Overview

In A Village Goes Mobile, Sirpa Tenhunen examines how the mobile telephone has contributed to social change in rural India. Tenhunen's long-term ethnographic fieldwork in West Bengal began before the village had a phone system in place and continued through the introduction and proliferation of the smartphone. She here analyzes how mobile telephones emerged as multidimensional objects which, in addition to enabling telephone conversations, facilitated status aspirations, internet access, and entertainment practices. She explores how this multifaceted use of mobile phones has affected agency and power dynamics in economic, political, and social relationships, and how these new social constellations relate to culture and development. In eight chapters, Tenhunen asks such questions as: Who benefits from mobile telephony and how? Can people use mobile phones to change their lives, or does phone use merely amplify existing social patterns and power relationships? Can mobile telephony induce development? Going beyond the case of West Bengal, Tenhunen develops a framework to understand how new media mediates social processes within interrelated social spheres and local hierarchies by relating, media-saturated forms of interaction to pre-existing contexts.

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9780190630287

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Reviews

Tenhunen's book speaks to the far-reaching and unpredictable consequences of the mobile technology revolution. It would be of interest to a wide range of readers. It is based upon fieldwork over multiple years, and is well-grounded in the literature. It is also a pleasure to read. * Dr Amanda H A Watson, Lecturer at the Development Policy Centre, University of Papua New Guinea, Devpolicy Blog *

Tenhunen's book speaks to the far-reaching and unpredictable consequences of the mobile technology revolution. It would be of interest to a wide range of readers. It is based upon fieldwork over multiple years, and is well-grounded in the literature. It is also a pleasure to read. -- Dr Amanda H A Watson, Lecturer at the Development Policy Centre, University of Papua New Guinea, Devpolicy Blog A Village Goes Mobile is a spectacular triumph, both in its methodology and in how it compels us to rethink the place of the mobile phone in an inter-connected world. Sirpa Tenhunen is remarkably successful in her fine-grained analysis of the micro-processes of everyday communication and social relationships as well as global flows of information and images. In recent years, we have seen a spurt of scholarship on 'new' media, but this is the first book I have come across that so rigorously and sensitively represents their role in the reconfiguration of social relationships and identities in a context where discourses of caste, class, gender, and generation are being renegotiated and assumptions about sociality and belonging are being overturned. - Purnima Mankekar, Professor, Gender Studies, Asian American Studies and Film, Television, and Digital Media, UCLA Sirpa Tenhunen shares with us a patient, holistic view of the many uses, meanings, and impacts of mobile communications observed within a single village in India, starting with observations made before the first call was placed. Mobile telephony spread so rapidly around the world that the window for projects like hers has now all but closed. But fortunately for us, by being at the right place, at the right times, she situates mobile communication practices in ways that link the local and the global, personal and mass, the expressive and the functional. The work is an important new contribution to our understanding of the roles mobile communication may play in socioeconomic development, while offering clear warnings against overly-simple, overly-optimistic narratives about its transformative power. - Jonathan Donner, Senior Director of Research at Caribou Digital

A Village Goes Mobile is a spectacular triumph, both in its methodology and in how it compels us to rethink the place of the mobile phone in an inter-connected world. Sirpa Tenhunen is remarkably successful in her fine-grained analysis of the micro-processes of everyday communication and social relationships as well as global flows of information and images. In recent years, we have seen a spurt of scholarship on 'new' media, but this is the first book I have come across that so rigorously and sensitively represents their role in the reconfiguration of social relationships and identities in a context where discourses of caste, class, gender, and generation are being renegotiated and assumptions about sociality and belonging are being overturned. - Purnima Mankekar, Professor, Gender Studies, Asian American Studies and Film, Television, and Digital Media, UCLA Sirpa Tenhunen shares with us a patient, holistic view of the many uses, meanings, and impacts of mobile communications observed within a single village in India, starting with observations made before the first call was placed. Mobile telephony spread so rapidly around the world that the window for projects like hers has now all but closed. But fortunately for us, by being at the right place, at the right times, she situates mobile communication practices in ways that link the local and the global, personal and mass, the expressive and the functional. The work is an important new contribution to our understanding of the roles mobile communication may play in socioeconomic development, while offering clear warnings against overly-simple, overly-optimistic narratives about its transformative power. - Jonathan Donner, Senior Director of Research at Caribou Digital

Author Information

Sirpa Tenhunen is an anthropologist who has carried out fieldwork in rural and urban India. In addition to the appropriation of mobile technology, her research interests cover gender and politics in India. She is currently Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki.

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