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Running head: Asymmetries in Asian families’ technology domestication
Asymmetries in Asian families’ domestication of mobile communication
Sun Sun Lim1
A low waged Indian migrant worker in Cambodia diligently saves up to buy his wife
back home a mobile phone, thus raising her status among her in-laws. A mother in Vietnam
demands that her daughter, a university student in Singapore, be constantly contactable by
phone. A toddler in Indonesia knows that if she wants to play games on a mobile device, she
will have greater luck approaching her father than her mother.
What do these families from diverse parts of Asia, avidly incorporating mobile
communication into their daily lives, have in common? In a word, asymmetries. As powerful,
portable media devices such as smartphones and tablets diffuse across the region at an
unparalleled rate, families in Asia are coming to terms with the many asymmetries that these
gadgets herald. The simple matter of who owns or pays for a mobile device can introduce
power asymmetries in a family, enabling one member to impose conditions on another.
Expectation asymmetries have also emerged with regard to one’s contactability, with some
parents demanding that their children respond to every call or message, and some children
perceiving such intrusions as surveillance. Practice asymmetries also result when parents
(and extended family) inconsistently apply rules surrounding children’s use of mobile
devices.
Many more asymmetries abound, such as those pertaining to access, competencies
and values. Access asymmetries are characteristic of transnational families, where the family
member residing abroad often enjoys higher standards of connectivity than those back
home, and must resourcefully bridge the gap to ensure seamless communication. Even
when access divides can be narrowed, competency asymmetries persist wherein some
family members simply lack the technical skills to benefit from the affordances of more
advanced channels of information and communication. Value asymmetries are also evident
when family members cannot agree on whether mobile communication devices are the
gateway to knowledge and academic achievement, or the path to deleterious distraction.
My focus on asymmetries is a deliberate one. Because mobile communication
devices are deeply personal, but are also vested with a remarkable combination of
instrumentality and emotionality, their entry into a household will inevitably provoke
alternating reactions of anticipation and dread, efficacy and inadequacy, liberation and
enslavement, joy and drudgery. Within every home, these emotional dualities will pervade, in
varying degrees, each family member’s experience of domesticating mobile devices, making
the asymmetries even more palpable. Families in Asia are constantly negotiating such
asymmetries, developing strategies to manage the growing presence of mobile
communication devices and their expanding repertoire of locative and social media
functions. No aspect of family life is untouched by mobile communication as households
employ its myriad affordances for communication, information, entertainment, the nurturance
of familial bonds, and the organisation of everyday routines.
The significant impact of mobile communication in Asia thus justifies a book that
focuses on this disruptive technology, but from the perspective of the family. However, just
as mobile communication constantly evolves, families in Asia are also experiencing
1 sunlim@nus.edu.sg, National University of Singapore
Running head: Asymmetries in Asian families’ technology domestication
significant changes in light of unprecedented economic growth, globalisation, urbanisation
and demographic shifts (Hennon & Wilson, 2008). Asia is therefore at the crossroads of
technological transformation and social change, and this book aims to capture the
interactions of these two contemporaneous trends. This collection showcases research on
Asian families across a spectrum of socio-economic profiles, from both rural and urban
areas, offering perspectives on children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly. As well, the
different chapters feature a range of family types including nuclear, multi-generational,
transnational, and multi-local, spanning the continuum from the media-rich to the media
have-less. These families’ varied yet convergent experiences illuminate how mobile
communication is influencing family interactions and shaping the bonds on which familial
relationships are built.
Technology domestication in the mobile age
Undeniably, mobile communication devices have inveigled their way into the
domestic space, to the point of being “taken for granted” (Ling, 2012). Yet the impact that
these devices have on families can hardly be taken for granted, much less unquestioningly
accepted. As Clark (2014) observed, mobile media “mediate, symbolise, and disrupt or
reinforce the social relations of the family”( p. 329). In this regard, technology domestication
offers a valuable conceptual apparatus for understanding the superimposition of
technological structures over the complexities of family dynamics.
Now into its fourth decade, the concept of technology domestication can truly come
into its own, in an era where mobile communication devices have embedded computing
power and internet connectivity into more households than ever before. As both an analytical
framework and a methodological approach, technology domestication was a significant
departure from earlier “rational, linear, monocausal and technologically determined” (Berker,
Hartmann, Punie & Ward, 2006, p. 1) frames of studying technology adoption. Instead, the
concept exhorts researchers to look beyond the transactional and procedural dimensions of
technology adoption, and to focus on the intangible aspects of what is fundamentally an
individualised, amorphous and haphazard process. In so doing, researchers can distil the
meanings that users inscribe in and ascribe to technologies by capturing their narratives and
interpretations.
Much has been written about the four processes that occur when a technology is
introduced into a household: appropriation, objectification, incorporation and conversion
(Silverstone, Hirsch & Morley, 1992), but a brief review here would be appropriate. Broadly,
the concept argues that objectification and incorporation take place within the internal realm
of the household, while appropriation and conversion extend the boundaries of the
household into the outside world. In appropriation, individuals or households take
possession of objects and assign them meanings. Objectification is also likely to occur,
where these objects are subsequently used or displayed in the home, thus embodying the
values of their owners and users. Incorporation is the process by which objects are
integrated into the quotidian rhythms of the household, performing both affective and
mechanical functions. Conversion in turn connects the household’s moral economy with the
public sphere, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) exist as both objects
and facilitators of conversion (and conversation).
All these processes take place against the backdrop of the moral economy of the
household. Silverstone et al referred to it as “an economy of meanings and a meaningful
Running head: Asymmetries in Asian families’ technology domestication
economy” (1992, p. 18) wherein the household is an economic unit in its own right, ordering
its economic and social activities according to a set of shared values and beliefs. Therefore,
through the production and consumption activities of family members, the household
becomes a part of the public economy. These economic activities within the household and
the larger public economy are in turn influenced by the morals undergirding the family.
As a concept, technology domestication has had considerable reach, having been
applied to the study of different family contexts in Europe and North America including
nuclear families (e.g. Hirsch, 1992) and single parent households (e.g. Haddon &
Silverstone, 1995), shedding light on parent-child relationships (e.g. Pasquier, 2001) and
gender roles (e.g. Frissen, 1997) vis-à-vis ICTs. Previous research has also targeted specific
age groups, including children (e.g. Livingstone, 2002), young adults (e.g. Hartmann, 2005)
and the elderly (e.g. Haddon & Silverstone, 1996). With regard to the technological
devices/services studied, some studies took an encompassing approach by including all
technologies within the home, while others focused on a single technological device such as
the computer (e.g. Aune, 1996), or the Internet (e.g. Bakardjieva, 2005). When I first began
my research on technology domestication by Chinese and Korean households (Lim, 2006;
2008), the concept had not been widely applied to Asian contexts. Previous research on
technology appropriation in the home had been conducted, although not necessarily
informed by the domestication framework, such as in China (notably, Lull, 1991), Japan (e.g.
Kanayama, 2003), Korea (e.g. Yoon, 2003) and Singapore (e.g. Lim & Tan, 2004).
Despite the broad range of its application, several aspects of technology
domestication have been found wanting. Early criticisms that domestication tended to study
only conventional families (parents with children in close propinquity) have since been
addressed with research on a mutiplicity of family types and constitutions, including in this
volume. Further suggestions for refinement include a sharpened focus on the “emotional
work” that drives the moral economy of the family (Clark, 2014). A more persistent issue with
domestication research relates to the “double articulation” of media as “specific technologies:
they are both objects and conveyer of messages” (Hartmann, 2006, p. 85). The challenge
then is to comprehensively examine media content in tandem with the media context, and to
effectively analyse their mutual interactions. Existing research tends to privilege one
dimension over the other, with few being able to successfully study both in equal measure.
To be sure, methodological constraints and ethical concerns prevent more sustained and
invasive fieldwork that can facilitate greater insight into the untidy complexities of the
domestic realm. The studies featured in this volume utilise a range of methods including
interviews, ethnography, observation, diaries, cultural probes and media deprivation. By
critically assessing each of these methods and the data they yield for their respective
settings, we can seek to develop a methodological matrix that outlines the relative strengths
and weaknesses of each research approach for studying the adoption of mobile
communication, so that both content and context can well captured. Such efforts will help to
resolve this perennial concern of technology domestication research.
Values / Intimacies / Strategies
While not all of the chapters in this volume apply the concept of technology
domestication, they have embraced its spirit of exploring the meaning that mobile
communication holds for families, beyond a mere account of its practical benefits and costs.
The chapters are organised according to three themes: values, intimacies and strategies,
although there are many instances where all three themes intersect in interesting ways.
Running head: Asymmetries in Asian families’ technology domestication
The three chapters in the first section centre around the values that form the core of
families’ moral economies. Tom McDonald (Chapter 2) studied the use of mobile phones in
a rural Chinese town, examining the relationship between mobile communication
technologies and education. His ethnographic data shows that for these rural families,
education is the springboard for upward mobility and is consequently their foremost priority.
His findings demonstrate how the mobile phone is the veritable lens through which societal
valorisation of educational achievement is reflected and indeed refracted, illuminating how
these everyday devices are not merely with vested technological capacity, but laden with
cultural values. Parents in rural environments view mobile phones, with their countless
diversions, as inimical to their children’s academic pursuits and therefore to be restricted.
But the young people find creative ways to circumvent such controls and actively use mobile
phones, recognising that these devices are indispensable for social networking, a key aspect
of education that they find their parents woefully ignorant of.
In contrast, the Muslim mothers in suburban Indonesia studied by Rahayu and Sun
Sun Lim (Chapter 3), are well aware of the growing importance of technology and want their
children to be IT literate. However, they also fear that negative online content may lead to
moral degradation, spiritual corruption and self-destruction in their children. Hence, they
seek to balance their practical outlook with their religious ideals by allowing their children
internet access while imposing mediation heavily informed by their faith. In Muslim families,
mothers are tasked with socialising children on Islamic beliefs and values, and these women
use their religious principles as a bulwark against the perceived harms of online content.
Their experience is indeed one of taming “wild technologies”, the metaphor that lends the
concept of technology domestication its name.
However, with domestication comes compliance, and previously alien technologies
can be coaxed into the service of the family, to aid in the nurturance of familial ties and the
inculcation of cherished values. Kakit Cheong and Alex Mitchell (Chapter 4) studied
Filipino domestic helpers working in Singapore, asking them what stories they told their
family members back home, and how they deployed mobile technologies in this process.
Family storytelling is known to help families maintain close bonds, shape shared identities
and even overcome adversity. Although these domestic helpers work in restrictive
conditions, they nevertheless marshal their limited mobile phone access to tell family
members stories that help to make sense of their physical separation, and to instil family
values and Christian doctrine in their left-behind children.
For transnational families in particular, whether their interaction relates to the lofty
inculcation of values, or to mundane daily updates, mobile communication is crucial for
forging intimacies and nourishing relationships. The three chapters in the second section
focus on such intimacies. Ravinder Kaur and Ishita Shruti (Chapter 5) sought to
understand how rural and urban transnational families are “doing family” with mobile
communication. They compared two groups of Indian migrants working in Cambodia - rural
and less educated single male migrants working as itinerant street vendors, and highly
educated professionals working in white collar jobs, some of whose family members are
scattered around the globe. The authors found that because education, income levels and
the cost of technologies shape these migrants’ access to technologies, professionals can
avail of more advanced technologies while the rural migrants make do with more basic
facilities. Across the two groups however, more regular communication enables them to
nurture deep affective bonds that help them to approximate, if not experience, the "family
Running head: Asymmetries in Asian families’ technology domestication
feeling". For the rural migrants in particular, mobile communication is the conduit for
renewing ties with the culture of their homeland, and for expressing care through sending
remittances to the family. For the professionals, multiple forms of mobile communication are
exploited so that their multi-local families can experience virtual togetherness despite being
geographically dispersed.
Indeed, the emotional geographies of transnational families can often be as complex
as their physical geographies. Kyong Yoon (Chapter 6) explored the communication
practices of South Korean families whose young adult children reside in Canada, while their
parents remained mostly in Korea. For these young people who had emigrated in their teen
years, being apart from their parents is a reality they have become accustomed to over
many years. Their default mode of interaction with their parents is via online channels and
some even prefer mediated to face-to-face interaction. They utilise a range of smartphone-
enabled services including KakaoTalk (messaging app), KakaoStory (for selfies and status
updates), Facebook, and video calls via Skype to enhance the sense of co-presence and to
foster a sense of belonging in the family. There is a fondness for ‘visual technologies’ such
as video calls and photographs that make it possible to ‘see’ one another, as well as the use
of humorous and cute emoticons to mediate tensions in online communication. Even so,
some respondents decry the misunderstandings that occasionally arise from mediated
interaction. Besides communication, parents also leverage smartphone functions for mobile
parenting, with mothers in particular using KakaoTalk to keep a watchful eye over their
children’s daily activities even across the miles.
Similarly, Vietnamese parents whose children are pursuing university studies in
Singapore also exercise parental oversight via mobile communication and social media.
Becky Pham and Sun Sun Lim (Chapter 7) investigated these Vietnamese migrant
students’ communication with their left-behind families and found that such remote
supervision, while born out of parental care and concern, is perceived by the children as
unwelcome surveillance. However, these students grudgingly accept rather than actively
resist such interference, recognising that their parents’ constant mediated presence helps
cushion them from the challenges of adapting to their host country. They experienced this
acutely when the study’s media deprivation condition required that they cease
communicating with their left-behind families for one week. Most of the students were
negatively affected by this loss of contact, feeling sad and distressed at the absence of their
parents’ emotional support, and anxious from not knowing about the well-being of their loved
ones. Notably however, this deprivation experience also highlighted to some students the
need to lean less on their parents and to develop emotional independence.
Ultimately therefore, all families that appropriate mobile communication are aware of
their impact on household dynamics and consciously or instinctively develop strategies to
manage the same, the theme of the remaining three chapters. Laras Sekarasih (Chapter 8)
probed parents of pre-schoolers in Indonesia to understand how they mediated their
children’s smartphone and tablet use. While these parents appreciate the educational,
entertainment, and “child-minding” benefits of these devices, they feel that health risks such
as eyestrain and physical inactivity, and exposure to violent or sexually explicit content, far
outweigh the gains. Most parents interviewed thus practise restrictive mediation on duration
and content, actively mediate by reasoning with the children, or steer them towards
alternative diversions. Effective mediation is however an ongoing challenge because both
parents may not be equally strict with the children, or other caregivers in the home are
Running head: Asymmetries in Asian families’ technology domestication
simply too permissive. In multi-generational settings, older family members such as
grandparents tend to be quick to indulge the children’s request for mobile device access,
thereby driving a wedge between parents and grandparents.
Navigating between the boon and bane of mobile communication is therefore a
salient thread coursing through the experiences of the many families featured in this volume.
Rosel San Pascual (Chapter 9) deals squarely with this issue by focusing on the paradoxes
surrounding the mobile communication of Filipino migrant mothers of teenaged children who
were working in Singapore. She identifies three main paradoxes:
independence/dependence, competence/incompetence, and empowerment/enslavement,
uncovering the equivocation with which these women use mobile communication for remote
parenting. While they treasure the independence that mobile communication grants them,
enabling them to work overseas while remaining connected to family, they also resent the
degree to which they are dependent on it. Indeed, they feel as much empowered by and
enslaved to these digital connections. Fundamentally, their negative feelings are rooted in
the doubts clouding over their own parenting. While gratified that they can parent from a
distance, they are also overwhelmed by societal expectations that only the mother who is by
her children’s side is the proverbial good mother (see also Soriano, Lim & Rivera, 2015 on
Philippine media representations that reinforce such norms). Despite such misgivings, these
women convince themselves that through the strategic use of mobile communication, they
can parent effectively and reach the best compromise for themselves and their children.
At every stage of the family’s development therefore, from when the children are very
young, through to their adolescence and emerging adulthood, families seek to manage and
exploit mobile communication in the interest of positive household dynamics. The book thus
concludes with an important prescription on how mobile technologies can be harnessed for
the care of older adults. Pin Sym Foong (Chapter 10) makes a compelling case for taking a
Life Course perspective in Human-Computer Interaction design for the elderly, proposing a
Gerotech Clock that depicts how the needs of older users vis-à-vis mobile technology evolve
over time. She also urges designers to be conscious of the distinction between age, life
stage, and cohort effects, because each factor would influence elderly users’ technological
competencies and adoption tendencies. She argues that when the elderly are relatively free
from physical impairment, mobile technology can be crafted to enhance their independence.
But once the elderly become reliant on caregivers from within and outside of the family,
technology design must take into account the needs and constraints of all parties, while
being sensitive to their relationship dynamics. She ends by challenging designers to cater to
the complex needs of ageing societies in our increasingly mobile landscape.
About this book series
Putting this book together has been gratifying in many ways. I had long recognised
the relative paucity of published research on mobile communication in Asia, despite the
technology’s growing importance in the region (Lim & Goggin, 2014). At the same time, I was
also aware of the vast number of researchers in the region whose innovative work had yet to
be published in the customary anglophone outlets, thereby circumscribing their contributions
to the broader academic mission –investigating the social impact of technology. In
developing this book series, I aim to showcase the work of emerging scholars for the wider
international audience, thereby introducing fresh perspectives to the global conversation on
the transformative effect of mobile communication. Hence the the series is entitled Mobile
Communication in Asia: Local Insights, Global Implications. I am heartened that Springer
Running head: Asymmetries in Asian families’ technology domestication
appreciates the merits of this endeavour and has thrown its support behind the series, as
have many colleagues who have committed to editing future volumes. In editing this first
volume in the series, I have had the privilege of mentoring and learning from emerging
scholars whose ground insights and and diverse perspectives will help to advance our
understanding of Asia’s increasingly complex sociotechnical morphology. Their valuable
contributions also signal that research on mobile communication in Asia is set to make a
long-term impact, both within the region and beyond.
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