The mobile phone, ‘modernity’ and change in Khartoum, Sudan

Brinkman, Inge; Bruijn, de M.E.; Bilal, Hafiz Muhammad; Goggin, Gerard; Hjorth, Larissa; Ling, Richard

doi:10.2307/j.ctvk3gmgv.9

Cited by 34 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…To this purpose, better‐resourced urban families may provide their rural kin with phones: gifting of an older model to a young rural‐based sibling, for instance, is quite common (Porter et al. 2012; Brinkman et al. 2009, 83, 88 re Khartoum; Pfaff 2009, 141–142 re Zanzibar).…”

Section: The Diffusion and Use Of Mobile Phones Among Africa’s Poormentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobile Phones, Livelihoods and the Poor in Sub‐Saharan Africa: Review and Prospect

Porter¹

2012

Geography Compass

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This review paper focuses on the potential of widespread access to mobile phones for improving the lives of poor people: the opportunities that mobile phones have already provided, or may soon present, for enhancing their material well‐being. Following a broad review of the diffusion of mobile phones across Africa, discussion is restricted principally to one key issue, livelihoods, due to space constraints. Attention is paid to the linkages between virtual and physical mobility throughout the paper and the final section reflects specifically on possible interactions between expanded virtual mobility and sustainable transportation in the continent, an issue of considerable significance for future development potential in our increasingly carbon‐constrained world.

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Section: The Diffusion and Use Of Mobile Phones Among Africa’s Poormentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobile Phones, Livelihoods and the Poor in Sub‐Saharan Africa: Review and Prospect

Porter¹

2012

Geography Compass

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“…The internet has stimulated a robust Berber nationalist movement in Algeria and among Algerian and other Maghribi diasporas, and has seeded interest in use of a ‘neo‐Tifinagh’ alphabet for writing Tamazight . Today in Sudan, Dutch and Sudanese researchers are studying how mobile phones and the internet have revitalised endangered languages like Moro, spoken in a part of the Nuba Mountains that suffered during civil war in the 1990s (Brinkman, de Bruijn, and Bilal ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language and Conflict: The Political History of Arabisation in Sudan and Algeria

Sharkey

2012

Studies Ethnicity & National

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Upon decolonisation, nationalist leaders in two North African countries, Algeria and Sudan, promoted a policy called Arabisation (ta'rib), which sought to impose standard literary Arabic at the expense of English (in Sudan), French (in Algeria), and other local languages (in both places). This language policy reflected the worldview of Muslim leaders, who hoped to break from the colonial past and start afresh while forging alliances with Arab Islamic states. Arabisation succeeded in expanding the use of literary Arabic in Sudanese and Algerian government bureaus as well as in schools and universities. However, in some circles it helped to stimulate oppositional identities that rejected pan‐Arabism as a focal point for national pride and that challenged the cultural foundations of national cohesion. Taking a comparative approach, this study argues that Arabic language policy in Algeria and Sudan featured strongly in postcolonial nationalism and civil conflict. It concludes by considering the status of language cultures and policies today in Algeria, the Republic of the Sudan, and the newly independent Republic of South Sudan, and contends that state‐led efforts at ‘language rationalisation’ have not eliminated multilingualism in practice.

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“…While mobile phone technology is usually discussed as empowering, the presence of a continually attached mobile companion means that one must appear to be available and accountable to others. Ethnographic research in Sudan shows that phones change, shape, and continue older forms of social relationship, allowing more free communication between the sexes and allowing women to organize their lives more independently, while still creating the appearance of societal norms for unmarried women (Brinkman and de Bruijn ). In the case of young women, cellular connection can also be used to control users and encourage them to do the bidding of others (Horst and Wallis ).…”

Section: Settings and Methods: Phones As Entitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Phones mean lies”: Secrets, sexuality, and the subjectivity of mobile phones in Tanzania

Kenny

2016

Economic Anthropology

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Based on a year of ethnographic interviews, focus groups, and participant observation on a university campus in Tanzania, this article examines the ways access and command of mobile technologies frame understandings of reciprocal obligation and intimacy. For this population, mobile devices actually acquire qualities of "ensoulment"; that is to say that the value of the phone is elevated beyond its materiality, becoming an entity whose proximity to the bearer is necessary for contextually specific constructions of identity, personhood, and relationships. In particular, access to and possession of these mobile technologies contribute to transformed strategies of image management that prize privacy and independence. For many of these young people, actually acquiring the "right kind" of phone remains embedded in intergenerational social relationships that include access to capital, gifting, and/or transactional sex, shaping new boundaries about what is expected within families and intimate relationships. Excited by the "new social spaces" afforded by social networks such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Vine, students worry that mobile phones increase the possibility of sexual infidelity and introduce a new vector of surveillance into their lives.

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The mobile phone, ‘modernity’ and change in Khartoum, Sudan

Cited by 34 publications

References 0 publications

Mobile Phones, Livelihoods and the Poor in Sub‐Saharan Africa: Review and Prospect

Mobile Phones, Livelihoods and the Poor in Sub‐Saharan Africa: Review and Prospect

Language and Conflict: The Political History of Arabisation in Sudan and Algeria

“Phones mean lies”: Secrets, sexuality, and the subjectivity of mobile phones in Tanzania

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