OUR EVENTS

The Center for Technology and Social Behavior hosts a monthly speaker series that brings internationally renowned speakers to Northwestern University to meet with our researchers and present on a topic relevant to technology and social behavior. This year's lineup includes a brilliant collection of guests from around the world. You can also visit our CTSB Speaker Series Google Calendar for a complete listing of times and locations.

CTSB Lecture Series

Oct 27, 2009, 12pm
Barbara Rogoff, UC Santa Cruz
Cultural Aspects of Learning: Observation, Collaboration, and Multimodal Conversation
Frances Searle 1-483

Oct 29, 2009, 4pm
Dan Jurafsky, Stanford University
It's Not You, it's Me: Automatically Extracting Social Meaning from Speed Dates
Frances Searle 1-421

Nov 12, 2009, 4pm
Shinobu Kitayama, University of Michigan
The Social Self and the Social Brain: A Perspective of Cultural Neuroscience
Frances Searle 1-421

Dec 10, 2009, 4pm
Cynthia Breazeal, MIT Media Lab
Robots as Social Learners
Ford 1.350 (ITW)

Jan 21, 2010, 4pm
Pamela Hinds, Stanford University
Situated Knowing Who: Why Site Visits Matter in Global Work

Feb 18, 2010, 4pm
Fernanda Viégas, IBM Research
Visualizing the Inner Lives of Texts

Mar 11, 2010, 4pm
Elizabeth Churchill, Yahoo! Research
TBD

Apr 29, 2010, 4pm
Matthew Kam, Carnegie Mellon University
MILLEE: Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies

May 13, 2010, 4pm
Jenna Burrell, UC Berkeley
Evaluating Shared Access: Social Equality and the Circulation of Mobile Phones in Rural Uganda

Jenna Burrell
UC Berkeley

Evaluating Shared Access: Social Equality and the Circulation of Mobile Phones in Rural Uganda

Abstract:
Mobile phones are being rapidly and enthusiastically adopted in rural and even non-electrified regions in Uganda. This trend brings with it new paradigms of access and use as phones have quickly become incorporated into the social worlds and interpersonal intricacies of village life. In this talk I will consider the dynamics of mobile phone sharing. By sharing I mean the practice of granting access or redistributing a privately-owned good without direct financial compensation. Sharing as a social practice is undertheorized but can be better understood drawing from literatures on gifting, common property, moral economy, reciprocity, and other intimate forms of exchange. In this talk I will discuss some of the distinctive issues of equality in access to technology that arise from a multitude of sharing configurations. In rural Uganda, efforts at social policing and managing social obligations were mediated and concretized by mobile phones. Patterns of phone sharing led to preferential access for needy groups (such as those in ill health) while systematically and disproportionately excluding others (women in particular). I propose a framework that takes into account the distinct roles an individual may have in relation to the phone and the benefits that accrue asymmetrically to each role. This framework may be useful for revising survey design work on technology adoption and access to suit research in a broader diversity of settings beyond the Euro-American context.