The Digitizing Family

TRAMA

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.

SOMMARIO

Chapter 1: Introduction: Digitizing the Melanesian Family1.1 Leapfrogging Technology1.1 An Anthropology of Digital Technologies1.3 The Diffusion of Contagious Ideas1.4 An Ethnography of Digital Technology1.5 Structure of the BookChapter 2: Methodological Notes2.1 Becoming Familiar in Gwou'ulu2.2 The Ethnographer and the Mobile Phone Research Protocol2.3 A Different Sort of Kinship ChartPart I: The Many Lives and Deaths of the Melanesian SmartphoneChapter 3: A Sketch of Many Births, Lives and Deaths of Smartphones3.1 Getting a Smartphone3.2 Losing a Smartphone3.3 Using a Smartphone3.4 Gendered Divisions3.5 Generational Divide3.6 Educational DifferencesChapter 4: A Digital Swiss Army Knife4.1 The Main Functions of a Popular Smartphone4.2 The 1TOK and Jenny TV as "smarter mobile phones"4.3 A Communication Technolgoy4.3a Telephones4.3b Texting4.3c Internet4.4 Multimedia and Entertainment4.4a Music Player4.4b Camera, visual display and movie player4.4c Television4.5 Back to the Basics4.5a Flashlights4.5b Watches and Calendars4.5c Calculator4.6 Beyond UniversalsPart 2Chapter 5: Digitizing Social Networks5.1 A Brief Sketch of the Central Technological Properties of Mobile Telephone5.2 Villagers' Smartphones and Phone Books5.2a Emily5.2b Victoria5.2c Philip5.2d Florian5.3 Telephony, Kin Networks and the Urban-Rural Divide5.4 Digitizing Kin Connections5.4a Access to Biomedical Care5.4b Gender-based Violence and Women's Support Networks5.4c Funeral Arrangements5.4d Conflict Management5.4e Remittance Requests5.5 Transforming Distant Relations Through Telephony?Chapter 6: Telephonic Immorality and Uncertainty6.1 Sexually Promiscuous Telephony6.2 Smartphone Magic6.2a Agalo and Malevolent Sorcery6.2b Contagious Magic6.2c Telephonic Contagion6.2d Love Magic6.3 Cautionary Tales6.4 Telephonic Anxieties in Accelerated SocialitiesPart 3: MicroSD Culture and Digital ParentingChapter 7: The Muvi Haos7.1 The Muvi Haos7.2 The Demise of the Muvi Haos and the Rise of Private Viewing7.3 From Public to Private ViewingChapter 8: The Babysitting Smartphone8.1 Pikinini Tumas8.2 Raising Children: An Issue of Relevant Social Groups8.3 A Different Kind of Sunday School?8.4 Educational Conundrums8.5 Fathers as Babysitters8.5a Ramo and Rambo8.5b Kissing Movies8.5c Sources of friction8.6 Mothers as Babysitters8.6a Nemo not Rambo8.6b Dancing not Kissing8.7 Guiding Visions and Competing FuturesPart 4: Towards a Theory of Smartphones as Kinship ToolsChapter 9: The Sociotechnical System of Melanesian Smartphones9.1 The Materials upon which Technologies Act9.2 The Forces that Move Objects and Transform Matter9.3 The Objects that Operate on the Materials Themselves9.4 The Gestures People Use to Make the Objects Work9.5 Knowledge that Puts Objects to WorkChapter 10: Conclusion: The Supercompositional Object\10.1 Family Life in Digital Perils10.2 Beyond Universalities: Smartphones as Rural Kinship Technologies10.3 Moral Anxieties in Medias Res10.4 Smartphones as Supercompositional Objects

AUTORE

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.

ALTRE INFORMAZIONI

• Condizione: Nuovo
• ISBN: 9783030349318
• Dimensioni: 210 x 148 mm Ø 454 gr
• Formato: Brossura
• Illustration Notes: XI, 225 p. 22 illus., 21 illus. in color.
• Pagine Arabe: 225
• Pagine Romane: xi