Back from India!

Our daughter at the feet of a Jain holiness.

I'm back from my 5-month ethnographic fieldwork trip to South India collecting data for our Mobile Communication, Gender and Development project. I've got plenty of interesting observations and interviews thanks to my efficient research assistants and interpreters as well as friendly villagers of Villupuram district. Despite the abundant but sometimes annoying flora and fauna as well as the quirkish forces of nature including Cyclone Thane rummaging through our neighborhood, the fieldwork was a success.

At the moment I am going through my field notes and interviews for some articles and conference papers. In June I will present a paper titled “It’s like a third arm!” - The Cultural Meanings of the Mobile Phone in Rural South India in the IV STS Italia National Conference titled "Emerging Technologies, Social Worlds" in Rovigo. [ABSTRACT]

At the food market.

I will also start working on an article similar to that presented in Rovigo but for a special mobile communication culture issue of Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society. The article is titled Can the Subaltern Woman Speak on the Phone? The Social Value, Cultural Meaning and Gendered Use of the Mobile Phone in Rural South India. [ABSTRACT]


Also, a conference report titled From a Workshop into a Network: India Researchers Unite written by Dr. Mari Korpela from University of Tampere and I was just published by Suomen Antropologi. [READ]

The temple next door.