Communicative Ecology and Mobile Phones A Study of the Everyday Life in the Labour Lines in a Tea Plantation of Assam

Abstract

The ubiquity of mobile phones has led to a wide range of scholarship on the adoption and usage of the device. As global mobile phone research has shown, the specific ways mobile phones and smartphones are integrated into consumers' daily life depend on prevailing cultural and communication practises. The relative geographic positioning of mobile phones appears to still be a significant determinant of how they are integrated into daily life. Using ethnography, this thesis examines the communicative ecology of the labour lines of a tea plantation in Assam and attempts to locate mobile phone in the daily lives of the inhabitants. To locate mobile phones in the daily life of the labourers, I argue, it is imperative to contextualise it in terms of the institutional nature of the plantations. The study found that the communicative ecology of the labour lines is profoundly impacted by the history and the institutional set up of the plantations. The appropriation of the mobile phone shows the socio-economic realities of the people staying in the labour lines. The study found out that the mobile phone is not leading to drastic social changes, rather it facilitates existing relationships in the labour lines. Despite the earning status of the women in the plantations, gender inequality persists and gets reflected in the way the mobile phone is owned and used. In the lines mobile phones have become a medium of collective entertainment instead of individualised entertainment. Regardless of their socio- economic position, young men are using phone which enables them to break physical and social boundaries in various capacities. As young people are mostly engaged in some work, the use of the phone was often in reference to the usage in free time. The findings suggest that the concern for livelihood predominates the phone usage.