SBE-RCUK: The Effects of Mobile Phones on Gendered Social Networks, Decision Making, and Vulnerability

SBE-RCUK：手机对性别社交网络、决策和脆弱性的影响

• 批准号: 1660428
• 负责人: Timothy Baird
• 金额: $ 33万
• 依托单位: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-04-15 至 2022-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1660428&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBE; RCUK; Effects; Mobile; Phones

This project will examine how mobile phones may empower or disempower vulnerable groups in rural communities, especially women. It will provide early research on the effects of mobile technologies on social empowerment and vulnerability in traditionally hierarchical societies. It will also help to develop existing theories of natural resource-based, subsistence livelihoods by incorporating perspectives from social network analysis and gender studies to better account for dynamics within and across households. Findings from this research will be presented in various formats to participant communities, local development NGOs, elementary school children and graduate students to promote greater awareness of how social networks and mobile technologies affect each other, how these effects vary for different individuals and groups, and how vulnerability is contextual. The project will also support interdisciplinary graduate education in the U.S. and improve international social science data infrastructure. This award is made under the SBE-RCUK Lead Agency Agreement.This project is embedded in a larger research context concerned with the rapid spread of mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs). Mobile phones especially have been heralded as transformative new tools to reduce global poverty. Scholars and development professionals alike have pointed out that phones can greatly reduce barriers to information, promote market efficiency, boost savings and expedite emergency response. An alternative perspective is that phones can magnify situations rather than transform them. In some contexts, phones have not been shown to improve communication, leading scholars to ask which lives may be transformed and which may not? Valuable tools may be less valuable to people who are not well positioned in society like minorities, women, or the poor. These concerns are especially prevalent in developing countries where poverty is common and social positioning is hierarchical with gender, age, and wealth serving as important drivers of access, influence and power. Furthermore, in rural areas telecommunications infrastructure can be patchy, access to resources like health care can be stochastic, and environmental shocks like droughts can be devastating. To address how phones may transform some lives and simply reproduce others, this project will use mixed qualitative and quantitative methodologies to examine how phones affect women's and men's social networks, access to information and decision making, and capacities to respond to shocks within several pastoralist Maasai communities in northern Tanzania over a three-year period. Key hypotheses include: (1) men's and women's social networks will be affected differently by mobile phones; and (2) women's access to household decision making will significantly affect tradeoffs between individual and household vulnerabilities.

该项目将研究移动电话如何增强或削弱农村社区弱势群体，特别是妇女的能力。它将提供关于移动技术对传统等级社会中社会赋权和脆弱性的影响的早期研究。它还将通过纳入社会网络分析和性别研究的观点来更好地解释家庭内部和家庭之间的动态，从而有助于发展以自然资源为基础的自给生计的现有理论。这项研究的结果将以不同的形式呈现给参与社区、当地发展非政府组织、小学生和研究生，以提高人们对社交网络和移动技术如何相互影响的认识，这些影响对不同的个人和群体是如何变化的，以及脆弱性是如何相关的。该项目还将支持美国的跨学科研究生教育，并改善国际社会科学数据基础设施。该合同是根据SBE-RCUK领导机构协议签订的。该项目嵌入了一个更大的研究背景，涉及移动信息和通信技术（ict）的快速传播。移动电话尤其被誉为减少全球贫困的变革性新工具。学者和发展专业人士都指出，电话可以大大减少获取信息的障碍，提高市场效率，增加储蓄，加快应急反应。另一种观点是，手机可以放大情况，而不是改变情况。在某些情况下，手机并没有被证明能改善沟通，这让学者们问，哪些生活可能会改变，哪些可能不会？有价值的工具可能对少数民族、妇女或穷人等社会地位不佳的人不那么有价值。这些关切在发展中国家尤其普遍，因为在这些国家，贫穷是普遍现象，社会地位是等级制的，性别、年龄和财富是获得机会、影响和权力的重要驱动因素。此外，在农村地区，电信基础设施可能参差不齐，医疗保健等资源的获取可能是随机的，干旱等环境冲击可能是毁灭性的。为了解决手机如何改变一些人的生活并简单地复制其他人的生活，该项目将使用混合定性和定量方法，在坦桑尼亚北部的几个马赛牧民社区中，在三年的时间里，研究手机如何影响女性和男性的社交网络、获取信息和决策的途径以及应对冲击的能力。主要假设包括：(1)手机对男性和女性社交网络的影响是不同的；(2)妇女参与家庭决策将显著影响个人脆弱性与家庭脆弱性的权衡。

项目成果

Mobile phones and women's empowerment in Maasai communities: How men shape women's social relations and access to phones

• DOI: 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2020.04.013
• 发表时间: 2020-05
• 期刊: Journal of Rural Studies
• 影响因子: 5.1
• 作者: Kelly H. Summers;Timothy D. Baird;E. Woodhouse;Maria Elisa Christie;J. McCabe;Felista Terta;Naomi Peter

Where mobile groups settle: Spatial patterns and correlates of Maasai pastoralist sedentarization in Northern Tanzania

• DOI: 10.1016/j.apgeog.2019.102086
• 发表时间: 2019-11
• 期刊: Applied Geography
• 影响因子: 4.9
• 作者: David Fox;Timothy D. Baird;M. Stern;S. Prisley

Mobile phones and wrong numbers: how Maasai agro-pastoralists form and use accidental social ties in East Africa

• DOI: 10.5751/es-12528-260241
• 发表时间: 2021
• 作者: Timothy D. Baird;J. McCabe;E. Woodhouse;I. Rumas;Stephen Sankeni;Gabriel Ole Saitoti