Mobile (for) Development
When Digital Giants Take Care of Poor Women

This Element analyses the construction and effects of the use of cellphones to improve health and healthcare in developing contexts.

Marine Al Dahdah (Author)

9781009202428, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 15 September 2022

75 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 0.5 cm, 0.15 kg

With their widespread use in the Global South, mobile phones are attracting growing interest from international aid actors and local authorities alike, who are positioning mobile technology as a growth driver and a solution to many social problems. Initiated by giants of the digital industry, these policies are reviving old questions about technological development, the relationship between the market sector and States, and the role of technology in the inequalities between the Global North and Global South. Through a multi-sited ethnography on maternal care in Ghana and India, this Element provides a first-hand look at initiatives that promise to improve poor women's health in the Global South through the use of mobile phones; a field known as Mobile Health or mHealth. Attentive to the way in which these technical objects modify power relations at both international and local levels, this Element also discusses how mHealth transforms care practices and healthcare.

Introduction
1. Mobile Health: a 'simply brilliant' innovation
2. Key concepts and methods for studying mHealth
3. Global dependencies and North-South inequalities
4. Datafication, data work and data management of healthcare
5. Optimisation and performance management of healthcare workers
6. Intersecting technological inequalities
7. Conclusion and implications for future research.

Subject Areas: Women's health [VFDW], Mobile phone technology [TJKT1], Political economy [KCP], Economic growth [KCG], Social theory [JHBA], Sociology [JHB]