12 November 2009 | South Africa, Trinidad: Gender Studies | Vincent Porfirio
The travel plans have been finalized and I’m very excited to be heading down to the Republic of Trinidad. The weather reports from my faculty hosts report a sunny and hot 90 degree week ahead and, honestly, I am eagerly awaiting some much needed sunshine after the 4:30 darkness we have been getting here in Albany every afternoon (evening?).
More importantly, I’m also excited to spend some time reflecting on much of the research that I was doing while in South Africa and to combine this with the presentation that I will be doing at the University of the West Indies on Tuesday. While guest lecturing for the University of Cape Town this summer I was invited to a faculty luncheon with Manuel Castells–a world leader in global technology and communications. This fit perfectly into the research that I was conducting (technology integration within educational settings) and allowed for me to broaden my research to a scope that would allow for me to look at technology as a tool used by the general population. In South Africa the main tool of communicating was cell phones and this truly shocked me. The internet boom has yet to sufficiently hit the country and the people there (due to economic reasons and the mass number of citizens living in townships with little or no electricity. However, cell phones are the norm. This technology also crosses a number or classes and truly works to break down the classism that is still within the social construct of the country.
I digress…Castells was able to open my eyes to this wonderful world of cell phones and to the added objectification of virtual space–this being places where new identities could be created via “Mxit” and other social networking spaces that are electronically hosted (not necessarily by the internet or other well known American outlets: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.). With my upcoming presentation and my continued work on my Ph.D. in Media Studies from UCT I wanted to reflect more on Castells and present here yet another link to some of this man’s fascinating research. By way of my own research I was pointed in the direction of a paper Castells’ (and a few others) had created in 2004. Although dated (I’m writing Nov. 2009) the implications, framework, and overall thesis of the paper remains surprisingly relevant, valid and topical.
Castells uncovers the world of cell phone usage within a global context. He traces how many consumers are eating-up minutes in the US, Europe, Africa, and in Asia. He takes us on a tour of the international airwaves that direct billions of communications daily (dare I say hourly!). For additional reading on Castells’ paper “Social Uses of Wireless Communications: The Mobile Information Society” (2004) can be found at:
http://arnic.info/workshop04/MCS.pdf
This paper (along with many of his sources) will become the lens in which I begin my research–taking Harvard’s technology integration in the classroom and expanding it to the society as a whole.
Trinidad will prove a positive jumping off point to begin articulating my ideas and blending the SA research with ideas of my own having to do with a number of “isms”: Classism, Marxism, Capitalism, Racism, Sexism, etc.
So now I say, Bon Voyage! I will be sure to plug back in while I’m abroad to upload additional narratives and reflections. As always, thank you for taking the time to read the ramblings of an absentminded researcher…
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