In Mobile Secrets Julie Soleil Archambault offers an engaging and original study of how cell phone technology is being used in Mozambique.
Through a rich ethnography, Archambault reveals how this technology allows youth to juggle the politics of display and disguise in a new digital space. Archambault allows the mobile phone to take centre stage in her analysis, and through this she demonstrates how Mozambican youth navigate a world of both everyday uncertainty and exciting new intimacies.
The book will give the reader a greater understanding of the ambivalent nature of mobile communication and the many ways technologies become both global and local.
Mobile Secrets is an important contribution not only to the field of digital anthropology, but also to ethnographers working in Africa, and to those working with youth. Additionally, the book informs broader debates about technology appropriation, postwar economies and information accessibility.
An enjoyable and thought-provoking read.