School Fees, Beer and “Meri”: Gender, Cash and the Mobile in the Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea (original) (raw)

An Ethnological Analysis of the Influence of Mobile Money on Financial Inclusion: The Case of Urban Zambia

Zambia Social Science Journal, 2021

The issue of access to financial products has been a public policy issue since 2005 when the first FinScope Zambia study was conducted. The 2015 study indicated that 40.7% of adults were financially excluded. This article investigates the influence of mobile money on financial inclusion using urban Kitwe and Kalulushi as case studies. We employ an ethnographic methodology to understand the extent to which mobile money has encouraged the unbanked population to access financial products and services. The findings indicate that mobile money has a positive influence on financial inclusion. It is easier to open accounts with mobile money kiosks than with formal banks. Mobile money services are conveniently located where the unemployed, aged and other segments of the unbanked population are found. They use mobile money services to send and receive money, pay utility bills and purchase airtime. Since mobile money services positively influence financial inclusion in urban settings, we recommend that they should be made widely available in rural areas. Furthermore, there is need to increase financial education and knowledge about mobile money systems and operations across populations in both urban and rural areas.

A mobile phone: mobility, materiality and everyday Swahili trading practices

This article engages with the recent literature on material culture, 'follow-the-thing geographies', mobility and mobile communication technologies by linking these theoretical reflections to ethnographic research in East Africa. Using the biography of a specific mobile phone as a window through which to shed light on the spatial and cultural practices in which the object is embedded, it attempts to provide an insight into contemporary trading practices in a Swahili context. Presenting phases in the life course of a particular mobile phone, it examines different ways of relating to, using, disposing of and acquiring mobile phones, illustrating how a phone is being appropriated and incorporated into the ways of life of many Swahili people and plays an important role in processes of identification. While, on the one hand, grounding the often very generalized discussions of mobile phone use in Africa in the biography of a specific object, on the other hand, the article tries to link its mobility to larger questions of cultural identity and meaning by showing how these are constantly being negotiated and practiced in everyday trading practices.

Mobail: Moral Ambivalence and the Domestication of Mobile Telephones in Peri-Urban Papua New Guinea PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Preliminary ethnographic data about the evaluation and use of mobile phones by low-income, peri-urban Papua New Guineans are analysed. These data do not affirm a modernist narrative that privileges discontinuity, dislocation and progress. They do not show a reduction of collective forms of sociality and agency in favor of ego-centric networks that disembed space and time from localities, alleviate poverty, and so on. Mobile phones neither dissolve the old nor constitute the moral world anew. Instead, their use in and effects on Papua New Guinea appear to be more complicated. By enabling voices to communicate over increased space and time, they make the person both more and less part of society. That is to say, they are used to fulfill collectivist values in ways that separate self from other. One significant purpose for which they are used thus exemplifies pre-existing meanings of kinship in everyday life. They also elicit a new self-reflexive voice, as well as an ongoing critique of postcolonial society.

Reimagining Rurality in Mobile Money Times: Life, Identity, and Community

In recent years there has been a lot of interest in the state of digital innovations in the global South. As work in this area has progressed, commentators have moved beyond studying the uptake of such innovations toward exploring their contributions, setbacks, and ability to overrun structural conditions of the South. Less attention, however, has been paid to their impact on rurality and rural life, identity, and community. In this project, I seek to show how with the emergence and dispersion of mobile money services 'the rural' has attained a certain kind of dynamism and fluidity, and a whole new identity through varied features of lifestyle, community, traditions, and landscapes. I ask: [1] how (and what) are the emergent mobile finance options shaping social life of groups and communities most at risk of rural poverty and social exclusion; and, [2] what forms of identity, community, and lifestyle are emerging around mobile money products and services in geographically remote territories in Southern Uganda? To answer these questions, I seek to adopt a small-scale and brief fieldwork approach, deploying multi-sited ethnographic cum interpretive research methods. Together, these methods will make an important methodological and substantive contribution toward facilitating observations as well as verbatim accounts of the poorest of the poor in remote settlements who are not 'automatically' reached by government and community financing initiatives. The project hopes to invite further debate on this important phenomena.

Mobile 2.0: M-Money for the BOP in the Philippines

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

This paper explores the reach and use of m-money among the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) in the Philippines using survey data from LIRNEasia's 2008 Mobile 2.0 surveys. It looks at m-money's potential and actual use for remittance among internal and external migrant workers and their families. The results are triangulated with focus group data and literature on mobile and electronic money, and framed using Van Dijk's (2006) Stages of Access to digital technologies. Although usage of m-money among the BoP remains low, the ICT infrastructure for this is in place. Compared to other Asian countries where the survey was also conducted, Filipinos are more familiar and have higher trust in mobile electronic transactions. Managing their resistance to change from current ofºine remitting practices remains a challenge. MOBILE 2.0: M-MONEY FOR THE BOP IN THE PHILIPPINES 16. Two percent of the BoP regularly do this, and 3% have done it, but do not do so regularly. 17. More than 95% of the Philippine mobile market is made up of prepaid subscribers.

Human Money Interaction: Designing For Personal Finances In The Developing Countries

This thesis is presented as a thesis by publication, where the peer-reviewed publications are directly used as chapters in comprising the greater part of the thesis. The introduction of the thesis provides details of the publications along with a summary of how each paper contributes to the thesis regarding the specific aims and objectives achieved by them. A comprehensive introduction (i.e., preamble) of each paper is provided at the start of each chapter (chapters 3-7). Since peer-reviewed publications are used as chapters, the references for each chapter can be found at the end of each chapter while the rest of the references (for Introduction, literature review and Reflections sections) can be found at the end of this thesis.