oa Veldwerk en mobiele telefoons op het Victoriameer, Uganda

Field work and mobile phones at Lake Victoria, Uganda

This article discusses the role of mobile phones in anthropological fieldwork. Based on research around Lake Victoria (Uganda), this article shows that in the local fishery, mobile phones play a crucial part. At the same time, it appears that increasingly mobile social relations are difficult to observe, that new social rules emerge, and that the mobile phone introduces new forms of exclusion. This imposes new requirements on the fieldworker, and the article argues that the mobile phone as a research instrument offers new, often unexpected, opportunities. As a result, the mobile phone might acquire a key position within the craft of anthropological fieldwork.