La fièvre des téléphones portables : un chapitre de la “success story” mozambicaine ?

Abstract

Cet article analyse les relations entre la présumée success story du Mozambique et la prolifération, ces dernières années, de la téléphonie mobile. Celle-ci est considérée ici comme un révélateur de la dynamique des transformations en cours dans le pays, en particulier les disparités croissantes et les mutations dans les modes d’accumulation et de redistribution de la richesse. En s’appuyant sur des recherches menées à Inhambane, dans le sud du Mozambique, il s’agit d’examiner quelques-unes des incidences des télécommunications sur la socialité et de démontrer que les pratiques de téléphonie mobile non seulement reflètent et reproduisent les hiérarchies sociales, mais participent également à la négociation des inégalités 1 .

Mobile phones, mobile Internet, and employment in Uganda

“…These results have interesting connections with the conclusions of Archambault et al (2010) who show that in Mozambique, it is expected for women to actively seek and provide financial support, while it is less likely to be the case among men.…”

‘Travelling While Sitting Down’: Mobile Phones, Mobility and the Communication Landscape in Inhambane, Mozambique

“…Orlove 2005) and where other modes of long-distance communication offer particular challenges, mobile phones can arguably be described as answering a ‘real communication need’ (Hahn and Kibora 2008: 93). Today, mobile communication lubricates the redistribution of remittances by facilitating coordination as well as by allowing those at the receiving end to play a more active role in the process (Archambault 2010). In Jhoker's words, ‘Before you had to wait for your uncle to remember to send you money for school, now you can call him to remind him.’ Like other modes of communication, however, mobile phone communication has its fair share of drawbacks, 18 not least among them economic costs, the topic of the following section.…”

“…It is in fact striking how young men describe their experiences with mobile phones as stressful. These gendered rules are often broken depending on the specificities of the situation, but they nonetheless guide and serve to gauge actual phone practices (Archambault 2010: 95). Some men are more subject to requests than others.…”

Innovation: transforming hierarchies in South Asia

“…Much of anthropological research on the uses of new technologies have an emphasis in common on how the appropriation of these technological innovations tends to reinforce existing structures (Horst and Miller 2006;Barendregt 2008;Archambault 2010). We ask whether innovations are mainly used to strengthen local hierarchies, or whether they also have a transformative potential.…”