The Mobile Phone in Siberia: The Impact of a New 
Communication Technology on the Everyday Culture 
of a Postsocialist Society 
Leonie Schiffauer 
Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane. 
Cambridge CB23RF 
Abstract. This paper explores the interdependency between a new technology and society in Siberia. It 
is argued that the use of the mobile phone must be analyzed with regard to the cultural context. The 
author explains the mobile phone’s significance through its central function: the quick and easy access 
to social networks. The technology supports the organization of reciprocity within these networks and 
affects forms of communication and social interaction. The use of the mobile phone in Siberia under 
lines the importance of social networks and their specific structure in postsocialist societies. 
[postsocialism, social networks, mobile phone, Siberia, reciprocity] 
Within just a few years the mobile phone has spread worldwide and has become an 
integral part of our modern network society (Castells 1996:469—478), a society 
‘whose social structure and social practices are organized around microelectronics- 
based networks of information and communication‘ (Castells et al. 2007:258). In 
non-Western societies in particular the mobile phone is in many places the first non- 
unidirectional communication technology that a majority of people has access to. In 
this paper I want to argue that the mobile phone’s use is deeply embedded in its cul- 
tural context, for it is closely associated with state structures, legal systems, social pat- 
cerns and economic factors. In order to understand the application of the technology 
one has to be familiar with the environment in which it is used. Not only is the tech- 
nology adapted to local realities; it also has an impact on them. A global technology 
like the mobile phone does not imply cultural homogenization (Appadurai 1997:11), 
Decause it stands in a complex interrelation with its environment. 
The idea to systematically investigate the use of the mobile phone I had during my 
studies at Irkutsk University. The ubiquity of the mobile phone and the significance 
that was attributed to the technology surprised me and in several instances I was fasci- 
nated by the way it was used. To collect data for my master’s thesis I conducted two 
months of ethnographic field research on the use of the mobile phone among Buryats 
in the Southeast of Russia in a town located in the autonomous Aginsk district near 
che border with Mongolia. This paper summarizes the main results of my thesis. Par- 
(icipant observation was an important method during my research as the presence of 
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 138 (2013) 23-36 
& 2014 Dietrich Reimer Verlag