I just finished reading Rich Ling’s New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication Is Reshaping Social Cohesion. This book is a lovely accumulation of the oeuvre of Ling’s research over the last decade. It is a healthy rain-forest of citations and unique connections between cellphones and sociological theory on interaction rituals. And if you don’t want to read thousands of pages of original Durkheim, Goffman, and Collins, Ling provides a GREAT summary of each theorist.
That being said, I have some major concerns with Ling’s latest book.
My concerns reflect a personal dialogue with myself that is getting louder as I prepare to enter into one year of continuous 24/7 fieldwork in China. This dialogue is about me making sure that I am as reflexive as possible about how I embed myself into my field site so as to avoid the concerns in Ling’s book that I outline below.
I find that there are few ethnographies about new ICTs that show the researcher being reflective about their position in the fieldsite. When I read danah boyd’s dissertation a few months ago, I was so delighted that she wrote about her deep and ongoing reflection about herself and her fieldwork. I hope that my review below shows why it is is important for ethnographers of ICTs to be reflexive if you engage in deep ethnography of subjective, granular social interaction - which Ling did not do.
The interesting thing is that Rich Ling’s work was so invaluable to me years in the early years of my research. When the sociologists in my department laughed in my face when I told them that I research cellphones, I found inspiration and validation in Ling’s research. I filled my office with his papers and his first book. Ling’s work was a reminder that someone else out there was a sociologist who talked about cellphones.
This is all to say that Rich Ling has been an important intellectual partner from afar (even though he doesn’t know who I am). Ling’s work thing was the only one I could turn to when I wanted to leave academia (before I met Barry Brown). Barry then then introduced me to a world wide network of amazing researchers on the social use of cellphones, from his own work to Genevieve Bell to Alex Taylor to Richard Harper to Mimi Shelly and John Urry. So reading Ling’s latest book is quite a disappointment. It seems like he didn’t evolve as a researcher. This book amplifies all the problems of his papers and books instead of ameliorating them. Nevertheless, I offer my critique below.
I question Ling’s main premise - that the mobile creates social cohesion. There are many other reasons why this book is questionable but my three biggest concerns are:
1) his sampling methodology
2) his over reliance on data that was obtained through primarily ethnographic participant observations
3) his elite normative assumptions of what makes a “successful” ritual of social cohesion
I worry that this book will be used by future ICT researchers use as a model in which to do research on tech use. I worry that non-qualitative researchers will think that this is good qualitative research OR that this is what all qualitative research looks like. This book has received a lot praise within the community and has won a lot of awards. For all the reasons I outline below, I don’t think his book serves as a good model for research.
Rather, I think this book is an excellent case study for what works and what doesn’t work — things like what kind of questions can be asked and what kind of methods are best for certain questions. Unfortunately, it’s a great case study for what happens when an ethnographer is not reflexive about their position in the field site.
Most worrisome to me is the way that Ling uses his own analysis to patrol how other communities use technologies. Researchers who are not conscious about class and culture may think that they can just make normative decisions of what counts as acceptable interaction. This is why I am so motivated about my own research - because if researchers only analyze how elite communities use technologies from their own elite position, then they’re going to produce analysis that reifies existing inequalities and assumptions about low-income and non-elite users.
1.) sampling methodology
Ling falls into the trap of sampling on the dependent variable: social cohesion. So it goes like this - Ling was looking for data to prove that mobiles create social cohesion. He makes observations of mobiles creating social cohesion. Therefore, he concludes that mobile phones create social cohesion! He found what he was looking for - mobiles creating social cohesion! His methodological and analytical strategy makes no room for any other types of interactions or analysis because his research design and methods to affirm an pre-determined outcome.
2.) over-reliance on participant observation, limits of theoretical engagement
Most of Ling’s data is collected through casual participant observations of interaction in public places where he positioned himself as a witness within audible distance of callers. His participants did not know that they were being observed. He did not conduct follow up interviews with the co-present caller or the caller on the other end. He says that he “was not interested in the dialogue of the individuals” because he was more concerned with how [individuals] carried themselves in the situation” (19-20). It’s not the use of participant observation that is the problem, it’s that he used this method to answer his research question - a question that needs subjective insight from BOTH callers on the context and content of interaction.
Ling assumes that all interactions are efforts to strengthen social cohesion. But he could never find out otherwise or even confirm. With his self-positioning as a witness to the interaction, he does not talk to either parties about the call afterwards. We can never ascertain the intent behind the interaction between the callers.
- What of the subjective intentions of the talker?
- What if the call was about information?
- What if the call was a fight?
- What if the caller felt obligated to take the call?
- What if the caller was having a secret affair with someone?
We will never know the answers to these questions because Ling never asks them. Hopefully readers are clever enough to know that human interaction isn’t ALWAYS about social cohesion - even if it’s within strong ties.
Part of the problem that Ling runs against is the limitations of the theories he draws upon. Durkheimian theories and its offshoots are functional theories - they seek to explain how a society functions instead of how it changes over time. As such, Ling has provided a functional theory of mobile use. Functional theories are not any less valuable or valid than other types of theories about ICT use, but in a book that’s supposed to be new transformations, they aren’t as useful for accounting for CHANGE in ICT practices.
3) his elite normative assumptions of what makes a “successful” ritual of social cohesion
The issue that concerns me the most is Ling’s normative definitions of what rituals of social cohesion look like. This is made apparent through the story that he opens the book with on page 1 where he details the interaction with a plumber at his house in Oslo, Norway.
Ling describes a moment outside on the front porch of his house where he was bidding goodbye to several guests who had just spent the night. In the middle of this intimate farewell interaction, a plumber— that Ling had called— arrived. The plumber, whom Ling had never met before, was on his mobile phone as he walked up to the porch. The plumber stayed on his phone, walked past Ling and his house guests, gave Ling a “minimal nod” and then “stopped in the vestibule and took off his shoes—as common in Norway—and then continued down the hallway into the kitchen.” (1).
Ling says that “the plumber’s entrance disturbed the farewells” (1). He was offended that there was “no salutation, no handshake, no exchange of names. This was a breach. It was a failed ritual” (21). Ling says that
“the entrance of the plumber was… an example of how mobile communication has interrupted the flow of normal co-present ritual interaction. There was not the normal greeting we expect when receiving visitors into our home.”
Ling’s story reveals a lot more about social anxieties around technology use as it intersects with class and culture than it does about Ling’s argument of social cohesion. This interaction is a collision of Ling’s and the plumber’s differing cultural and class expectations. Ling, an international elite researcher, calls the plumber, a working-class local Norwegian plumber in Norway. The plumber is not on the same equal social standing as Ling’s house guests. Ling, a cosmopolitan researcher, has a different set of expectations for rituals of social cohesion.
Back in the early 20th century when landline telephones were first introduced in the US, AT&T and other phone companies created etiquette instruction booklets on the “proper” uses of the telephone. These booklets warned males against being too loud and to avoid the use of curse words that female telephone operators could over hear. Women were admonished for initiating phone calls to men, initiating new anxieties for mothers around the country. While the examples I have given speak to concerns around gender boundaries, Ling’s story essentially echoes the same concerns but in regards to class.
Did Ling ever consider that the plumber only saw himself as a “hired worker” to accomplish a task? It is likely that the plumber didn’t see himself as a “visitor” but as a hired service worker. A service worker is not the same as a house guest visitor. The interactions are different because the hired service worker and houses guests are embedded in different structural socio-economic positions.
Ethnographies of class and social interaction have illustrated the vast number of ways normative expectations of social behavior map onto class positions. Elites from higher-income stratas, institutions, or social status often patrol, surveil, and regulate the ways non-elites interact with institutions, use technologies, and interact in everyday life. Sociological researchers have documented time and time again (to name a few Pierre Bourdieu, Paul Willis, Paul Gilroy, Carol Stack, Michael Dunnier, Annette Lareau, Michelle Lamont) that when working class people interact with those they perceive to be in a higher-income or social status bracket, working-class people behave in different ways and are often not comfortable in these situations. One behavior is to to retreat into the background and to make one’s self as invisible as possible so as to not disturb a situation. By giving just a minimal nod before walking in, the plumber may have doing exactly this - trying to avoid disrupting the intimate social conversation between Ling and his house guests!
- What if the plumber felt uncomfortable and unsure about how to interact at that moment?
- What if he saw all those people on the porch and felt anxiety about disrupting a ritual interaction?
- If is possible that the plumber realized this to be an important “ritual” that he didn’t want to interrupt?
Or what if the plumber saw all the people on the porch and didn’t know who lived at the house? Who made the call for him to come? This is very likely considering that Ling says he had never met the plumber before, the door was open, and there were several people on the porch.
So what if Ling is the one who failed at a ritual interaction - what if he didn’t make himself known as the person who called the plumber? What if Ling misread the interaction and the plumber was giving a general nod to everyone on the porch?
And what does it say about Ling who didn’t stop the plumber to say, “hey, are you the plumber? I’m the one who called. I live here.” Ling’s annoyance seems very passive-aggressive to me.
Essentially, what if Ling failed to understand local Norwegian culture? In talking with my Norwegian and Swedish friends, they have said that of all the Scandinavian countries, Norway is known to be the “least cultured.” This is not to say that they actually are, but among popular discourse and history - that is a stereotype. Norway was not a wealthy country until the last few decades when oil was discovered. The government was very smart about investing this money in tourism and social security for every Norwegian citizen. But the stereotype still holds that Norwegians are notorious for lacking what the French and Austrians would call “good manners.” Norway is also know for their strong working class culture and for having one of the strongest communal cultures. It is said that they emphasize the task to be accomplished over small talk or any interaction that gets in the way of getting the work done. If what my Northern Europeans friends have told me about Norway is more or less the case, than the interaction Ling described with the plumber is quite reflective of Norwegian cultural norms.
Another possibility is that has nothing to with the cellphone but is instead a story of deep user experience. Haven’t you been so immersed in a book or the confusion of instructions - that you lost track of what was going on around you?
Now it is also just as likely that this was less about class etiquette than the plumber’s subjective priorities. The subject of the call could’ve been about the work. What if the plumber was obtaining crucial information to fix Ling’s pipes at the time he stepped into the frame? While Ling does consider this possibility he sees it as a matter of social cohesion, not of socio-economic priorities to fulfill a job.
__________
So hey Rich what was plugged up in your house that got you so anxious about the plumber? Did one of the house guests over-use your toilet? Maybe that was why you were so sensitive to the plumber? So did the plumber fix it? How was the interaction afterwards? Were you so annoyed that the plumber sensed your annoyance, got embarrassed, and that just made the whole interaction sour and beyond rescue?
I am curious about how you handled the interaction afterwards. I wonder if you just didn’t say anything about it to the plumber at that moment only to years or months later write about this frustrating moment as the intro to your book - to essentially tell the world that this “naive” Norwegian plumber failed at a social ritual.
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REFLEXIVITY
My concerns point to several issues that all ethnographers encounter in the field - their own position in it and their relation to all their participants. This is why reflexivity is super important. I would’ve loved for Ling to reflect more upon his own position in his work. This would’ve helped Ling account for his normative assumptions. There is no acknowledgment that the views he holds are partial and situated.
Because Ling does not engage in self-reflexivity of his own situated view, Ling allows his normative expectations of a “normal greeting” to cloud his analysis. When the plumber “fails” the ritual, Ling attributes this “awkward” social interaction to the plumber prioritizing his own mobile conversation over the co-present interaction with Ling. Ling assumes that the plumber was solidifying a close social tie at the expense of the co-present interaction with Ling. It appears that Ling was projecting his own argument about mobiles onto the plumber.
Did Ling bother to talk to the plumber about this afterwards to find out the nature of the mobile phone call? What Ling attributes to lack of social manners of “flawed etiquette” (21), is a possible social collision of globalization where people of different classes, backgrounds, nationalities, subjectivites are thrown together.
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SOCIOLOGY and CELLPHONES
Now that the field of sociology is finally coming to realize that “society” uses digital tools - they are scrambling to find ways to analyze their recent discovery. Unfortunately many of them keep going back to the same old European scholars who were trying to make sense of a world in the 1800-1900’s (!).
After years of sociology classes, I got tired of writing about cellphones within the context of dead sociologists. There are limits to all theories, especially those that were written in a completely different era (industrial). though my department has urged me to publish my papers on cellphones and Marxian, Weberian, and Durkheimian theory, I chose not to. Instead I just make them available for download on my website because those papers were not based on thorough qualitative research. Because I had never been one for writing ungrounded theory papers, they felt more like writing exercises for me.
But it appears that Ling has found a lot of fans by grooming his data for the world of sociology.
So here’s a lesson - if you want to study cellphones and be loved by sociologists, here are are some book ideas and dissertations that might be embraced by a sociology department:
- cellphones are a form of alienation - Marx!
- cellphones tap into the collective concious - Durkheim!
- cellphones aren’t about class - they are about social status- Weber!
- cellphones allow for sociation - Simmel!
- cellphones create anomie - Durkheim!
- cellphones destroy primary ties of community (gemeniscaft), not loose ties of society (gesellschaft) - Tonnies!
Cultural Bytes engages with research on information communication technology (ICT) users of low-income communities. This is run by Tricia Wang - me! My motivation is to better understand how low-income/under-served populations manage their social connections with a variety of practices. I bring attention to the ways that low-income users challenge, change, and innovate ICT usage patterns. I focus on mobile populations, such as migrants and youth in Mexico, China and US.
When does something stop being a “technology”? The word technology is a loaded term that is full of futuristic newness— the information age, the network society, the post-industrial era—-all the hopes and fears of “modernity.” These thoughts swirled in my mind when my friend forwarded me Karen’s Leland’s column from The Huffington Post, 
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