Foucauldian concerns about surveillance and the production of subjectivity. However, a considered examination of these technologies and an empirical investigation of their use suggests a more complicated story. Though these may be considered “technologies of the self,” their use seems to vary amongst adherents, surprisingly less used by those who may be seen as more spiritually committed. Rather than serving to “quantify” or even “gamify” spirituality fully, the use of these apps suggests a form of self-paternalism in which certain users willingly respond to features designed to encourage particular spiritual practices—a mode of governance that subtly promotes particular (personally) desired behaviours. Drawing in part on an international survey that examined users’ motivations and experiences with these applications, the contexts and results of spiritual applications raise several issues for surveillance studies more generally, including considerations needed for contextual norms, responses to and accommodation of social expectations, and a reorientation towards agency in relation to the production of subjectivity.

中文翻译：

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通过基督教信仰的运用促进精神修养：自我家长制和对灵魂的监视

本文研究了为基督教精神实践而设计的应用程序的日常使用，从阅读圣经到祈祷到冥想再到个人和集体崇拜的形式。这些应用程序旨在提示和加强用户的特定行为，以支持他们的奉献精神。作为一种技术，它介于（神的）权力的外部运作与通过个人检查的权力重申之间，这些精神上的应用似乎体现了福柯主义对监督和主观性产生的担忧。但是，对这些技术进行仔细的检查并对其使用进行实证研究表明，情况更为复杂。尽管这些可能被视为“自我技术”，但对于信奉者而言，它们的用法似乎有所不同，令人惊讶的是，那些可能被视为在精神上更坚定的人较少使用。这些应用程序的使用并非完全“量化”或“游戏化”灵性，而是暗示一种自我家长式的形式，其中某些用户愿意对旨在鼓励特定精神实践的功能做出回应-一种巧妙促进特定精神的治理模式（个人）期望的行为。部分根据对用户使用这些应用程序的动机和经验的国际调查得出的结果，精神应用程序的上下文和结果更普遍地提出了一些监视研究的问题，包括上下文规范所需的考虑，对社会期望的回应和适应，以及与主体性相关的对代理的重新定位。