The impacts of the cell phone on different populations and in different contexts highlight the different meaning-making of the role of the cell phone in the social contexts of these populations. Genevieve Bell (2006), Myrna van Pinxteren (2012) and Romie Vonkie Nghiulikwa (2008) document how their study populations navigate their cell phones, socially, in their lives.
Genevieve Bell (2006) conducted research in Asia to critically interrogate the ways in which cultural practices are shaping people's relationships to new information and communication technologies (ICTs) in urban Asia. Bell (2006: 43) explains that she is particularly interested in the ways in which cell phones are being deployed, consumed, regulated, rejected, and naturalized in urban Asia. She found that though in some countries like China cell phones were exceedingly in demand, it appeared that in the other countries like Indonesia cell phones were not considered a necessity. She argues that for as much as cell phones are pieces of technology, they are also constellations of social and cultural practice (2006: 54). Bell’s study illustrates that the cell phone ids perceived in different in Asia, indicating that the value the cell phone is granted on the basis of whether it serve a crucial purpose in their lives. The study by van Pinxteren (2012) is a South African study on the social use of the cell phone among deaf people in Cape Town.
Myrna van Pinxteren’s study was conducted for her Masters degree in Social Anthropology.
The study was conducted specifically to explore the social uses deaf people make of cell phones. She conducted fieldwork in different townships of Cape Town. Her study shows that cell phones assimilate deaf people into the wider society and how its function as a “hearing baby” can be implemented in their lives to facilitate their need. Van Pinxteren explains that deaf people use texting as a communication strategy. She also documents deaf people as a
55 marginalised and victimised population who use their agency and status to move between different social, political, linguistic, sensory and religious communities. Van Pinxteren (2012:
42) says that the deaf embrace the cell phone creatively and thereby negotiate their feelings of belonging and identity in the dominant hearing world, but without completely breaking hierarchical boundaries. This study show how those cell phones are neither socially, nor culturally bounded.
In Romie Vonkie Nghiulikwa’s Masters thesis, “Re-situating and shifting cultural identity in contemporary Namibia: The experience of rural-urban migrants in Katutura (Windhoek)”
(2008), has a chapter dedicated to Namibian Youth Culture where she explores the use of cell phone among the youth in Namibia. She found that everyone (or almost everyone) in Babilon owned a cell phone, which many regarded as their most prized possession. Nghiulikwa (2008: 87) say that cell phones play a major role in the lives of my friends in Babilon. They all spend much of the little earnings they make on airtime and you regularly see in the settlement young people busy with their cell phones (ibid). They send SMSes and make calls to stay in touch with their peers in the city and with their family and friends back home (ibid).
This section of the thesis is a clear illustration of implementation and navigation of the cell in the social lives of young people.
My reason for looking at these specific studies at this point where I am engaging in an analysis of the social uses of cell phones by my informants is because each of them contributes to an aspect of my research population. My research study is on the use of cell phones as a mediator in the love relationships, but these studies tap into the aspect of the cell phone as a social object, which is the focus of this chapter. All these studies contribute to the growing literature on the social use of cell phones, interestingly showing how the different implementation of the cell phone brings different results.
4.7 Conclusion
This chapter explored the various ways in which the cell phone as social object influences social identity of the marginal migrants residing in Cape Town. In also explored how the status of the cell phone shapes the perceptions of its user, by looking at the meanings that are formed through what the cell phone is capable of doing for its users. With regard to the
56 analysis of this on the perceptions of migrants on cell phone, Bell (2006: 51) argues that cell phones are carried close to our bodies, are embedded into our daily lives, become an extension of ourselves and our personalities, our social relationships and larger cultural contexts. In addition to the politics of social identity and relationship maintenance, follows the conflicting functions of the cell phone, where the issue of privacy is questioned.
The chapter highlights that in as much as cell phones help in maintaining relationships; it also needs maintenance of its own. It is through the maintenance of the cell phone that the cell phone can construct these social and cultural circumstances and be able to allow people accessibility to the different spheres of their communication networks, making it possible for migrants in long-distance relationships to communicate. The following chapter explores the intimate characteristic of the cell phone and how it is deployed to facilitate long-distance relationships.
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CHAPTER FIVE: Three is not always a crowd: The intimate character of the cell phone in migrant love relationships
... relationships are consolidated, which might not have been, were it not for mobile phones.
Archambault (2009: 6)
5.1 Introduction
So far, I have focused on the social function of the cell phone and how a cell phone is implemented in a social context by its users. I have also highlighted the different characteristics of the cell phone that contributes to the migrants’ perceptions of the role of the cell phone in migrants’ love relationships by looking at its aesthetics- its function and value- as a social object and its significant role in the love relationships of migrants.
In this chapter I will discuss the obstacles experienced by migrants in love relationships that are at constant battle with distance, how cell phones mitigate that distance and to what extent they do so. The chapter will investigate the intimate characteristic of the cell phone by questioning the usage of cell phones in communicating with each other and the difference that a cell phone makes in combating the strain that distance puts on love relationships.
Observations from the field reveal that migrants in long-distance relationships creatively use the cell phone to maintain and consolidate their relationships and to build broader social networks in the spaces that they inhabit.
Distance is the impediment that restricts communication among migrants and their intimate partners as they do not communicate as frequently as geographically close partners do; hence the use of cell phones. In this study I will show that cell phones take on the role of combating this impediment, allowing for communication to not only take place among distant partners, but also to do so regularly and affordably. The accessibility of cell phones also allow for people to explore other features of the cell phone that may be a convenient approach for communication, be it texting, calling or chatting. The role of the cell phone in love relationships may be observed as helping in maintaining these relationships, particular long-distance love relationships, but what remains an ambiguity is to what extent the cell phone helps maintain these relationships. What approaches are employed by intimate partners to help in supporting the continued existence of their love relationships?
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