This talk discusses methodological insights from a participatory research project on cooperative care practices conducted in Switzerland and Germany, with an ongoing research phase in Japan. The project engages care and technology through co-design processes with co-researchers, jointly developing situated sociotechnical imaginaries of future care practices and potential technological systems and applications. It is oriented towards ageing in place and ageing in community as guiding values for desirable futures, while fostering and elaborating more cooperative and integrated forms of care that bridge care, cure, and prevention.

Analytically, the talk approaches cooperative research and design processes with a focus on “impositions” (Zu-Mutungen), understood as structuring conditions of participatory research. These emerge in the recruitment and involvement of co-researchers, forms of invisible work, questions of remuneration and recognition, diverging expectations, and dynamics of power and conflict. Furthermore, the integration of heterogeneous epistemic and practical logics is discussed, highlighting the coordination and translation work required across different contexts and stakeholders. Moreover, cultural differences in the Japanese case are reflected upon with regard to their implications for ethnographic fieldwork. The talk concludes by addressing the sustainability of cooperative research and design arrangements as an open and structurally unresolved challenge.

Dennis Kirschsieper & Claudia Müller (University of Siegen / Project A05 @ SFB 1187 Media of Cooperation)