Gendered Mobile Media in the Asia

42 Pages·2017·4.2 MB·English

Volume 7 | Issue 9 | Number 3 | Article ID 3064 | Feb 25, 2009
The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus
Imaging Communities: Gendered Mobile Media in the Asia-
Pacific
Larissa Hjorth
Imaging Communities: Gendered cross-cultural case study of gendered
Mobile Media in the Asia-Pacific mobile media conducted in Tokyo, Seoul,
Hong Kong and Melbourne from
Larissa Hjorth
2000-2007. Deploying on
interdisciplinary, ethnographic research
Abstract
conducted over a seven-year period, this
paper examines the relationship between
In the rise of participatory, networked
gender, technology, labour and intimacy
and social media epitomised by Web 2.0
through ‘imaging communities’. Imaging
and user created content (UCC), mobile
communities can take multiple forms —
media has been central in ushering in
form of texting, camera phone practices
new types of consumer agency, creativity
or mobile novels (keitai shôsetsu). These
and collaboration. Through its rapid
communities provide fresh ways for
uptake across the world, the mobile
conceptualising the region’s multiple
phone has become a compelling symbol
cartographies of personalisation.
for contemporary post-industrial modes
Cartographies of personalisation are new
of labour and intimacy. In particular, the
socio-emotional and political economic
icon of the mobile phone is most palpable
maps for imaging and imagining the Asia-
in the Asia-Pacific where a diversity of
Pacific in an age of personalised media
innovative production and consumption
and Web 2.0.
practices can be found. One of the
dominant symbols of the region’s mobile

media has been the conspicuous symbol
of the female mobile media user. And yet,
the phenomenon—and its gendered
implications—has been relatively under-
explored. By charting the rise of
gendered mobile media practices, we can
gain insight into how technology, gender,
labour and intimacy are being
conceptualised and how this, in turn, is
reconfiguring the region within the
twenty-first century.
In this paper I draw from a longitudinal
1
7 | 9 | 3
APJ | JF
Indonesian capitalist
entrepreneurs signing deals
with Western companies;
white-coated Malaysian or
Taiwanese computer
programmers and other
technical experts at work in
electronics plants; and, above
all, crowds of Asian consumers
at McDonalds or with the
ubiquitous mobile phone in
hand (Robison & Goodman
1996: 1).
The Art of Being Mobile (Larissa
Hjorth 2004). At the dawn of the twenty-first century,
the Asia-Pacific provides a compelling
Introduction
model for analysing emerging forms of
post-industrialism and postmodernity.
In recent years the The region is a powerful player in the
imagination of the West, and circulation of mobile technologies—both
indeed, of the East as well, has materially and symbolically—and in
been captured by the dramatic shaping the emerging lifestyle patterns
emergence in East and associated with them. The cultural and
Southeast Asia of a new economic power of global mobile
middle class and a new technologies in the Asia-Pacific can no
bourgeoisie. On the television longer be sublimated under the symbol of
screens and in the press of Japan as the production epicentre of
Westerns countries, the portable technologies such as the Sony
images formerly associated Walkman. Concurrent to the rise of
with affluence, power and mobile technologies globally, the region
privilege in Asia—the has grown to become both a powerful
generals, the princes and the economy and a conveyer of soft cultural
party apparatchiks—however capital. Through various forms of
outmoded in reality, are being innovative mobile technology in locations
increasingly replaced by more such as Tokyo and Seoul, and the
recognisable symbols of potentialities of colossal new
modernity. Western viewers markets—particularly China—the Asia-
are now familiar with images Pacific now plays an important role in
of frustrated commuters in global design, production and
Bangkok and Hong Kong consumption circuits. In sum, the
traffic jams, Chinese and region’s formidable economic power has
2
7 | 9 | 3
APJ | JF
transformed into a rising cultural intimacy, labour, communication and
currency globally. creativity which provide ways for
configuring, and intervening that shape
The multiple forms of cultural capital that
the region’s ‘imagined community’
the region commands worldwide are
(Anderson 1983). [1]
undisputed, particularly in the rise of
mobile phone cultures as part of its Rather than the region being the sum of
techno-cultural capital. This phenomenon what Benedict Anderson (1983) calls
parallels the unshakable position mobile ‘imagined communities’—that is, nations
phone cultures occupy globally. With the formed through the birth and rise of
world’s highest mobile phone printing press and print media, what
subscription rates (Mitomo et al. 2005; Anderson styles “print
Castells et al. 2007) and housing key capitalism”—networked mobile media is
centres for globally innovative production best conceptualised as a series of
(Tokyo, Shanghai and Seoul), the Asia- ongoing, micro ‘imaging communities’
Pacific is unquestionably central; in this that span visual, textual and aural forms.
positioning we see the deep Moreover, in contrast to Anderson’s
interconnections between mobile phone imagined communities that saw the rise
production, distribution, and of the nation lead to the demise of the
consumption patterns. Given how central local and vernacular, ‘imaging
mobile phone production, distribution communities’ further amplify the local
and consumption have been in the rise of and the colloquial. In the case of ‘imaging
the region as arguably this century’s new communities’, each community shares,
global power center (Arrighi et al. 2003), stores and saves its media in diverse
to what extent is the transnational ways reflecting localised gift-giving
imaginary vested in, and represented by, rituals and practices.
the cultural index of the mobile phone?
Equally striking is the fact that imaging
As the rise of the mobile phone into communities frequently transcend
mobile media is marked by gendered national, and in some cases even
practices of User Created Content (UCC), regional, borders. For example, similar
the examination of gendered mobile techniques of sel-ca (camera phone self-
media provides much insight into the portraiture) can be found in the region —
region in the twenty-first century. Central the only difference being how these
to the emergence of UCC is what I call images are saved and stored. In locations
‘imaging communities’. By ‘imaging’ I like Tokyo, purikura (stickers) are made
refer to all the mobile media UCC and best friends collaboratively
practices that take the form of visual, customise their phones with the ultimate
textual, aural and haptic modes of personalisation — pictures of themselves.
expression. From text messages to In Seoul, young women often take control
camera phone images, these practices of of customising their boyfriend’s phone so
imaging communities reflect forms of that they become mini-shrines to, and
3
7 | 9 | 3
APJ | JF
perpetual reminders of, the girlfriends we can also see how these modes of
(and the need to call them)! Examples intimacy and labour reconfigure and
can be found where girlfriends save the reflect the region’s post-industrial work /
sel-ca as a screen saver on their life patterns as part of broader
boyfriend’s phones along with cartographies of personalisation.
customising the outside of their phone. Cartographies of personalisation are new
This act of feminising the phone signals maps reflective of the gendered media
out to others much like an engagement scapes and practices in the region. To
ring — the phone is the constant chart the rise of mobile communication
reminder (and significant in the into mobile media is to trace the
maintenance) that “he is taken”. cartographies of personalisation.
The poignant role played by mobile
phones—as both a symbol and set of
material practices—can be mapped back
to the rise, fall and reemergence of new
forms of consumption and labour around
the region’s 1997 financial crisis. As
Richard Robison and David S.G.
Goodman noted, through the symbol of
the mobile phone we can gain great
acuity into the region’s emerging ‘new
rich’ (1996) that operate as an index for
new forms of post-industrial lifestyle
narratives in which consumption and
production are reconceptualised (Chua
The i in the eye: girlfriend’s eye is the 2000). The adoption of the mobile
screen saver on her boyfriend’s phone—partly because of its ‘class’ status
phone (Larissa Hjorth 2005) and lifestyle—suggests a localised
appropriation of consumption and post-
These ‘imaging communities’ are
industrialism. [2] Since 1997 the mobile
indicative of emerging forms of gendered
phone has shifted from the symbol of the
labour and intimacy comprising the
new rich and economical mobility to
region’s cartographies of personalisation.
being adopted by young and old in a
On the basis of sample studies of imaging
variety of ways. These shifts in the usage
communities in four locations, I argue
and meanings of the mobile phone can be
that we can begin to re-imagine the
seen as reflective of the consumption and
region’s new socio-emotional and
production paradigm changes in the
political economic maps through the
region post 1997.
rubric of cartographies of
personalisation. Through recognition of Indeed once a symbol for a rising class
the gendered character of mobile media, and leisure culture in the region, the
4
7 | 9 | 3
APJ | JF
mobile phone has come to encompass as a poignant symbol for emerging
diverse social, cultural and economic classes and attendant modes of lifestyle,
dimensions. These dimensions are the mobile phone has become
multiple, divergent and always evolving, intrinsically linked to personalisation
like the region itself. In these emerging techniques as expressions of labour,
lifestyle cultures we can see a variety of creativity and intimacy. More
attendant forms of gendered mobility and significantly, these changes are
immobility — epitomised by the forms of correlated with shifts in gender and
labour and intimacy surrounding mobile power relations. To study how the mobile
media. To explore mobile technologies is phone has transformed into mobile media
to investigate the ongoing significance of is to analyse new practices of female
localisation practices — that is, the labour and intimacy in the Asia-Pacific.
deployment of personalisation. As the
As pioneers in mobile communications
politics of leisure and work increasingly
globally, the region’s various production
become intertwined, processes of
centres have seen this technological
personalisation can provide insight into
the growing geo-imaginaries of the development, and the politico-economic
twenty-first century. power it secures, translated into new
forms of cultural capital both within and
beyond the region. For example,
technological innovation has been
instrumental in the rise of South Korea’s
transcultural capital in the form of the
Korean wave (Hallyu). Once a centre for
the production of domestic-technology
hardware, Korea has become a major
exporter of cultural products in the form
of films, TV dramas and online games. As
well as housing global leaders in the
development, innovation, manufacture
and distribution of mobile technologies,
the Asia-Pacific has also reflected
emergent paradigms around user agency
Waiting for immediacy (Larissa
and technologies. From the example of
Hjorth 2004)
the Japanese high-school girl pager
In the case of the Asia-Pacific, in which revolution in the early 1990s to the
mobile technologies are both the symbol camera phone empowerment pioneered
and product of high post- by women in Seoul in the early 2000s, the
industrialisation, mobile media region is awash with the rise of mobile
epitomises new cartographies of localised phone users, and agency, inextricably
labour and intimacy. Not only operating linked to female users. This phenomenon
5
7 | 9 | 3
APJ | JF
has resulted in its domestication of Thus the mobile phone is a poignant
mobile technologies implicitly tied to symbol, and set of material practices
gendered practices of consumption. Thus within the region’s various contesting
to explore mobile consumption is to cartographies. Yet despite its pivotal role
investigate the emergence of gender in the global production, distribution, and
inflected technologies in shaping consumption of mobile technologies, the
consumer identities and post-industrial region has been under-explored
imaginaries. (McLelland 2007). Moreover, the crucial
role of the young Asian female as

synonymous with the rise of mobile
media and UCC practices has also been
overlooked. These new gendered forms of
media creativity and storytelling,
‘imaging communities’, are inflected by
the local and the contingent. The rise of
gendered mobile media practices in the
Asia-Pacific has produced, and reflected,
new cartographies of personalisation. In
order to examine these new
cartographies, it is necessary to show
how the mobile phone becomes a tool for
new practices of personalisation and new
Keitai kimono: remediated and imaginings of geography.
feminised new media (Larissa Hjorth

2004)
As a key icon of mobile phone
consumption, the construction and
representation of the young female Asian
‘produser’ operates across multiple levels
— national, transnational, governmental,
social, cultural and economic. The rise of
the mobile phone has been accompanied
by increased subversive appropriation of
the technology by the active female user.
Parallels can be drawn with other
domestic technologies, illustrating the
instrumental role of gender and power in
inscribing technology with the socio-
cultural. [3]
6
7 | 9 | 3
APJ | JF
In examining gendered practices in the
region there is a need to analyse new
forms of intimacy and labour. Indeed,
through women’s deployment of mobile
media and UCC practices, we can explore
some of the emerging paradigms for
labour and creativity that suggest
new—and also rehearse and adapt older
or what Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin
(1999) call ‘remediated’—media tactics in
which women figure prominently. Via the
rubric of gendered mobile media, we can
investigate patterns of intimacy,
creativity and labour that are produced
by, and within, the region’s cartographies
of personalisation.
In order to do so, we need to locate the
place of the region’s gendered mobile
media in the context of mobile
communication research. In this first
section, I trace a gendered genealogy of
DoCoMo girl (Larissa Hjorth 2004)
mobile media literature and mobile
The obvious role of gender in shaping communication research. This is followed
mobile media practices has been largely by the second section, ‘maps of
overlooked beyond the studies that have personalisation’, where I discuss how the
conflated women with youth and fashion. personalisation of mobile phones and
Drawing on a revised notion of Judith mobile media can be considered as a new
Butler’s (1991) ‘gender performativity’ in way of mapping the region via the rubric
which gender is seen as not innate but of cartographies of personalisation.
rather is naturalised by regulated Epitomised by UCC, cartographies of
actions, I argue that in the case of the personalisation are best understood
region and the gendered use of socio- through the relationship between media
technologies, we can see a ‘gendered convergence and intimacy. They are
performativity’ that differs dramatically marked by the shift from mobile phone
from Western or Eurocentric identity and (as a means of communication) to mobile
subjectivity. This is evident in the case of media (as a form of creativity and
gendered mobile phone customisation in expression), and the consequent
the Asia-Pacific whose distinctive production of new forms of gendered
patterns and meanings differentiate it intimacy and labour. Personalisation is
from other world regions. linked to, and an expression of, the
7
7 | 9 | 3
APJ | JF
various attendant forms of mobility —
social, geographic, technological,
economic. It is also a reflection of
emerging forms of gendered labour
(creative, social, affective and emotional)
and intimacy. Personalisation takes
material and immaterial forms that
converge as they diverge upon micro
(individual) and macro (communities,
national and transnational) levels.
In the third section, ‘Beyond “The New
Rich”: Re-imaging the region’, we
consider how micro imaging communities
(such as those that use / deploy UCC) can
reveal macro cartographies of
personalisation as part of broader post-
industrial lifestyle movements. Here I
reflect upon emerging forms of post-
industrial lifestyle narratives that have
arisen since the pivotal 1997 economic
crisis and how, by engaging in the micro
Dislocated localisation (Larissa
imaging communities, we can begin to
Hjorth 2004)
reconceptualise current models of
cultural consumption and production 1.1 Locating the mobile: current
within the Asia-Pacific. literature in the field

… the mobile phone is far too
much of a newborn creature to
have a storied history, or even
much of a reputation in social
science research. Its advent
and rapid evolution have
bypassed most researchers
who are deeply engaged in
their own research pursuits,
but few if any social scientists
would fail to recognise the
impact this technology has had
on all of us and on aspects of
our behaviour (Beaton &
8
7 | 9 | 3
APJ | JF
Wajcman 2004: 2). times and life in the fast lane’ and has
become iconic of ‘work-life balance’—or
As mobile technologies grew from the
lack thereof—in contemporary life (2009:
twentieth into the twenty-first century,
9). These boundaries of time and space
they were marked by the transformation
are determined, in part, by ‘debates
from communication into media. One of
about work/life boundaries’ that are
the defining features of this paradigmatic
imbued by traditional gendered divides
shift was the rise of the active user
‘between the separate spheres for market
playing a pivotal, co-producer role in the
work (male) and domestic work (female)
orchestration of the device into a form of
wrought by industrialisation’ (2009: 10).
creative and expressive media. Despite
Thus the mobile phone is deeply
the ubiquity of mobile media with global
implicated in debates around various
everyday life, this all-pervasive
forms of mobility and immobility that cut
phenomenon has only recently gained
across gender, labour, technology and
critical attention. This paucity is
capital within contemporary
especially apparent in one of the main
globalisation.
global producers, distributors, and
consumers of mobile media, the Asia-
This is, in part, due to the multiple
Pacific. In particular, the dominant role
dimensions of mobile communication as
played by the female mobile media user
metaphor, icon, culture and practice. As
has yet to be fully addressed. To chart
a consequence, it lends itself to
the rise of mobile media in the region is
interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary
to do so in the context of localised forms
analyses. At mobile communication
of gender.
conferences the rooms are filled with
sociologists, media theorists,
As Beaton and Wajcman observe, the
anthropologists, philosophers, new media
social impact of the relatively nascent
artists, economists and IT researchers.
rise of mobile communication cannot be
The mobile phone can be read for its
ignored. In their important study of
social, technological, economic, and
Australian mobile telephony, they note
creative properties. And yet within this
the transformation and diffusion of
burgeoning area gaps remain — most
boundaries between traditional private
and public spheres (2004: 9), a trend that notably the role of the mobile phone as a
sees mobile telephony penetrating ‘new cultural index, the implications of the
geographic spaces that enable the mobile phone within the changing
consumption and communication process modernity of the Asia-Pacific, and the
to be applied in new social, cultural and way in which the rise of the mobile phone
psychological spaces’ (2004: 12). In as a symbol and practice is imbued with
‘Intimate Connections: The Impact of the gendered genealogies. Despite the
Mobile Phone on Work Life Boundaries’ region’s significant role in producing,
(2009), Wajcman et al. note that the marketing and consuming mobile
mobile phone ‘characterises modern technologies, it has gained little focus in
9
7 | 9 | 3
APJ | JF
comparison to mobile communication practice. Ann Moyal’s (1992) study on
research in Europe. Of the handful of gender and the (landline) telephone in
researchers specialising on the region, Australia was an earlier pioneer in what
only a few such as anthropologist would become mobile communication
Genevieve Bell have explored the role of research. Patricia Gillard’s research in
mobile communication in the region, with Australia in the 1990s (particularly with
most focused on specific locations such the Australian government) was
as Tokyo, Seoul, and the Philippines. significant in conceptualising new models
for studying telecommunications as a
Unsurprisingly, the early studies of the
cultural practice. Michele Martin’s
mobile phone—which were highly
(1991a & b) eloquent study explored the
inflected by gender—can be traced to its
transformation of the telephone from
formation and transformation from the
business tool to a feminised social and
landline. As with the landline, the
cultural artefact. [4]
emergence of mobile phone technology
was marked by an appropriation of the
In a similar vein as Martin’s study, Lana
mobile phone’s original intended use as a
Rakow’s (1992) lucid study investigated
business tool into an instrument for social
some of the ways in which gender has
and domestic use, notably by younger
informed conventions around telephonic
women. This transformation from male
practices. The issue of reproductive
business tool to vehicle for female social
labour and the shifting politics of ‘care
“gossip” and reproductive / social labour
cultures’ that Arlie Hochshild details so
has indelibly marked the history of
vividly in her research is presciently
telephony. Despite this gendered
outlined in Rakow’s and Vija Navarro’s
formation, the pivotal role of gender in
(1993) ‘Remote Mothering and the
the domestication of the technology into
Parallel Shift: Women Meet the Cellular
a cultural and social practice has been
Telephone’. Here, the role of the
marginalised in the literature, with
telephone as both a product and symbol
researchers preferring to emphasise the
of particular types of emotional and
‘youth’ aspects and relegating gendered
reproductive labour is emphasised.
customisation to the realm of fashion or
Despite the fact that during these
motherhood. This is astounding given the
interesting early years the rise of mobile
often subversive ways in which female
communication was clearly invested with
users in the region have transformed the
gendered politics and the socio-cultural
technology as part of rapidly increasing
economies of the domestic sphere,
socio-cultural media practices.
history repeated itself. Like the landline
The first studies of mobile culture around that started off as a business tool, to be
the early 1990s tended to highlight the later transformed—feminised—by women
implicit role that gender played in the into a socio-cultural practice and
emergence and transformation of the artefact, the mobile phone replicated the
business technology into a socio-cultural same cycle. So why, second time around,
10