FEMALE AGING AND MOBILE PHONES: SHARING SUBJECTIVITIES AND COLLECTIVITIES IN MOBILITY PROCESSES

Abstract

This article analyzes aging women in their connections with digital technologies in urban mobility contexts. It studies women from the lower classes, aged sixty or over, who still work and travel in the city of Rio de Janeiro by subway and BRT with their cell phones. Dialoguing with digital anthropology and the agency between humans and non-humans, the study invests in an ethnographic approach to map the experiences of these women in the use of their cell phones, the consequences of these uses, and the relationships with broader sociocultural contexts. The research indicates that aging women navigate their cell phones during the trips of home-work routines with multiple connections: engaging in sociability along the way, with affective dialogues with people close to them, but also investing in subjective processes, activating memory with online games or following pages of spiritual guidance or connections with musicalities. Therefore, commuting time with mobile phones is designed as multifaceted: plural, challenging, with risks but also with creative opportunities.