Abstract
The Great Indian Phone Book by Robin Jeffry and Assa Doron provides a fascinating narrative of the diffusion and impacts of mobile phones in India. It is a book that traverses the terrain of technology studies without slipping down to determinisms or resorting to overemphasizing the role of technology in development, a fashionable approach in information and communication technologies and development (ICTD) studies. Its coruscating journey through India’s political, cultural, and social landscapes to situate the increasing influence and command of cell phone technology in the everyday life of people is remarkably elucidating and instructive. It is a first book of its kind on cell phone studies in India, and an ambitious pioneering attempt in the literature to understand how democracies around the world negotiate the use and mediation of mobile technology once its ubiquitous existence has become a material reality to reckon with.
There have been some significant innovations in the use of new media technologies by communities around the world and it is often seen both as a liberating as well as a disempowering experience. We have well documented examples of either case. Uses of cell phones for social mobilization, community bonding, redefining familial and love relationships, and a host of other human communication needs have been well researched. The literature often emphasizes a “national culture” of cell phone uses providing us insights about texting habits, customs, and norms in various countries. National behavioral patterns of cell phone use are intended to give us insights into the diversity of technology adoption within large socioeconomic and political milieus. The book draws on examples of imaginative uses of cell phones in India ranging from metro megacities to remote tribal villages in India and how they tend to challenge and overcome traditional barriers to communication. Rather than pressing for a uniqueness of the Indian case, similar examples from other countries are also often provided to emphasize how Indian uses of cell phones remarkably resemble the ways in which new media technologies have been appropriated by the masses in differing cultural and political conditions.
It is difficult to miss the extensiveness of the book in terms of bringing together every single field of cell phone use that can be systematically conceptualized. It shows a formidable span of reference, ranging from health to governance, from Indian brides to terrorists, from networks to mobile waste. It leaves out almost nothing that may be discussed in the emerging culturescape of social shaping of cell phones in India. Besides the range and versatility of this book, its insightful blending of empiric work with theoretical sophistication also needs to be appreciated. Although the book does not offer a new perspective to look at the nature and consequences of cell phone diffusion in developing countries, the restrained discourse in the book clearly points to the need to understand technology as a collective meaning-making endeavor in widely differing sociopolitical and cultural environments rather than deifying technology even when it is overwhelmingly universal in its proliferation.
The fundamental question that the book poses hinges on the assumption that technologies can be assessed on their ability to function as social equalizers. The three parts of the book narrate the trajectories of cell phone penetration in India facilitated by neoliberal economic policies, marketing strategies of cell phone service providers, and the imagination and innovativeness of Indian consumers and retailers in realizing the potential championed by the technology. The question of whether it has led to a breaking of social hierarchies of class, caste, or gender in India cannot be settled by looking at the ever accumulating empirical narratives even when they are numerically persuasive, reassuring, and overwhelming. Sociological theory and technology studies have failed to come to a consensus on understanding the democratic potential of new media technologies including cell phones. To equate the possible social power of owning a mobile phone with the empowering consequences of universal franchise or literacy or land rights for the poor, may not be very enlightening. The book is cautious in making such broad generalizations while its central tendency is to argue that the fundamental politics of the cell phone is manifested in its ability to redefine citizenship and political participation. The book surprisingly stops before attempting to develop a theoretical conversation between sociology and technology studies although it comes close to this dialogue at many points in the book, particularly while discussing social structure and gender issues. Such an attempt, where the insights from the examples and instances provided in the book illuminate the conflicting standpoints, would have helped the readers to critically review the book’s own theoretical perspective. Needless to say, beyond its limitations, the book deserves to be lauded for what it accomplishes through its breathtaking range, resourcefulness, historical depth, and analytical rigor, which make it a valuable handbook for studying both technological and social changes in contemporary India.