Mobile Phones and the Cultural Ecology of Fishing in Kerala, India

Studies that go beyond the ICT4D (Information and Communication Technologies for Development) framework emphasize the social and cultural dimensions of mobile phones. Nevertheless, the cultural dimension, in literature pertaining to both urban and rural use patterns, typically takes an individualistic orientation. The possibility of actualizing the collectivistic logic in a community's appropriation of new technologies is mostly overlooked. The present article explores how the fishers community in Kerala, India, use mobile phones in culturally enhancing and ecologically oriented ways that improve their working and living conditions. In the case of Kerala fishers, the impulse toward cooperation has long been ingrained in their culture, as often happens among marginalized groups. The availability of mobile technologies has allowed for the amplification of this impulse and enabled new modes of cooperation, especially in sharing of information on promising fishing spots and safety and rescue at sea.

[1]  Reuben Abraham,et al.  Mobile Phones and Economic Development: Evidence from the Fishing Industry in India , 2006, 2006 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development.

[2]  Stuart W G Derbyshire.  Cellular Phones, Public Fears, and a Culture of Precaution , 2004, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[3]  Jonathan Donner,et al.  Research Approaches to Mobile Use in the Developing World : A Review of the Literature , 2007 .

[4]  Samuel Pierre,et al.  Technological developments and socio-economic issues of wireless mobile communications , 2001, Telematics Informatics.

[5]  P. Arora.  The ICT Laboratory: An Analysis of Computers in Public High Schools in Rural India , 2007 .

[6]  Alice Crawford,et al.  Taking Social Software to the Streets: Mobile Cocooning and the (An-)Erotic City , 2008 .

[7]  Lee Humphreys,et al.  Mobile Social Networks and Social Practice: A Case Study of Dodgeball , 2007, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[8]  Philip E. Agre,et al.  Real-Time Politics: The Internet and the Political Process , 2002, Inf. Soc..

[9]  Wicky Meynen.  Fisheries Development, Resources Depletion and Political Mobilization in Kerala: The Problem of Alternatives , 1989 .

[10]  Mizuko Ito,et al.  Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life , 2006 .

[11]  Janey Gordon.  The Mobile Phone and the Public Sphere , 2007 .

[12]  Terhi-Anna Wilska,et al.  Mobile Phone Use as Part of Young People's Consumption Styles , 2003 .

[13]  Rowan Wilken,et al.  Mobilizing Place: Mobile Media, Peripatetics, and the Renegotiation of Urban Places , 2008 .

[14]  William Mazzarella.  Beautiful balloon: The digital divide and the charisma of new media in India , 2010 .

[15]  R. Pertierra.  Mobile phones, identity and discursive intimacy , 2005 .

[16]  Joachim Höflich,et al.  The mobile phone and the dynamic between private and public communication: Results of an international exploratory study , 2005, Thumb Culture.

[17]  R. Abraham.  Mobile Phones and Economic Development: Evidence from the Fishing Industry in India , 2006 .

[18]  Harmeet Sawhney.  Innovations at the Edge: The Impact of Mobile Technologies on the Character of the Internet , 2009 .

[19]  Jason Whalley,et al.  The impact of mobile telephony on developing country micro-enterprise: A nigerian case study , 2008 .

[20]  N. Kabeer,et al.  The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and Labour Market Decisions in London and Dhaka , 2000 .

[21]  J. Donner,et al.  A review of evidence on mobile use by micro and small enterprises in developing countries , 2010 .

[22]  T. T. Sreekumar,et al.  Decrypting E‐Governance: Narratives, Power play and Participation in the Gyandoot Intranet , 2007, Electron. J. Inf. Syst. Dev. Ctries..

[23]  Thomas Molony,et al.  ‘I Don’t Trust the Phone; It Always Lies’ , 2007 .

[24]  Michal Daliot-Bul.  Japan's mobile technoculture: the production of a cellular playscape and its cultural implications , 2007 .

[25]  T. T. Sreekumar,et al.  Kerala's experience of development and change , 2003 .

[26]  Abdul Bayes,et al.  Infrastructure and rural development: insights from a Grameen Bank village phone initiative in Bangl , 2001 .

[27]  Georg Strom.  The telephone comes to a Filipino village , 2002 .

[28]  A. Townsend.  Life in the Real-Time City: Mobile Telephones and Urban Metabolism , 2000 .

[29]  Nojin Kwak,et al.  Mobile communication and social capital: an analysis of geographically differentiated usage patterns , 2010, New Media Soc..

[30]  Sirpa Tenhunen,et al.  Mobile technology in the village: ICTs, culture, and social logistics in India , 2008 .

[31]  Danny Miller,et al.  From Kinship to Link‐up , 2005, Current Anthropology.

[32]  Genevieve Bell,et al.  The age of the thumb: A cultural reading of mobile technologies from Asia , 2005, Thumb Culture.

[33]  T. T. Sreekumar,et al.  ICTs and Development , 2008 .

[34]  H. Afshar.  Women, work, and ideology in the third world. , 1985 .

[35]  R. Wade.  Bridging the Digital Divide: New Route to Development or New Form of Dependency? , 2002 .

[36]  H. Geser.  Towards a Sociological Theory of the Mobile Phone , 2004 .

[37]  Jan Nederveen Pieterse,et al.  Digital Capitalism and Development: The Unbearable Lightness of ICT4D , 2010 .

[38]  J. Donner.  The Use of Mobile Phones by Microentrepreneurs in Kigali, Rwanda: Changes to Social and Business Networks , 2007 .

[39]  Keval J. Kumar,et al.  Telecommunications and Development , 2006 .

[40]  T. T. Sreekumar.  Cyber kiosks and dilemmas of social inclusion in rural India , 2007 .

[41]  Victor R. Prybutok,et al.  HOW THE MOBILE COMMUNICATION , 2005 .

[42]  H. Horst,et al.  The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication , 2006 .

[43]  Joong Soo Ma,et al.  Mobile Communications , 2003, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[44]  Mark Howell,et al.  Understanding emotions experienced when using a mobile phone in public: The social usability of mobile (cellular) telephones , 2008, Telematics Informatics.

[45]  Patricia Caplan,et al.  Class and Gender in India: Women and Their Organizations in a South Indian City , 1985 .

[46]  Wai-chi Chu,et al.  Mobile Phones and New Migrant Workers in a South China Village: An Initial Analysis of the Interplay between the “Social” and the “Technological” , 2006 .

[47]  Lu Wei,et al.  The adoption and use of mobile phone in rural China: A case study of Hubei, China , 2008, Telematics Informatics.

[48]  Mark Aakhus,et al.  Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance , 2002 .

[49]  A. Honneth,et al.  Adorno, Theodor W. , 2006 .

[50]  Jenna Burrell,et al.  Evaluating Shared Access: social equality and the circulation of mobile phones in rural Uganda , 2010, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[51]  Noah Arceneaux,et al.  The Cell Phone Reader: Essays in Social Transformation (Digital Formations) , 2006 .

[52]  N. Scott,et al.  The Economic Impact of Telecommunications on Rural Livelihoods and Poverty Reduction: a Study of Rural Communities in India (Gujarat), Mozambique and Tanzania. Summary Report. , 2005 .

[53]  J. Urry,et al.  Mobile Transformations of `Public' and `Private' Life , 2003 .

[54]  Lee Humphreys,et al.  Mobile social networks and urban public space , 2010, New Media Soc..

[55]  R. Jensen.  The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance, and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector , 2007 .

[56]  J. Platteau.  The Drive Towards Mechanization of SmallScale Fisheries in Kerala: A Study of the Transformation Process of Traditional Village Societies , 1984 .

[57]  J. Donner.  Blurring Livelihoods and Lives: The Social Uses of Mobile Phones and Socioeconomic Development , 2009, Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization.

[58]  Scott Campbell.  Mobile Technology and the Body: Apparatgeist, Fashion, and Function , 2008 .

[59]  C. Stork,et al.  ICT usage and its impact on profitability of SMEs in 13 African Countries , 2006 .

[60]  Göran Bolin,et al.  Domesticating the mobile in Estonia , 2010, New Media Soc..