Week 6: mobile phones in the global South (Stefan Klercke ...

Steenson & Donner
This text is an attempt to add to add to the literature body concerning the sharing of mobile handsets. Using ethnographic methods such as interviews and observations, the authors look into how people in Bangladesh are sharing their mobile phones, and how this changes notions of space and location. In the end they identify several different physical contexts (domestic, public, commercial and long distance) in which four primary modes of sharing occurs:

1. Conspicuous (the informal, willing sharing between family-members and friends)
2. Stealthy (non-consensual borrowing, as when a teenage-daugther uses her fathers phone to call her ?secret? boyfriend).
3. Person-seeking (people calling other people with the expectation that a third person, who does not have her own mobile phone, is near by).
4. Place-seeking (Mobile phones that are fixed to a certain place, much like a landline, which several people uses).

de Souza e Silva et al.

This study deals with the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and how their residents appropriate. Through interviews with the residents, they identify three main and interconnected dimensions to how cell phones are appropriated:

1. The residents have difficulties with obtaining legitimate access to cell phones
2. It is, comparatively, much easier to gain access to a cell phone illegally (obtaining one on the parallel market)
3. The materiality of the cell phone embodies social relations

The authors find that favela-residents seldom have the funds to buy a cell phone, and even if they do, other obstacles like paying for your subscription, figuring out the software of the handset etc. exist. As a consequence of the problems with paying for the phone, most everyone buys a stolen or found cell phone from inside the favela. Especially for drug dealers, it is also common to get a so-called?diret?o, a phone with three months of free calling-time obtained from an employee at a service provider. Finally, they find the same patterns of sharing the phone as Steenson & Donner, which they call an embodiment of social relations.

Heeks, Whalley & Jagun

In this article, the authors set out to research the impact of mobile phones on micro-enteprises in the developing world, using so-called Aso Oke-weavers in Nigeria as a case study. They start out with the belief that informational challenges are an inherent part of business, and especially among micro-entrepreneurs. Perhaps then, mobile phones have the potential alleviate some of these challenges and make it both more effective and cheaper to do business in the developing world. Their study shows that it does have significant implications for the need to travel, which can often be substituted by calling instead. However, it can?t altogether cancel the need for travel, mostly because of issues with trust, physical inspection etc. Also, the authors find no evidence that mobile phones are a technology that is levelling the field - rather it is mostly reproducing patterns of power that were already present before the introduction of mobile phones. There is even a danger that it creates a sort of ?competitive divide? because some cannot afford a mobile phone and thus has an even greater disadvantage than before, if their more affluent competitors are easier to do business with, because they are now connectable by phone.

Versteeg

This paper presents a lengthy argument as to why research needs to focus on actual use of mobile phones when dealing with Africa, rather than adopting the western standard of penetration rate understood as the percentage of subscribers. As has been argued in the former papers, the tradition of sharing mobile phones make penetration rates a unsatisfactory measure for the actual impact of mobile phones in the continent. In order to thoroughly address the question of the digital divide, the authors argue, research endeavors has to account for?use, even if data is difficult to obtain and differs widely from country to country.

Collings

This is quite an interesting read on a whole new market that have sprung up in Africa, based on the service of charging mobile phones in areas not connected to the electrical grid. The report is done as part of the?Developing Energy Enterprises Project (DEEP), trying to support micro-businesses engaged in serving energy needs in poor african communities. The author finds that phone charging-businesses is a prosperous business with most entrepreneurs struggling to keep up with demand, and most of them trying to find ways to expand their business. The report also finds that the services greatly helps the customers, who both save money and are empowered to expand on their own business-ventures.

Remarks

I find the papers to be really interesting, dealing with areas where the diffusion of mobile phones currently has the most profound impact. They give a nice overview of the different modes of use, and sheds light on some crucial aspects that is perhaps not always considered like sharing and the problems of charging. I think, however, that is is quite evident that the field is so relatively new and so little data can be found, that most of the findings are quite inconclusive and feel more like a starting point for further studies.

Source: https://blog.itu.dk/DMKO-F2012/2012/03/06/week-6-mobile-phones-in-the-global-south-stefan-klercke-mathiesen/

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