The Digitizing Family: An Ethnography of Melanesian Smartphones

Chapter 1: Introduction: Digitizing the Melanesian Family

1.1 Leapfrogging Technology

1.1 An Anthropology of Digital Technologies

1.3 The Diffusion of Contagious Ideas

1.4 An Ethnography of Digital Technology

1.5 Structure of the Book

Chapter 2: Methodological Notes

2.1 Becoming Familiar in Gwou'ulu

2.2 The Ethnographer and the Mobile Phone Research Protocol

2.3 A Different Sort of Kinship Chart

Part I: The Many Lives and Deaths of the Melanesian Smartphone

Chapter 3: A Sketch of Many Births, Lives and Deaths of Smartphones

3.1 Getting a Smartphone

3.2 Losing a Smartphone

3.3 Using a Smartphone

3.4 Gendered Divisions

3.5 Generational Divide

3.6 Educational Differences

Chapter 4: A Digital Swiss Army Knife

4.1 The Main Functions of a Popular Smartphone

4.2 The 1TOK and Jenny TV as "smarter mobile phones"

4.3 A Communication Technolgoy

4.3a Telephones

4.3b Texting

4.3c Internet

4.4 Multimedia and Entertainment

4.4a Music Player

4.4b Camera, visual display and movie player

4.4c Television

4.5 Back to the Basics

4.5a Flashlights

4.5b Watches and Calendars

4.5c Calculator

4.6 Beyond Universals

Part 2

Chapter 5: Digitizing Social Networks

5.1 A Brief Sketch of the Central Technological Properties of Mobile Telephone

5.2 Villagers' Smartphones and Phone Books

5.2a Emily

5.2b Victoria

5.2c Philip

5.2d Florian

5.3 Telephony, Kin Networks and the Urban-Rural Divide

5.4 Digitizing Kin Connections

5.4a Access to Biomedical Care

5.4b Gender-based Violence and Women's Support Networks

5.4c Funeral Arrangements

5.4d Conflict Management

5.4e Remittance Requests

5.5 Transforming Distant Relations Through Telephony?

Chapter 6: Telephonic Immorality and Uncertainty

6.1 Sexually Promiscuous Telephony

6.2 Smartphone Magic

6.2a Agalo and Malevolent Sorcery

6.2b Contagious Magic

6.2c Telephonic Contagion

6.2d Love Magic

6.3 Cautionary Tales

6.4 Telephonic Anxieties in Accelerated Socialities

Part 3: MicroSD Culture and Digital Parenting

Chapter 7: The Muvi Haos

7.1 The Muvi Haos

7.2 The Demise of the Muvi Haos and the Rise of Private Viewing

7.3 From Public to Private Viewing

Chapter 8: The Babysitting Smartphone

8.1 Pikinini Tumas

8.2 Raising Children: An Issue of Relevant Social Groups

8.3 A Different Kind of Sunday School?

8.4 Educational Conundrums

8.5 Fathers as Babysitters

8.5a Ramo and Rambo

8.5b Kissing Movies

8.5c Sources of friction

8.6 Mothers as Babysitters

8.6a Nemo not Rambo

8.6b Dancing not Kissing

8.7 Guiding Visions and Competing Futures

Part 4: Towards a Theory of Smartphones as Kinship Tools

Chapter 9: The Sociotechnical System of Melanesian Smartphones

9.1 The Materials upon which Technologies Act

9.2 The Forces that Move Objects and Transform Matter

9.3 The Objects that Operate on the Materials Themselves

9.4 The Gestures People Use to Make the Objects Work

9.5 Knowledge that Puts Objects to Work

Chapter 10: Conclusion: The Supercompositional Object\

10.1 Family Life in Digital Perils

10.2 Beyond Universalities: Smartphones as Rural Kinship Technologies

10.3 Moral Anxieties in Medias Res

10.4 Smartphones as Supercompositional Objects