From Autonomy to Sovereignty - A New Telos for Socially Assistive Technology
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866910045899325440 |
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| author | Jang, JiWoong Carrington, Patrick Begel, Andrew |
| author_facet | Jang, JiWoong Carrington, Patrick Begel, Andrew |
| contents | Social accessibility research faces a persistent tension: assistive technologies (AT) predominantly pursue independence, yet disabled people's experiences reveal rich preferences for interdependence. Our analysis of 90 papers from 2011-2025 uncovered that this stems from a deeper issue - which crystallized through dialogue with three bodies of theories: (1) self-determination theory (SDT), (2) symbolic interactionism, and (3) posthumanist perspectives and crip technoscience. SDT illuminates individual needs; symbolic interactionism addresses construction of social meaning and stigma; Posthumanist and crip technoscience together challenges normalcy, governance, and the human-machine boundary. Through their tensions, we identify relational sovereignty as an alternative telos - or goal - to autonomy. While our corpus equates autonomy with independence, sovereignty centers the power to choose between independence and interdependence. To operationalize this shift - from "Can they do it?" to "Do they get to decide?" - we introduce the Relational Sovereignty Matrix and four design interventions: (1) a sovereignty-centered reframing of SDT, (2) generative questions for justice-oriented reflection, (3) the idea of building through sovereign technical primitives, and (4) explicit consideration of power in AT design. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_07737 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | From Autonomy to Sovereignty - A New Telos for Socially Assistive Technology Jang, JiWoong Carrington, Patrick Begel, Andrew Human-Computer Interaction Social accessibility research faces a persistent tension: assistive technologies (AT) predominantly pursue independence, yet disabled people's experiences reveal rich preferences for interdependence. Our analysis of 90 papers from 2011-2025 uncovered that this stems from a deeper issue - which crystallized through dialogue with three bodies of theories: (1) self-determination theory (SDT), (2) symbolic interactionism, and (3) posthumanist perspectives and crip technoscience. SDT illuminates individual needs; symbolic interactionism addresses construction of social meaning and stigma; Posthumanist and crip technoscience together challenges normalcy, governance, and the human-machine boundary. Through their tensions, we identify relational sovereignty as an alternative telos - or goal - to autonomy. While our corpus equates autonomy with independence, sovereignty centers the power to choose between independence and interdependence. To operationalize this shift - from "Can they do it?" to "Do they get to decide?" - we introduce the Relational Sovereignty Matrix and four design interventions: (1) a sovereignty-centered reframing of SDT, (2) generative questions for justice-oriented reflection, (3) the idea of building through sovereign technical primitives, and (4) explicit consideration of power in AT design. |
| title | From Autonomy to Sovereignty - A New Telos for Socially Assistive Technology |
| topic | Human-Computer Interaction |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.07737 |