REVIEW

THE CELL PHONE IN THE HANDS OF A JAMAICAN

Heather A. Horst and Daniel Miller, The Cell Phone: AnAnthropology of Communication. Oxford: Berg, 2006. Pp. 212.

£16.99 PB.

By Judy Wajcman

Consumer products themselves do not change the world economy.Nevertheless, when a new product neatly slots into a known gap itcan make a material difference in the way people use their timeand hence it can have a material impact on the economy. The cell/mobile phone has achieved faster global penetration than any newproduct in the history of the world. Most of the research to datehas concentrated on affluent societies, where much has been madeof their capacity to enhance mobility and constant communication.However, there is increasing awareness that the most dramatic ef-fects of the device may well be in the developing countries. To alarge extent, this is because many such populations move from hav-ing no phone to being able to access a mobile.

The aim of this book is to evaluate the consequences of the cellphone for low-income communities in Jamaica. It is based on aproject funded by the British Department for International Devel-opment (DFID), one of four ethnographies devoted to a generalassessment of the relationship between information and communi-cation technologies (ICTs) and poverty alleviation. The result is afascinating ethnography of ‘‘what a cell phone can turn into in thehands of a Jamaican, and what a Jamaican can become when theyhave their hands on a cell phone’’ (p. 181).

The book begins with an excellent chapter on the technicalinfrastructure that enables people to have mobiles – the sort ofchapter that is often missing from more culturally oriented mobilestudies. We are then introduced to the rural and urban low-incomesites that are the basis of the research. These are communities that

Metascience (2007) 16:493–495 � Springer 2007DOI 10.1007/s11016-007-9128-3

rely to a very significant extent upon resources that come neitherfrom formal employment nor from informal buying and selling.Over one-third of the populations in the research are dependentupon income received from other individuals. This is the crucialbackground to understanding the impact of the mobile in Jamaica.It does not represent a luxury item or merely a style accessory. Forlow-income groups, whose survival depends upon communicationwith other people and social networks, it has become a key to theirvery lives.

This point is vividly illustrated in the following chapters, whichpresent the rich ethnographic material. For example, the chapteron ‘‘Possession’’ provides a neat contrast between the differences inmeaning that the mobile represents in London and Jamaica. Inmore affluent countries, people who have many more resourcesavailable for communication may view the mobile in a functionalway as simply a device for making calls. For the poor, however,the mobile’s multiple capacities represent a unique communicationcentre. It signifies special skills and an array of new facilities.Indeed, for the authors, the mobile enables Jamaicans to per-form new kinds of identities, a particular kind of Jamaicanindividualism.

The key issue here is how Jamaicans experience and viewcommunication. Research on the mobile has increasingly distanceditself from earlier generalisations about increasing individualisation.Instead, ICTs are now widely seen as instrumental in creatingsocial networks and invigorating social relations. What is interest-ing at this point is to understand the specific ways that this occursin different societies and within different localities. The authorsstress that the cell phone has become appropriated to fit within awell-established feature of Caribbean communication. The termthey adopt is �link-up’, where communication no longer appears asa means to some other end, but has value and imperative in itsown right. While the specific modes of communication revealed inthe interview material are of great interest, I was personally struckby many parallels, in terms of mobile use more generally. The fre-quency of brief calls with minimal context that serve as a means ofmaintaining connectedness, and the high incidence of calls to fam-ily members, are the typical pattern of mobile phone use. So tooare the contradictory and ambivalent feelings that people expressabout their newfound capacity for perpetual contact.

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Where this point gains traction, however, is in relation to thegap the authors identify in Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach –that is, the importance of communication as an intrinsic socialactivity. While the authors could not report to DFID that cellphones are transforming employment and entrepreneurial opportu-nities in Jamaica, they can report that they have been vital formaintaining social networks that provide the financial basis formany people’s survival, as well as contributing more generally topeople’s sense of well-being. ‘‘The cell phone is not central to mak-ing money, but it is vital to getting money’’ (p. 165). As such, thecell phone is dramatically transforming the lives and livelihoods oflow-income Jamaicans.

In sum, I highly recommend this book as it describes the com-plex and many layered effects that the cell phone is having in rela-tion to health, crime, loneliness, depression, religion, and love. Therich accounts of significance of the cell phone in so many aspectsof people’s lives make for enthralling reading. My only caveat, andone that will surely resonate with readers of this journal, is the ab-sence of STS literature. As the book’s subtitle indicates, the au-thors attempt to delineate a specific anthropological approach totheir object of enquiry. The core idea seems to be that, instead ofsome form of technological determinism, there is a reciprocal ordialectical process between the existence of cell phones and Jamai-can identity today. Such an approach has much in common withSTS concepts of mutual shaping or co-production that treat tech-nology and society as mutually constituted. While I appreciate thatdevelopment agencies need to be convinced to move beyond eco-nomic impact studies, the theoretical contribution of this book willnot be entirely novel for students of STS or those working in com-munication studies.

School of Social SciencesAustralian National UniversityCanberra, Australia

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