Mobile technology is currently emerging as the first extensive form of electronic communication system in many regions of Africa and Asia. This article analyses the appropriation of mobile phones in rural India by exploring what new social alternatives mobile phones enable and how these new social constellations relate to culture and cultural change. The ethnographic description relates phone usage to other communication patterns and ongoing processes of transformation. The article shows how the appropriation of phones draws from the local cultural and social context, but also that phones facilitate new patterns that show great similarity with social processes in other places where phones have been introduced as the first form of communication technology, such as the increased multiplicity of social contacts and the greater efficiency of market relationships. I argue that mobile technology amplifies ongoing processes of cultural change but does so selectively, so that it brings about the homogenization of ‘social logistics’. Résumé Dans de nombreuses régions d'Asie et d'Afrique, la technologie mobile apparaît aujourd'hui comme la première forme étendue de communications électroniques. L'auteur analyse ici l'appropriation de la téléphonie mobile en Inde, en explorant les nouvelles alternatives sociales que le téléphone portable rend possibles et les liens entre ces nouvelles constellations sociales, d'une part, et d'autre part la culture et le changement culturel. La description ethnographique fait le lien entre l'utilisation du téléphone et les autres modes de communication et avec les processus actuels de transformation. L'article montre comment l'appropriation du téléphone s'inscrit dans le contexte culturel et social local, tout en mettant en lumière la similarité entre la façon dont le téléphone facilite de nouveaux schémas de communication et les processus sociaux qui se déploient dans d'autres lieux où la téléphonie a été introduite comme première forme de technologie de communication : multiplication des contacts sociaux, efficacité accrue des relations de marché. L'auteur affirme que la technologie mobile amplifie les processus actuels de changement culturel, mais quelle le fait de manière sélective, en induisant ainsi une homogénéisation de la « logistique sociale ».

HENRIKA DONNER. Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalization and Middle-class Identity in Contemporary India. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Pp. 230. ISBN:978-0-7546-4942-7.

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This article examines the rise of dowry system in Janta, a West Bengali village in the Bankura district, where the dowry payments are a relatively new phenomenon. The oldest generation in Janta had experienced times when no demands for money or other gifts had been made during marriage arrangements, but since the 1950s huge dowry payments have become the central financial transactions in the region. In addition to oral history interviews on dowry practices, I draw from my research on the changes in caste, gender and class relationships in the village. I argue that the dowry payments do not merely represent economic considerations in a class conscious society, but that they reflect a rearticulation of both the tradition and market, of gender, ritual, and class identities, and that paying attention to the multiplicity and local variation of dowry practices provides a key to its understanding.