A gift from the city: mobile phones in rural China

Oreglia, Elisa; Kaye, Joseph "Jofish"

Abstract

In rural Northern China, many people own a mobile phone without ever having purchased it: they received it as a gift from better off relatives, usually their migrant children. Drawing from ethnographic field work in three Chinese villages, we describe practices of mobile phone gifting and the social relations that underlie them, as well as the consequences of the circulation of mobile phones, from the change of use that happens when they move from an urban environment to the countryside, to the possibilities that they open up or close out for rural users. We conclude with implications for technology design that emphasize the situated nature of these experiences and thoughtful approaches to the design of 'traveling' mobiles.

Citation

Oreglia, E., & Kaye, J. ". (2012, February). A gift from the city: mobile phones in rural China. Presented at Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Seattle

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
• Start Date: Feb 11, 2012
• End Date: Feb 15, 2012
• Acceptance Date: Sep 1, 2011
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2012
• Deposit Date: May 31, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Publisher URL: http://dl.acm.org/authorize?N82429
• Related Public URLs: http://dl.acm.org/authorize?N82429
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference