Search

This article presents ethnographic accounts of the mobile phone mediated experiences of connection and intimacy among young low-income women in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It argues that mobile phones are a 'pathway to empowerment' insofar as the ever-evolving social practices of 'wrong-number friendships', long-distance courtship, and the management and manipulation of new contacts on mobile phones broaden the range of social interactions, enable expressions of aspirational mobility, and contribute to the evolution of a sense of self. It also explores how the affective power of mobile phone communication in intimate relationships alters perceptions of distance and creates forms of 'immobile mobility'. Thus, this article builds on research that argues that the material affordances of a mobile phone challenge social and cultural gender norms and power dynamics. Moreover, by drawing out how mobility, gender and class intersect with the social and emotional experiences of low-income women in Bangladesh, it goes beyond existing literature and offers a more nuanced perspective on the notion that access to technology among marginalised and disempowered groups leads to poverty alleviation and greater equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bangladesh's garments workers have served as both an emblem of that country's rapid social and economic progress, and of the precarities of labour in global value chains. Based on an understanding of how disaster politics have played out in Bangladesh's history, this article explores whether and how the Rana Plaza disaster has been a critical juncture in the politics of the sector, resulting in a shift in power relations that empowers workers to demand and secure their rights. Drawing on a framework developed by Mark Pelling and Kathleen Dill for the analysis of the politics of natural disasters, the article explores the aftermath of the 2013 factory collapse in which 1,134 factory workers were killed. The article examines changes in workers' own agency and resources, and in their relationships to the state and transnational actors. The article concludes that while the disaster was a turning point in key respects, it has not – unlike previous major disasters in Bangladesh – generated an elite consensus over the priority of workers' rights and in particular of trade unions. Workers are more empowered than in the past but have yet to fully reverse their historical associational and structural disempowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]