“I can´t live without a cell phone”: sociability, consumption, corporality and new practices in urban cultures

Abstract

In this article I analize some of the implications brought about by the centrality that cell phones have acquired in daily life. Assuming as a premiss the increasing relationship between culture and consumption in contemporaneity, I reflect upon the theme by priviledging a theoretical framework of consumption as communication. Such a framework favours the social agents’ vision regarding their own practices. In this sense, and departing from the relations between cell phones and consumer culture, I present the findings of recent ethnographic research on the topic, developed recently in various parts of the world. Finally, I present data from my own fielwork. The analysis of the data points, among other changes, to the important role played by cell phones in the symbolic inclusion of individuals – especially the young – in the cultural logic characteristic of contemporaneity: instantaneous, mobile and virtual.