Anthropological studies of mobile phones
By Francisco Osorio
Our main question is what anthropological studies of mobile phones can be found in a literature review. For that reason we used three peer review journals databases: Abstract in Anthropology, Anthropological Index Anthropology Plus and Sage. We limited the search between 2000 and 2010 (although we need to wait until 2011 to have the 2010 list complete), using the keyword mobile.
The first problem is that the keyword mobile can direct to studies on mobility or other areas not related to mobile phones. The second problem is that at the beginning of the decade the words ‘cell phone’ or ‘cellular telephony’ were more frequent than today’s ‘mobile’, so some studies could not be discovered. The third problem is what can be labelled ‘anthropological’.
