Wallis, "Technomobility in the margins: Mobile phones and young rural women in Beijing," 2008

Cara Wallis, Ph.D

Abstract (Summary)

This dissertation, the result of 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork, is an exploration of the ways that young rural-to-urban migrant women working in the low-level service sector in Beijing engage with mobile phones to negotiate their identity and create meaning in relation to themselves and others in the city.

This research is situated within the particular socio-cultural and historical context of Beijing in the new millennium, where nearly three decades of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" have resulted in an urban, consumer-driven, networked society that exists far removed from rural regions that are discursively constructed as "backward" and "other." Occupying a space in between is a vast population of rural "peasants" who have journeyed to China's cities to seek work and a better life despite extremely difficult conditions that are a result of both structural impediments and cultural prejudices. In such a milieu, young rural women in particular are configured as passive, of "low quality," and in need of "development." Drawing from theories of the fluidity of identity, hybridity, the social construction of gender, and Foucaultian notions of power and discourse, this research uses an intersectional framework that considers gender, class, and place to understand migrant women's diverse engagement with and understanding of mobile phones.

For the women in this study, mobile phones become key signifiers of urban modernity and citizenship in China's burgeoning consumer society. They are also linked to "modern" notions of essentialized femininity and as such are associated with gendered discourses and practices. In addition, cell phones enrich and expand social networks and open up new possibilities for dating and intimacy. At the same time, mobile phones can create new disciplinary practices that lead to exclusion, and employers use mobile phones as a method of control.

his study adds to the body of scholarship that insists that practices and understandings of new communication technologies must be studied not only among a certain age group or gender, but also as these are intricately connected to and arise within a particular discursive context. In this way, we gain a richer understanding of "technological culture."

Advisor: Banet-Weiser, Sarah
Committee members: Ball-Rokeach, Sandra,  Castells, Manuel,  Rosen, Stanley