Heather A. Horst

From kinship to link-up - Cell phones and social networking in Jamaica

On the basis of lists of numbers saved on individuals cell phones and other evidence, it is argued here that lowincome Jamaicans use the cell phone to establish extensive networks, a practice identified as linkup. Linkup has many of the same characteristics as those found by R. T. Smith in a classic study of Jamaican kinship and genealogy. However, the new evidence suggests that kinship merely exemplifies a pattern that may be found in a wider range of Jamaican networking strategies including the creation of spiritual and church communities, the search for sexual partners, and the coping strategies adopted by lowincome households. Linkup also accounts for the rapid adoption of cell phones and the patterns of their use by lowincome Jamaicans and highlights the importance of understanding the local incorporation of cell phones and local forms of networking enacted through new communication technologies.On the basis of lists of numbers saved on individuals cell phones and other evidence, it is argued here that lowincome Jamaicans use the cell phone to establish extensive networks, a practice identified as linkup. Linkup has many of the same characteristics as those found by R. T. Smith in a classic study of Jamaican kinship and genealogy. However, the new evidence suggests that kinship merely exemplifies a pattern that may be found in a wider range of Jamaican networking strategies including the creation of spiritual and church communities, the search for sexual partners, and the coping strategies adopted by lowincome households. Linkup also accounts for the rapid adoption of cell phones and the patterns of their use by lowincome Jamaicans and highlights the importance of understanding the local incorporation of cell phones and local forms of networking enacted through new communication technologies.

Mobile communication in the global south

Mobile communication has become a common phenomenon in most parts of the world. There are indeed more mobile subscriptions than there are people who use the internet. For many people outside of the metropolitan areas of Europe and North America, this is literally their first use of electronically mediated interaction. This preface to the special issue of New Media & Society examines mobile communication in a global context. Through an overview of eight articles situated in the global south, we describe how mobile communication sheds light upon notions of information, appropriation and development and how it is challenging, and in many cases changing, notions of gender. While the mobile phone reshapes development and micro dynamics of gendered interactions, it is not necessarily a revolutionary tool. Existing power structures may be rearranged, but they are nonetheless quite stable. The analysis of mobile communication in the global south helps us to understand the rise of innovative practices around information and communication technologies and, in turn, enables us to develop theory to understand these emergent empirical realities.

The infrastructures of mobile media: Towards a future reseach agenda

In this contribution to the inaugural issue of Mobile Media & Communication, I draw upon recent work on mobiles in the global south to illustrate how the ‘third wave’ of mobile communication research requires a renewed focus upon the political and economic dimensions of infrastructures and the subversion of the system by individuals, communities and organizations. Inspired by Susan Leigh Star’s seminal work on the importance of studying infrastructures, I suggest that mobile media scholarship should look to the changes in the technical, social, political, regulatory and other forms of infrastructures that the first two waves’ focus upon novel uses and consumers often rendered invisible.

Rethinking ethnography: an introduction

This special issue of Media International Australia seeks to ‘rethink’ ethnography and ethnographic practice. Through the six contributions, the authors consider the variety of ways in which changes in our media environment broaden what we think of as ‘media’, the contexts through which media are produced, used and circulated, and the emergent practices afforded by digital media.

Tactile digital ethnography: Researching mobile media through the hand

In this article we focus on the relationship between vision and the hand to develop an understanding of the experience of mobile media use which in turn informs a methodology for researching it; a tactile digital ethnography. Theories of knowing through the hand, and uses of the hand in documentary practice already highlight its significance. We bring these together with our video ethnographies of mobile media use, to show how a focus on the hand offers both new insights into other people’s digital worlds, and an approach to learning about these.

Visualising ethnography: ethnography’s role in art and visual cultures

Two decades on from Hal Foster’s seminal essay on the ‘artist as ethnographer’, a range of ethnographic approaches have emerged to understand and analyse the relationship between ethnography, art and the broader sphere of visual culture. With the proliferation of desktop and laptop computers, mobile phones, portable gaming systems, digital and video cameras, tablets with haptic interfaces and a range of other portable media, the nature of contemporary screen cultures has shifted. Facebook and other forms of social media have emerged as spaces for interactions, providing new ways in which to participate in the production and circulation of visual culture across a range of spaces, from online and offline, private and public spaces and within and across national borders. The pervasiveness of camera phones – combined with a growing number of smartphone apps like Instagram and Snapchat that geotag (Lapenta 2011) – we are witnessing a transformation in the ways in which locations are represented, moved through and co-presently experienced within visual cultures. The interfaces with the multiplicities of screens, platforms and contexts bring to the fore the haptic, sensory and visual nature of our worlds, requiring us to re-examine the increasing intersections between practices of art, visual culture, ethnography and knowledge production.

From Kinship to Link‐up

On the basis of lists of numbers saved on individuals cell phones and other evidence, it is argued here that lowincome Jamaicans use the cell phone to establish extensive networks, a practice identified as linkup. Linkup has many of the same characteristics as those found by R. T. Smith in a classic study of Jamaican kinship and genealogy. However, the new evidence suggests that kinship merely exemplifies a pattern that may be found in a wider range of Jamaican networking strategies including the creation of spiritual and church communities, the search for sexual partners, and the coping strategies adopted by lowincome households. Linkup also accounts for the rapid adoption of cell phones and the patterns of their use by lowincome Jamaicans and highlights the importance of understanding the local incorporation of cell phones and local forms of networking enacted through new communication technologies.On the basis of lists of numbers saved on individuals cell phones and other evidence, it is argued here that lowincome Jamaicans use the cell phone to establish extensive networks, a practice identified as linkup. Linkup has many of the same characteristics as those found by R. T. Smith in a classic study of Jamaican kinship and genealogy. However, the new evidence suggests that kinship merely exemplifies a pattern that may be found in a wider range of Jamaican networking strategies including the creation of spiritual and church communities, the search for sexual partners, and the coping strategies adopted by lowincome households. Linkup also accounts for the rapid adoption of cell phones and the patterns of their use by lowincome Jamaicans and highlights the importance of understanding the local incorporation of cell phones and local forms of networking enacted through new communication technologies.

Normativity and Materiality: A View from Digital Anthropology:

As with all material culture, the digital is a constitutive part of what makes us human. Social order is itself premised on a material order, making it impossible to become human other than through socialising within a material world of cultural artefacts, and includes the order, agency and relationships between things, and not just their relationship to persons. This article considers the consequences of the digital culture for our understanding of what it is to be human. Drawing upon recent debates concerning materiality in the sub-field of digital anthropology, we focus upon four forms of materiality – the materiality of digital infrastructure and technology; the materiality of mediation; the materiality of digital content; and the materiality of digital contexts – to make the case that digital media and technology are far more than mere expressions of human intention. Rather than rendering us less human, less authentic or more mediated, we argue that attention should turn to the human capacity to create or impose normativity in the face of constant change. We believe these debates around materiality and normativity, while rooted in the discipline of anthropology, have broader implications for understanding everyday practices in the digital age.

Cultivating the cosmopolitan child in Silicon Valley

How does cosmopolitanism emerge in regions characterised by diversity and difference? This article examines the ways parents living in Silicon Valley, California seek to realise, maintain and manage ‘cultural and political multiplicities’ in their efforts to create cosmopolitan environments and sociality for their children and families. Grappling with the tension between cultivating academic achievement and cosmopolitan sociability, I explore how parents create opportunities for cosmopolitanism experiences and spaces, moving away from schooling towards education through international travel and philanthropy. The article reflects upon the challenges parents face as they attempt to realise their good intentions, ideas and attitudes to facilitate cosmopolitan sociability in a region where diversity is located in everyday interactions and encounters. I conclude by drawing connections between changing practices and how structural constraints influence parents’ approaches to cultivating cosmopolitanism over time.

From roots culture to sour fruit: the aesthetics of mobile branding cultures in Jamaica

From aggressive marketing campaigns in print, television and billboards to corporate sponsorship of sporting events and corporate social responsibility programmes in the community, the logos, jingles, billboards and other forms of advertising are part and parcel of branded landscapes in which we live. Over the past decade, online, mobile and social media have also emerged as part of these branded landscapes. How have social media changed the ways in which companies and agencies develop and sustain relationships with potential consumers? Tracing the changes in the branding of telecommunications in Jamaica from public billboards and television advertisements (2001–2007) to forms of online advertising through social network sites such as Facebook (2008–2013), this article draws upon ethnographic research about interpretation of local and national culture by global telecommunications companies in the Caribbean. Building upon recent work in the study of consumption, new media as well as visual and sensory studies, I highlight the visual and aesthetic play and intimacy made possible through social media. I conclude by suggesting that social media expands the spaces for the consumption and circulation of mobile product and services and enables the aesthetic management of these products and services with consumers in novel ways.