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Kinship, gender, and communication technologies: Family dramas in the Tongan diaspora
Author(s) -
Nishitani Makiko
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/taja.12089
Subject(s) - diaspora , kinship , ethnography , sociology , information and communications technology , emerging technologies , gender studies , transnationalism , focus (optics) , political science , anthropology , law , physics , optics , politics , materials science , nanotechnology
When scholars of transnational studies examine communication technologies, they tend to focus on how the technologies help to maintain people's transnational ties. However, until recently, little attention has been given to the question of how the technologies become involved in conflicts in transnational contexts. Drawing on extensive fieldwork among Tongan migrants and their children in Australia, this article discusses how information, mediated by technologies, circulates and provokes ‘dramas’ among dispersed family members both in the diaspora and in Tonga. Such use of communication technologies is often further mediated by gender. Ethnographic descriptions of how mothers and daughters use communication technologies reveal interactive relationships between the technologies and people as well as culture.