World-Making: Mobile Phone Discourses among Selected Urban Poor Married Couples

Abstract

This paper focuses on the role communication technology plays in the world-making of urban poor married couples. It explores if and how mobile phone use has triggered changes in the values, interpersonal networks, and relationships of urban poor married couples. The findings show that the urban poor, despite their precarious economic condition, keep up with richer counterparts in their acquisition and use of mobile phones. Husbands and wives have differential uses and interpretations of the technology, revealing gender issues and power relationships. Mobile phone use seems to intensify gender biases, which put the husband’s concerns as the focal point in household matters, and the wife’s own particular concerns at the periphery.