Publication Date:
2024-04-07
Description:
The smartphone is often literally right in front of our nose, so you would think we would know what it is. But do we? To find out, 11 anthropologists each spent 16 months living in communities in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America, focusing on the take up of smartphones by older people. Their research reveals that smartphones are technology for everyone, not just for the young. The Global Smartphone presents a series of original perspectives deriving from this global and comparative research project. Smartphones have become as much a place within which we live as a device we use to provide ‘perpetual opportunism’, as they are always with us. The authors show how the smartphone is more than an ‘app device’ and explore differences between what people say about smartphones and how they use them. The smartphone is unprecedented in the degree to which we can transform it. As a result, it quickly assimilates personal values. In order to comprehend it, we must take into consideration a range of national and cultural nuances, such as visual communication in China and Japan, mobile money in Cameroon and Uganda, and access to health information in Chile and Ireland – all alongside diverse trajectories of ageing in Al Quds, Brazil and Italy. Only then can we know what a smartphone is and understand its consequences for people’s lives around the world.
Keywords:
ethnography
;
smartphones
;
ageing
;
new technology
;
anthropology
;
Italy
;
media studies
;
older people
;
cultural studies
;
popular culture
;
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JH Sociology and anthropology::JHM Anthropology::JHMC Social and cultural anthropology
;
thema EDItEUR::G Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary subjects::GT Interdisciplinary studies::GTC Communication studies
;
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBC Cultural and media studies::JBCC Cultural studies::JBCC1 Popular culture
;
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBC Cultural and media studies::JBCT Media studies
;
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JH Sociology and anthropology::JHB Sociology
;
thema EDItEUR::P Mathematics and Science::PD Science: general issues::PDR Impact of science and technology on society
Language:
English
Format:
image/jpeg
Format:
image/jpeg
Format:
image/jpeg
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