The Moral Economy of Mobile Phones
Pacific Islands Perspectives
Edited by: Robert J. Foster
, Heather A. Horst Please read Conditions of use before downloading the formats.
Description
The moral economy of mobile phones implies a field of shifting relations among consumers, companies and state actors, all of whom have their own ideas about what is good, fair and just. These ideas inform the ways in which, for example, consumers acquire and use mobile phones; companies promote and sell voice, SMS and data subscriptions; and state actors regulate both everyday use of mobile phones and market activity around mobile phones. Ambivalence and disagreement about who owes what to whom is thus an integral feature of the moral economy of mobile phones. This volume identifies and evaluates the stakes at play in the moral economy of mobile phones. The six main chapters consider ethnographic cases from Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Vanuatu. The volume also includes a brief introduction with background information on the recent ‘digital revolution’ in these countries and two closing commentaries that reflect on the significance of the chapters for our understanding of global capitalism and the contemporary Pacific.
Details
- ISBN (print):
- 9781760462086
- ISBN (online):
- 9781760462093
- Publication date:
- May 2018
- Imprint:
- ANU Press
- DOI:
- http://doi.org/10.22459/MEMP.05.2018
- Series:
- Pacific Series
- Disciplines:
- Arts & Humanities: Cultural Studies; Social Sciences: Anthropology, Development Studies, Sociology
- Countries:
- Pacific: Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Vanuatu
PDF Chapters
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- Preliminary Pages (PDF, 0.2MB)
- List of Figures (PDF, 0.1MB)
- Acknowledgements (PDF, 0.1MB)
- Contributors (PDF, 0.1MB)
- Introduction (PDF, 0.7MB) – Robert J. Foster and Heather A. Horst
- A Handset Dangling in a Doorway: Mobile Phone Sharing in a Rural Sepik Village (Papua New Guinea) (PDF, 1.3MB) – David Lipset doi
- HIV, Phone Friends and Affective Technology in Papua New Guinea (PDF, 0.2MB) – Holly Wardlow doi
- Toby and ‘the Mobile System’: Apocalypse and Salvation in Papua New Guinea’s Wireless Network (PDF, 1.0MB) – Dan Jorgensen doi
- Creating Consumer-Citizens: Competition, Tradition and the Moral Order of the Mobile Telecommunications Industry in Fiji (PDF, 1.3MB) – Heather A. Horst doi
- ‘Working the Mobile’: Giving and Spending Phone Credit in Port Vila, Vanuatu (PDF, 0.2MB) – Daniela Kraemer doi
- Top-Up: The Moral Economy of Prepaid Mobile Phone Subscriptions (PDF, 1.6MB) – Robert J. Foster doi
Discussion
Reviews
The book describes what happened in Papua New Guinea and other Pacific island nations when their governments opened up the telecommunications sector to market competition.
—Peter Iglinski, Newscenter, Rochester University, 31 August 2018
The full review can been read via the Newscenter, Rochester University website
While deep ambivalence towards the adoption of digital technologies is nothing new, the moral element of these analyses in their Pacific contexts is striking, particularly where tensions between use and misuse and questions of social and political power are involved.
—Christopher Thomson, Pacific Journalism Review, Vol24(4) 2018
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