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Abstract:
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The integration of mobile phones into social life has attracted divergent views on
its technosocial capacities for social transformations especially its disruption on
the integrity of space and time. While celebrated as a technology that liberates
users from the constraints of time and place, it is equally reviled for the
defilement of place or space and face to face social encounters (copresence). This
paper discusses the influence of mobile telephony on social interactions with
specific focus on conversations around copresence in Marakwet. Through
ethnographic interviews and observational notes, the paper argues for the need
to study mobile telephony as a social assemblage. Drawing from Delanda’s
(2006) version of assemblage theory, the researcher finds that copresent
encounters has changed the way time and place is conceptualised, with
distinctions between private and public places blurred and transformation of
social interaction evidenced. |