Sociality Revisited? The Use of the Internet and Mobile Phones in Urban Cameroon

4. Practices of social networking – face-to-face and mediated social ties and support

175 4 Practices of social networking – face-to-face and mediated social ties and support In this chapter, I will look in particular into practices of social networking and access to social capital and support through these social networks, which are pursued on both a local face-to-face and a translocal mediated level. I will introduce different categories of social ties, and examine how notions of sociality and solidarity transform from local face-to-face to mediated social ties. This chapter thus relates to guiding questions number two and three. New Media seem to have a high potential in order to contribute to the transformation of New Media users’ agentic possibilities, in intentional practices of social networking, in the sense of a practical-evaluative adapting of these media. At the same time, these practices are strongly tied to blueprints for an ideal sociality or connectedness, as well as to alternative pathways for social mobility through New Media of communication. In this chapter, I intend to adapt a predominantly local perspective from the view of non-migrants in the context of Bamenda, before I will integrate views of migrants more specifically at a later stage in this book, in chapter 6. In this and the coming chapters, I will describe the increasing interconnections supported by New Media of communication, how they have transformed sociality, and how related social imaginaries of roles and norms, and thus expectations and claims on sociality and solidarity are negotiated, revised or enforced. Thereby, new opportunities seem to be integrated into existing norms and patterns of sociality, evaluated on their premises and pursued along the lines of acknowledged practices, within altered frameworks of reference, where they are prone to negotiation (compare Giddens 1976). I thereby understand the term negotiation as an on-going coordination of social practices of intersubjective meaning making, understanding and articulation by social groups and individuals. The concept of “liveness”, in the sense of potential and work may here be adopted in order to describe New Media users’ efforts to establish and maintain enduring social 176 relationships and networks, and articulating241 claims on social capital and notions of solidarity. Social units and networks based on co-presence – families, friends and lovers In this subchapter I will concentrate on primary social ties of connectedness, in varying degrees of closeness. In today’s globalizing world, communities are prone to being dispersed in spatial terms. Nevertheless, physical co-presence of individuals is the base on which basic sociality draws on. Mediated – or indirect - social interaction and relations are usually based on a relationship which has been built during face-to-face interaction prior to physical dislocation, based on a shared life-world as a base for the valuation of other’s comportment. In this sense, mediated social relationships should be examined contrasted with face-to-face social relationships of direct interaction. Kinship, families and households Kaberry (1952:15)242 distinguishes different categories of kinship243 : the “group of the house”, which is the elementary family, in polygamous households several wives and their children of the same father, the “group of the compound”, which also includes the co-resident patrilineage, and the “great group” of the patrilineal clan244 (compare Den Ouden 1987:7). Social network analysis has shifted the unit of analysis from the family to the household, placing emphasis on spatial proximity, as families are increasingly transnational. In this sense, the unit of the household relates to a community living together in the same 241 According to Förster (compare 2010), articulation is a part of practices of mutual negotiation, consisting in claim making, distanciation, connecting and dislocation. Such practices influence interpersonal communication processes and social relations, and are thus useful for my work. 242 Relating to the Nsaw, or Nso’ (compare Goheen 1996), an ethnic group in Cameroon’s North West province. 243 Studies of kinship and social organization lie at the core of migration studies in Anthropology. They evolve around the concept of the social network, which gained importance as anthropologists turned to the studies of complex societies and urban populations (Brettell 2008:124). 244 Or that of the father’s mother, or mother, varying between groups and situation in matrilineal or patrilineal tribes. 177 house or compound, in different interrelations, differentiation of roles, and division of work. Thus, a household is defined as an economic unit. However, members of a household who contribute to its functioning, do not necessarily live in co...