Children’s Digital Experiences in Indian Slums : : Technologies, Identities, and Jugaad / / Kiran Vinod Bhatia.

• VerfasserIn: Bhatia, Kiran Vinod,
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam : : Amsterdam University Press, , [2024]; ©2024
• Year of Publication: 2024
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (180 p.)

Children’s Digital Experiences in Indian Slums departs from the universalising and rescue narratives of poor children and technologies. It offers complex stories on how children’s social identities (gender, caste, and religion), cultural norms, and personal aspirations influence their digital experiences. How do children challenge, circumvent, or reinforce the dominant sociocultural norms in their engagements with digital technologies? What can we learn about digital technologies and poor children’s jugaad and aspirations in the urban sprawls of India? I explore these questions ethnographically by focusing on how children in three urban slums in India access technologies, inhabit online spaces, and personalise their digital experiences, networks, and identity articulations based on their values and aspirations. I utilise insights from studies on jugaad, expression, and sociality to argue that poor children’s material realities, community relations, and aspirations for leisure, class mobility, and belongingness profoundly shape their engagements with digital technologies.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Living in a Technological Utopia -- 3 Fair Is Lovely; Boys Will Be Boys: Notes on Gender, Class, and Technologies -- 4 (Non)Negotiating Caste in Digital Encounters -- 5 Digital Traces of Religious Identities: On Belongingness and Anxiety -- 6 Inhabiting a Digital Dystopia? -- About the Author -- Index