The Digitizing Family

Chapter 1: Introduction: Digitizing the Melanesian Family

1.1 Leapfrogging Technology

1.1 An Anthropology of Digital Technologies

1.3 The Diffusion of Contagious Ideas

1.4 An Ethnography of Digital Technology

1.5 Structure of the Book

Chapter 2: Methodological Notes

2.1 Becoming Familiar in Gwou'ulu

2.2 The Ethnographer and the Mobile Phone Research Protocol

2.3 A Different Sort of Kinship Chart

Part I: The Many Lives and Deaths of the Melanesian Smartphone

Chapter 3: A Sketch of Many Births, Lives and Deaths of Smartphones

3.1 Getting a Smartphone

3.2 Losing a Smartphone

3.3 Using a Smartphone

3.4 Gendered Divisions

3.5 Generational Divide

3.6 Educational Differences

Chapter 4: A Digital Swiss Army Knife

4.1 The Main Functions of a Popular Smartphone

4.2 The 1TOK and Jenny TV as "smarter mobile phones"

4.3 A Communication Technolgoy

4.3a Telephones

4.3b Texting

4.3c Internet

4.4 Multimedia and Entertainment

4.4a Music Player

4.4b Camera, visual display and movie player

4.4c Television

4.5 Back to the Basics

4.5a Flashlights

4.5b Watches and Calendars

4.5c Calculator

4.6 Beyond Universals

Part 2

Chapter 5: Digitizing Social Networks

5.1 A Brief Sketch of the Central Technological Properties of Mobile Telephone

5.2 Villagers' Smartphones and Phone Books

5.2a Emily

5.2b Victoria

5.2c Philip

5.2d Florian

5.3 Telephony, Kin Networks and the Urban-Rural Divide

5.4 Digitizing Kin Connections

5.4a Access to Biomedical Care

5.4b Gender-based Violence and Women's Support Networks

5.4c Funeral Arrangements

5.4d Conflict Management

Geoffrey Hobbis is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur l'Océanie, France, and lectured at the University of British Columbia, Canada.