{"title":"Gendered Technologies: Youth, Gender and Mobile Phones in Chennai City","authors":"V. Devadas","doi":"10.1177/09715215211056802","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the role of mobile phones in the lives of the youth in the city of Chennai, South India. Drawing on field research, the article argues that the social life of the mobile phone is gendered. The article curates three narratives to make this argument. The first engages with young men and mobile phones and claims that the technology is instrumental in the construction of normative ideas of masculinity. The second explores the ways in which the technology has empowered young women, enabled mobility, and reconstituted female agency. The third examines the regulation and disciplining of women’s use of and access to the technology through the discourse of maanam. The aim of articulating these three narratives is to demonstrate that the mobile phone is a gendered technology.","PeriodicalId":44810,"journal":{"name":"Indian Journal of Gender Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5000,"publicationDate":"2021-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Indian Journal of Gender Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09715215211056802","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"WOMENS STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article explores the role of mobile phones in the lives of the youth in the city of Chennai, South India. Drawing on field research, the article argues that the social life of the mobile phone is gendered. The article curates three narratives to make this argument. The first engages with young men and mobile phones and claims that the technology is instrumental in the construction of normative ideas of masculinity. The second explores the ways in which the technology has empowered young women, enabled mobility, and reconstituted female agency. The third examines the regulation and disciplining of women’s use of and access to the technology through the discourse of maanam. The aim of articulating these three narratives is to demonstrate that the mobile phone is a gendered technology.
期刊介绍:
The Indian Journal of Gender Studies is geared towards providing a more holistic understanding of society. Women and men are not compared mechanically. Rather, gender categories are analysed with a view to changing social attitudes and academic biases which obstruct a holistic understanding of contributions to the family, community and a wider polity. The journal focuses, among other issues, on violence as a phenomenon, the social organisation of the family, the invisibility of women"s work, institutional and policy analyses, women and politics, and motherhood and child care.