A mobile phone: mobility, materiality and everyday Swahili trading practices

Abstract

This article engages with the recent literature on material culture, ‘follow-the-thing geographies’, mobility and mobile communication technologies by linking these theoretical reflections to ethnographic research in East Africa. Using the biography of a specific mobile phone as a window through which to shed light on the spatial and cultural practices in which the object is embedded, it attempts to provide an insight into contemporary trading practices in a Swahili context. Presenting phases in the life course of a particular mobile phone, it examines different ways of relating to, using, disposing of and acquiring mobile phones, illustrating how a phone is being appropriated and incorporated into the ways of life of many Swahili people and plays an important role in processes of identification. While, on the one hand, grounding the often very generalized discussions of mobile phone use in Africa in the biography of a specific object, on the other hand, the article tries to link its mobility to larger questions of cultural identity and meaning by showing how these are constantly being negotiated and practiced in everyday trading practices.