1st Edition

Digital Technologies and Gendered Realities

Edited By Lakshmi Lingam, Nolwazi Mkhwanazi Copyright 2025
264 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge India

264 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge India

264 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge India

The book explores the varying experiences and engagement of youth with smartphones and digital technologies in India and South Africa. It examines the process of meaning-making (identity construction) garnered through smartphone technology — specifically relating to notions of love, sex, and sexuality. A keen reappraisal of the smartphone revolution, the essays underline the constant... Read more

1. Smartphones, Surveillance, Power and Digital Lives: Connecting India and South Africa

Lakshmi Lingam & Nolwazi Mkhwanazi

 

Part I: Social Media & Digital Apps: Technology of the Self

2. Living the #blessed life: Compensated relationships and social media in Johannesburg

Lebohang Masango

3. Ladies first? How Heterosexual Women Navigate the Gendered World of Online Dating in Delhi-NCR

Nishta Jaiswal

4. Public Displays of Affection: Experiences of Youth as they Negotiate Private and Public Love

Gabby Sipho Dlamini & Nolwazi Mkhwanazi  

5. Mobility, mediation and multiple men: an exploration of the role of mobile phones in young women’s sexual partnerships and social networks in Khayelitsha, Cape Town

Alison Swartz

 

Part II: Production of ‘good girls’ within the Context of Disruptive Technologies

6. Mobile phones and "Good Muslim Women": Narratives of young women from the old city of Hyderabad, India

Neha Dhingra, Nidhi Wali &  Debanjali Saha 

7. “Good girls” and “smart boys”: Mobile Phones and the Social Reproduction of Gender

Lakshmi Lingam & Isha Ballamudi 

8. Mobile Phones, Control and Violence: Experiences from Gujarat

Pragya Joshi, Sejal Dand & Neeta Hardikar

  

Part III: Surveillance, Gendered Negotiations & Legal Meanings

9. Young women’s engagement with mobile phones: A family justice perspective 

Albertina de J. P. Almeida

10. Gendered Surveillance, Family Connections and Conflicts: An Ethnographic Perspective on Mobile Phone Usage by Migrant Brides in North India

Paro Mishra

 

Part IV: Unpacking ‘Digital Natives’, Policy and Technology-supported Interventions

11. Between Panic and Protection: Children and Young People’s Encounters with Online Pornography

Deevia Bhana

12. Gendered Use of Mobile Technology among Young Children in Urban India: Is there a Difference between the ‘Haves’ and the ‘Have-Less’?

Anjula Srivastava & Vinita Datye 

13. Kishor Varta: Using Information Communication Technology (ICT) for changing gender discriminatory social norms among boys and young men in Rajasthan, India

Rimjhim Jain, Shreeti Shakya, Abhijit Das, Satish Kumar Singh, Jagdish Lal & Sana Contractor

 

Biography

Lakshmi Lingam was the Dean and Professor of the School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India, till February 2023, when she superannuated after working at the Institute for nearly 35 years. Currently, she is a Chair Professor with the School of Public Health at the D Y Patil University, Navi Mumbai, India. Lakshmi’s research interests lie in researching gender, employment, health, public policies, social movements, sexualities, social inequalities and digital citizenship.

Nolwazi Mkhwanazi is a Professor of anthropology and Deputy Director of the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Nolwazi’s research focuses on youth sexuality, sex education, and sexual health interventions. Her current project is called Reimagining Reproduction: Making Babies, Making Kin and Citizens in Africa.