I wrote my thesis on the application of Cyborg Anthropology to Cell Phone use. Since then, I’ve had numerous requests to download it.

It is due to these requests that I’ve made it downloadable from this site. The title of it is Cell Phones and its Technosocial Sites of Engagement. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via E-mail or via @caseorganic on Twitter.

Abstract

“This paper provides examination of the effects of widespread mobile telephony on the social and spatial relations of individuals in the postmodern state. This is the realm of Cyborg Anthropology, which, according to co-developer Donna Haraway, “explores the production of humanness through machines” (Gray 1993:342). The widespread adoption of the cell phone has morphed five aspects that Zygmunt Bauman (2000) considered to be the basis of share human life: emancipation, individuality, time/space, community, and work. Changes to individuality and community can be described through an analysis of the constructions of public and private space.When the public sphere becomes completely private the social sphere will become public again, but the field of interaction will be global instead of local. The conclusions gathered from an analysis of these spaces will be used to show how cell phones have changed the construction time/space and emancipation of the human in the postmodern state. This paper discusses the effects of mobile telephony on emancipation, individuality, time/space and community through the theoretical lenses of Erving Goffman, Victor Turner, Marc Augé, Donna Haraway, and Bruno Latour.”

Thesis Excerpt

“The airport terminal is a sign of mass transit in the modern age. It is a place that is by its very nature liminal, because it is neither ‘here nor there’ and serves as a transition point from visitors that just came from ‘here’, and are going to ‘there’. “If a place can be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place” (Augé, 1995:77-78). The airport terminal is a place that is not concerned with identity or the historical or the relational, and thus Marc Augé would call it a non-space. An airport is a non-place that has tangible weight and space, but the cell phone’s space is compressed and unseen. If the space in which the cell phone exists is a place, then where does that place lie? If the cell phone’s technosocial manifestation lies on the realm of the unseen, the auditory extra-terrain, it would stand to reason that in Marc Augé’s perspective, the cell phone exists as a non-place. However, the cell phone, while not seen, can be heard, and the cell phone’s technosocial manifestation concerns a real social connection that, while neither ‘here nor there’, has historical and relational aspects. The cell phone, in providing a link to the historical and relational aspects of a social existence, also provides a link to identity. The auditory realm of the cell phone is a place.

Table of Contents

I. Abstract

II. Introduction

III. The Actor Network and the Technosocial Hybrid

IV. Constructions of Liminality

1. ‘Put that Dog on Hold!’ Canine Companions and RCF

V. Constructions of the Public and the Private

1. The Landscape of the Landline

2. Face-Saving and Cell Phone Use

3. Privacy and Boundary Maintenance

4. Negotiating Temporary Private Space

VI. Place and Non-Place

1. Time/Space Compression

2. Auditory Space as a Place

3. Connecting in Non-Places

VII. The Technosocial Womb

1. The Allure of the Mobile Auditory Place

2. Face Maintenance and Personal Ethnomethodologies

VIII. Conclusions on Cell Phones and Modernity IX. References

About the Author

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and Social Media Consultant based out of Portland, Oregon. Her current speaking venture is at Inverge, the Interactive Convergence Conference.