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Linguistic and Material Intimacies of Cell Phones offers a detailed ethnographic and anthropological examination of the social, cultural, linguistic and material aspects of cell phones. With contributions from an international range of established and emerging scholars, this is a truly global collection with rural and urban examples from communities across the Global North and South. Linking the use of cell phones to contemporary discussions about representation, mediation and subjectivity, the book investigates how this increasingly ubiquitous technology challenges the boundaries of privacy and selfhood, raising new questions about how we communicate.
List of contents
Introduction: Linguistic and Material Intimacies of Cell Phone Communication Origins 1. The Slow Road to Tartarus: Technological Fetishism, Materiality, and the Trafficking in “Conflict Minerals” in the Eastern DR Congo 2. The role of mobile phones in the mediation of border crossings: A study of Haiti and the Dominican Republic 3. Bridges to Cash’: Channelling Agency in Mobile Money 4. Medialects in the Creation of Mayan Peer Cultures: Romantic Texting as a New Literacy Practice 5. Phone-made Poiesis: Towards an Ethnography of Call and Response 6. Technologically Mediated Sociality: Negotiating Culture, Communication, and Access 7. Safety, Sensemaking and Solidarity: Mobile Communication in the Immediate Aftermath of the July 22, 2011 Oslo Bombing 8. Piracy, Cloning, and Criminal Cats: The Discomforts of Cellularity in Brazil 9. Curating Visual Experiences through Mobile Phones 10. Intimate Materialities in Cell Phone Repair: Performance, Anxiety and Trust in DC Repair Shops 11. Cell Phone Antinomies: A Commentary
About the author
Joshua A. Bell is a cultural anthropologist and Curator of Globalization at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, USA.
Joel C. Kuipers is professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at the George Washington University, USA.
Summary
Linguistic and Material Intimacies of Cell Phones offers a detailed ethnographic and anthropological examination of the social, cultural, linguistic and material aspects of cell phones. Linking the use of cell phones to contemporary discussions about representation, mediation and subjectivity, the book investigates how this increasingly ub
