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Abstract

Editor’s Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Telephony in India:

A Visually Mediated History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1. Long-Distance Communication Before

the Smartphone:

Distinctive Cultural Transformations . . . . . . . . . 4

A. A brief history of pre-mobile telephony

in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1) Late colonial and early postcolonial

telephony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 6

2) Public telephony and the dawn (and swift

demise) of the yellow booth era . . . . . . . . . . 8

B. The incipient arrival of the mobile phone . . . 10

1) Traffic Signal as an ethnographic

inflection point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2) The lowering cost of connection . . . . . . . . 11

3) The rise of refurbishment shops . . . . . . . . . 13

4) Cellular conventionalization and the rise

of individuated participation . . . . . . . . . . . 14

C. The unsettling and stimulating nature

of mobile telephony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2. After the Smartphone:

Idiosyncrasies of Adoption,

Opportunities for Mobility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

A. The explosion of smartphone users in India:

Promises, discontents, accommodations . . . 19

1) A deeper dive into the digital divide . . . . . 20

2) Beyond connectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

3) Low trust, digital accommodations . . . . . . 22

B. Smartphone accelerations:

The filmed, the forwarded, and the filched . 23

1) The mixed cultural blessings of

mobiles for women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

C. The mixed economic blessings

of Roti Kapda Makan—and a mobile . . . . . . 26

D. The unanticipated blessings

of mobile-enhanced urban anonymity . . . . . . 28

E. New mobilities in India’s

Internet-enabled cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

F. The asymmetries of urban smartphone

culture: Dissecting the Netflix series Class . 31

G. Smartphone movies and

media made mobile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Book Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Briefly Noted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

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Available for download on Sunday, September 01, 2030

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