At once a digital ethnography of smartphones and a classically conceived village-based ethnography, this book relocates the study of digital technologies to rural Melanesia, with a focus on the Lau of Malaita, Soloman Islands. In this 'technography', Geoffrey Hobbis studies the materiality and functional attributes of smartphones and their object biographies-modes of acquisition, maintenance, uses, limitations and the problems specific to this region in adopting and adapting smartphones in everyday life. As he examines the various uses of smartphones, as both telephone and multimedia device,…mehr
At once a digital ethnography of smartphones and a classically conceived village-based ethnography, this book relocates the study of digital technologies to rural Melanesia, with a focus on the Lau of Malaita, Soloman Islands. In this 'technography', Geoffrey Hobbis studies the materiality and functional attributes of smartphones and their object biographies-modes of acquisition, maintenance, uses, limitations and the problems specific to this region in adopting and adapting smartphones in everyday life. As he examines the various uses of smartphones, as both telephone and multimedia device, Hobbis also explores the social and cultural transformations, the hopes and uncertainties, with which they are associated. Ultimately, in bringing together a study of digital technologies with classical anthropological theory, The Digitizing Family develops a theory of smartphones as kinship technologies and supercompositional objects.
Geoffrey Hobbis is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur l'Océanie, France, and lectured at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Inhaltsangabe
Chapter 1: Introduction: Digitizing the Melanesian Family
1.1 Leapfrogging Technology
1.1 An Anthropology of Digital Technologies
1.3 The Diffusion of Contagious Ideas
1.4 An Ethnography of Digital Technology
1.5 Structure of the Book
Chapter 2: Methodological Notes
2.1 Becoming Familiar in Gwou'ulu
2.2 The Ethnographer and the Mobile Phone Research Protocol
2.3 A Different Sort of Kinship Chart
Part I: The Many Lives and Deaths of the Melanesian Smartphone
Chapter 3: A Sketch of Many Births, Lives and Deaths of Smartphones
3.1 Getting a Smartphone
3.2 Losing a Smartphone
3.3 Using a Smartphone
3.4 Gendered Divisions
3.5 Generational Divide
3.6 Educational Differences
Chapter 4: A Digital Swiss Army Knife
4.1 The Main Functions of a Popular Smartphone
4.2 The 1TOK and Jenny TV as "smarter mobile phones"
4.3 A Communication Technolgoy
4.3a Telephones
4.3b Texting
4.3c Internet
4.4 Multimedia and Entertainment
4.4a Music Player
4.4b Camera, visual display and movie player
4.4c Television
4.5 Back to the Basics
4.5a Flashlights
4.5b Watches and Calendars
4.5c Calculator
4.6 Beyond Universals
Part 2
Chapter 5: Digitizing Social Networks
5.1 A Brief Sketch of the Central Technological Properties of Mobile Telephone
5.2 Villagers' Smartphones and Phone Books
5.2a Emily
5.2b Victoria
5.2c Philip
5.2d Florian
5.3 Telephony, Kin Networks and the Urban-Rural Divide
5.4 Digitizing Kin Connections
5.4a Access to Biomedical Care
5.4b Gender-based Violence and Women's Support Networks
5.4c Funeral Arrangements
5.4d Conflict Management
5.4e Remittance Requests
5.5 Transforming Distant Relations Through Telephony?
Chapter 6: Telephonic Immorality and Uncertainty
6.1 Sexually Promiscuous Telephony
6.2 Smartphone Magic
6.2a Agalo and Malevolent Sorcery
6.2b Contagious Magic
6.2c Telephonic Contagion
6.2d Love Magic
6.3 Cautionary Tales
6.4 Telephonic Anxieties in Accelerated Socialities
Part 3: MicroSD Culture and Digital Parenting
Chapter 7: The Muvi Haos
7.1 The Muvi Haos
7.2 The Demise of the Muvi Haos and the Rise of Private Viewing
7.3 From Public to Private Viewing
Chapter 8: The Babysitting Smartphone
8.1 Pikinini Tumas
8.2 Raising Children: An Issue of Relevant Social Groups
8.3 A Different Kind of Sunday School?
8.4 Educational Conundrums
8.5 Fathers as Babysitters
8.5a Ramo and Rambo
8.5b Kissing Movies
8.5c Sources of friction
8.6 Mothers as Babysitters
8.6a Nemo not Rambo
8.6b Dancing not Kissing
8.7 Guiding Visions and Competing Futures
Part 4: Towards a Theory of Smartphones as Kinship Tools
Chapter 9: The Sociotechnical System of Melanesian Smartphones
9.1 The Materials upon which Technologies Act
9.2 The Forces that Move Objects and Transform Matter
9.3 The Objects that Operate on the Materials Themselves
9.4 The Gestures People Use to Make the Objects Work
9.5 Knowledge that Puts Objects to Work
Chapter 10: Conclusion: The Supercompositional Object
10.1 Family Life in Digital Perils
10.2 Beyond Universalities: Smartphones as Rural Kinship Technologies
