(Im)mobile phones

This qualitative study examines the role of the mobile phone in negotiating the day-to-day experience of social immobility for young users in a low-income area in a small town in South Africa. What does the mobile phone become when one is not part of a mobile globalised elite, but poor, unemployed...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Alette Schoon, Larry Strelitz
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of Johannesburg 2022-10-01
Series:Communicare
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.uj.ac.za/index.php/jcsa/article/view/1636
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1832593776321757184
author Alette Schoon
Larry Strelitz
author_facet Alette Schoon
Larry Strelitz
author_sort Alette Schoon
collection DOAJ
description This qualitative study examines the role of the mobile phone in negotiating the day-to-day experience of social immobility for young users in a low-income area in a small town in South Africa. What does the mobile phone become when one is not part of a mobile globalised elite, but poor, unemployed and living on the margins of society in the global south? While research on mobile phones in developed countries suggest these devices facilitate the creation of a society free from the confines of local geography and community, where the user can craft an individualised networked sociability, this may not be the reality in the global south. In our study, mobile phones were seen to amplify a communal sociability where privacy is largely absent from the densely contiguous neighbourhood where life happens on the streets for all to see. This study demonstrates how, in a particular context, mobile phones and the mobile Internet do not necessarily facilitate a mobile world where individual networks allow an escape from local norms and structures, but may instead facilitate communal networks that bind users to the local and the co-present and so facilitate “stuckness”, a term we use to reflect social immobility and the inability to escape the disciplinary surveillance of the co-present.
format Article
id doaj-art-6b71cc4dfa5347ca952d567101976147
institution Kabale University
issn 0259-0069
2957-7950
language English
publishDate 2022-10-01
publisher University of Johannesburg
record_format Article
series Communicare
spelling doaj-art-6b71cc4dfa5347ca952d5671019761472025-01-20T08:55:01ZengUniversity of JohannesburgCommunicare0259-00692957-79502022-10-0133210.36615/jcsa.v33i2.1636(Im)mobile phonesAlette Schoon0https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2369-3607Larry Strelitz1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9950-8562Rhodes UniversityRhodes University This qualitative study examines the role of the mobile phone in negotiating the day-to-day experience of social immobility for young users in a low-income area in a small town in South Africa. What does the mobile phone become when one is not part of a mobile globalised elite, but poor, unemployed and living on the margins of society in the global south? While research on mobile phones in developed countries suggest these devices facilitate the creation of a society free from the confines of local geography and community, where the user can craft an individualised networked sociability, this may not be the reality in the global south. In our study, mobile phones were seen to amplify a communal sociability where privacy is largely absent from the densely contiguous neighbourhood where life happens on the streets for all to see. This study demonstrates how, in a particular context, mobile phones and the mobile Internet do not necessarily facilitate a mobile world where individual networks allow an escape from local norms and structures, but may instead facilitate communal networks that bind users to the local and the co-present and so facilitate “stuckness”, a term we use to reflect social immobility and the inability to escape the disciplinary surveillance of the co-present. https://journals.uj.ac.za/index.php/jcsa/article/view/1636mobile phonesSouth Africasocial immobilitysmall townamplify a communal sociabilitymobile Internet
spellingShingle Alette Schoon
Larry Strelitz
(Im)mobile phones
Communicare
mobile phones
South Africa
social immobility
small town
amplify a communal sociability
mobile Internet
title (Im)mobile phones
title_full (Im)mobile phones
title_fullStr (Im)mobile phones
title_full_unstemmed (Im)mobile phones
title_short (Im)mobile phones
title_sort im mobile phones
topic mobile phones
South Africa
social immobility
small town
amplify a communal sociability
mobile Internet
url https://journals.uj.ac.za/index.php/jcsa/article/view/1636
work_keys_str_mv AT aletteschoon immobilephones
AT larrystrelitz immobilephones