Ageing with Smartphones in Uganda

Ageing with Smartphones in Uganda is based on a 16-month ethnography about experiences of ageing in a neighbourhood in a diverse neighbourhood in Kampala, Uganda. It examines the impact of smartphones and mobile phones on older people’s health and everyday lives as part of the global ‘Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing’ project.

In taking the lens of the smartphone to understand experiences of ageing in this context, the monograph presents the articulation and practice of ‘togetherness in the dotcom age’. Taking a ‘convivial’ approach, which celebrates multiple ways of knowing about social life, Charlotte Hawkins draws from these expressions about cooperative morality and modernity to consider the everyday mitigation of profound social change. ‘Dotcom’ is understood to encompass everything from the influence of social media to urban migration and lifestyles in the city, to shifts in ways of knowing and relating. At the same time, dotcom tools such as mobile phones and smartphones facilitate elder care through, for example, regular mobile money remittances.

This book explores how dotcom relates to older people’s health, in particular their care norms, social standing, values of respect and relatedness, and intergenerational relationships – both political and personal. It also re-frames the youth-centricity of research on the city and work, new media and technology, politics and service provision in Uganda. Through ethnographic consideration of everyday life and self-formation in this context, the monograph seeks to contribute to an ever-incomplete understanding of how we relate to each other and to the world around us.

Praise for Ageing with Smartphones in Uganda

‘A thought-provoking contribution to the field of social policy, social cultural, and medical anthropology’
Anthropology & Aging

‘Offering a fresh perspective on the lives of older people in Kampala, this book critically explores the intersection between aging, urbanism and technology, and acts as a clarion call for scholars, policymakers and researchers to understand the everyday lives of older people in Africa.’
Josiah Taru, Great Zimbabwe University

‘A careful and heartfelt discussion of the ethical challenges of ethnographic fieldwork in postcolonial contexts, as well as a lively example of the global reach of new technologies’
Journal of Anthropological Research