The Mobile Phone as a Transitional Object

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The Mobile Phoneas a Transitional Object

• Rivka Ribak
• Department of Communication
• University of Haifa, Israel, 31905

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Goals of This Talk

• Reclaim the family as a meaningful unit of
  analysis for studying the mobile phone
• Propose to study the mobile as an object rather
  than as a means of communication
• Reflect on the use of the notion of transitional
  object for thinking about the mobile phone

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Research on the Mobile among Youths The
Emancipator

• The mobile is perceived as a tool for
• "bypassing parental restrictions on the use of
  landlines
• "aiding young people to bypass parental
  authority and gain control over contact and
  access"
• and (ironically, through screening or opting
  out)
• "liberating young people from the new forms of
  parental surveillance the mobile facilitated
• (Henderson, Taylor and Thomson, 2002, p. 507)

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• Peer culture of mediated communication
• Collecting practices, collective reading
  composing messages, initiating specialized
  communication
• Parents are all but absent
• "I'm at a football practice. Pick me up at 730,"
  
• but also
• "mommy, I love you, I took out the garbage
• (Kasesniemi and Rautiainen, 2002 p. 172)

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Relational Metaphors

• The mobile as
• Remote control
• (Vestby, 1994, p. 104)
• Umbilical cord
• (Ling, 2004, p. 100)
• between parents and their children.

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Problems with This Model

• Individuation as separation, Launching
• Generational relations within families have been
  neglected and young people have been studied
  within the public domainin schools, peer groups,
  lifestyles and private markets. The household
  domain, which is a key arena in which the
  transition to adulthood takes place, has been
  ignored. Young peoples transitions to adulthood
  from their own perspectives have been less
  evident. The theoretical focus has been the issue
  of social control of, rather than the extension
  of rights and responsibilities to, young people
  in the transition to adulthood. Moreover, the
  concentration upon youth within the public arena
  has led, until recently, to the neglect of young
  women (Brannen, 1999, p. 215).

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• The Israeli case A challenge to the notion of
  generational separation as a cultural personal
  goal (Birenbaum-Carmeli, 1999, p. 46)
• Israelis desire more children, and have more
  children, than people in other industrialized
  countries these children, in turn, remain a
  central focus of concern for their parents for a
  longer period of time than in most industrialized
  countries (Lavee and Katz, 2003, p. 205)
• Israeli adolescents reported more parental care,
  less control (Canetti et. Al., 1997)

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The Theoretical Framework

• Donald W. Winnicott, Object Relations Theory
• This object is the focus of a great deal of
  emotional and cognitive activity. It is the first
  mark of the infants recognition that he or she
  is in some sense separate from the mother. It is
  the focus of all the powerful emotional energies,
  desires and fantasies which have been attached to
  the mother as an extension of the infant, but
  which are increasingly vulnerable because the
  mother goes away.. (Silverstone, 1993, p. 581-2)

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• This object becomes vitally important to the
  infant for use at the time of going to sleep, and
  as a defense against anxiety. It becomes a
  comfort and a comforter. It is taken everywhere,
  cherished for its familiarity, a magical object
  embodying the continuities of care but also the
  infants emerging powers of creativity..

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• In terms of simple metaphorical substitution,
  which is what it is, the transitional object
  stands for the breast (as indeed the breast
  stood for the mother previously), but in the
  space created by the metaphor it is the object
  through which the infant begins to distinguish
  between him/herself and the mother (..), and
  equally important, between fantasy and reality.
  The space is the space of illusion the capacity
  to imagine, the capacity, indeed, to create
  meaning. (Silverstone, 1993, p. 581-2)

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Observations

• And interviews, Israel 2000-4
• 30 youths (12-18) and their parents

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Themes

• Ownership, reasons for purchasing
• Tolerance, constructions of care privacy
• Bills, who pays for what
• Mutuality, practices of being connected
• The sense of freedom

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The Mobile as a Transitional Object

• Silverstone The television as a transitional
  object
• The interpretation of the mobile phone as a
  transitional object
• Introduces the family into the discussion about
  mobiles transitional objects
• Highlights the role of the mobile as an object,
  as potential communication

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Thank you!rribak_at_research.haifa.ac.ilhttp//hev
ra.haifa.ac.il/com/faculty-panorama/rivki.htm???
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