Waiting for power: Mobile phones off the grid and the ethnographic method

Power and constraint in the field

The fieldsite discussed here is a region of rural village settings where access to basic infrastructure was limited and uneven. While mobile phones were widely present, the conditions enabling their use were not consistently available, namely electricity and internet access. Rather than being taken for granted, access to power was an ongoing practical concern that shaped everyday activity. Indeed, for some time after returning from the field, I found myself immediately charging all my devices upon returning to my apartment in Vancouver as a matter of habit and ethnographic hangover, alongside maintaining a stockpile of tinned meats and instant noodles, both ubiquitous in the South Pacific. The issue also is part of the techniques of ethnographic data management. In 2014 and 2015 I stored my data on MicroSD cards and external hard drives. On my 2026 trip, Elise Hornstra and I encountered the challenge that our phones had no SD port, much more internal storage than a decade before but we still maxed them out and had to wait until returning from Malaita to the country’s capital of Honiara before accessing internet fast and reliable enough to transfer materials and backups to my professional “cloud storage” data system. The technical objects advance in complexity but encounter the same patterns of disconnectivity.

Electricity in the villages were often described in terms of difficulty and effort. As I have noted elsewhere, people frequently explained that charging a phone was “hard” (hadom), because it depended on access to fuel, generators, and social relations. Grid electricity was absent, and power was instead generated through small-scale, privately owned generators that required fuel and regular maintenance. Over time an increasing number of solar power panels supplement the system but electricity is by no means ubiquitous. As a result, charging a phone was rarely a simple or immediate task. Villagers regularly contrasted these conditions with those in urban centers. During fieldwork, people often noted that “in the village there is no power,” while in Auki, the provincial capital, or Honiara phones could be charged more easily, even though electricity is often cut in these locations too. Such comparisons did not necessarily express dissatisfaction: they articulated a shared understanding that access to electricity in the village was conditional, contingent, and situational rather than assumed. Crucially, electricity was experienced as a social resource (Hobbis, 2021a). Access to power frequently depended on relationships with those who owned generators or controlled fuel supplies or had working solar power. Charging a phone therefore involved negotiation inside of traditional systems of Melanesian reciprocity. This manifests as a particular tempo of timing and obligation in exchange of goods and services. Power, in this sense, was something one accessed through social ties.

Understanding power and infrastructural constraint in this setting requires situating electricity and related material conditions as simultaneously technical and social phenomena. Anthropological work on infrastructure has shown that what appears to be a “technical absence” is often deeply embedded in social relations (Larkin 2013; Star and Ruhleder 1996). In contexts where grid electricity is unavailable or unreliable, scholars have documented how access to power becomes interwoven with reciprocity (Anand 2017; Simone 2004). In settings where grid electricity is absent or unreliable, access to power often depends on negotiation, reciprocity, and differential control over resources, rendering infrastructure a site of social differentiation (Anand, 2017; Simone, 2004). Studies of energy access in low-resource contexts have similarly demonstrated how generators, fuel, and charging infrastructures shape everyday expectations and obligations, structuring both economic activity and social hierarchy (Munro and Schiffer 2019). Situating electricity in the Lau Lagoon within this literature underscores that what appears as infrastructural deficit is, ethnographically, a dense field of social relations through which access is mediated and contested.

Scholars of ethnography-as-practice consistently demonstrate that material constraints, and it doesn’t matter what they may be, ranging from economic, infrastructural, or bureaucratic, shape social life and the positionality and practice of the ethnographer themselves, hence my ethnographic hangover upon returning from the field. Studies of work and marginalization show how access to resources is mediated through social relations that the ethnographer must also navigate (Bourgois and Schonberg 2009; Wacquant 2002). In this sense, electricity in North Malaita is an infrastructural variable and a condition that situates the ethnographer within the same circuits of dependence and negotiation as their interlocutors. Studying the sociality of electricity is a critical emphasis on fieldwork as relationally embedded and materially constrained (see also Hobbis, 2021b). This case foregrounds these disruption in Melanesia. Many ethnographers have written about disconnection in digital systems. Several have written about infrastructural disruption in Melanesia.

In the specific domain of mobile technologies, Horst (2012) emphasizes that infrastructure matters as a background condition that acts as a structuring force in how people incorporate phones into daily life. Tenhunen (2008) similarly argues that infrastructure cannot be analytically separated from use, as charging routines and network access shape when, where, and whether phones are carried and activated. These insights extend classic STS arguments about the materiality and invisibility of infrastructure into ethnographic accounts of communication technologies in low-resource environments. The focus here on electricity as a negotiated social resource resonates with these literatures, drawing attention to how material non-use is intimately tied to social practice.

Phones that move, phones that wait

During the afternoon of one Saturday, two boys went “walkabout” (for a walk, similar to flaneur) in a Lau village. This, in itself, was unremarkable. What was striking, however, was the manner in which they did so. One boy walked ahead listening to music through oversized earphones connected by cable to a smartphone. The second followed behind carrying a handheld solar panel, also connected by cable to the phone in order to keep its battery charged. After a time, the two boys switched roles.

This conspicuous display of digital consumption provoked a response. A third boy intervened, ripping the earphones from the head of the lead boy in a fit of jealously. A fight ensued, with the first two boys hurling insults at the mother of the third. From the perspective of village leaders, the problem was not the use of the phone itself. While it may have been wise for the boys to be less flamboyant in their exclusive enjoyment of music, this alone did not constitute a serious transgression. Although conspicuous displays in what may reasonably be called an egalitarian society, if such a thing is possible, are never good. The more serious offense occurred when insults were directed at a woman, and specifically at a mother. As a result, it was the extended family unit - a Traeb or perhaps more similar to the classic anthropological concept of a “clan” - of the first two boys that was ultimately held responsible and required to pay compensation.

By foregrounding the circulation and temporary truancy of mobile phones, this article extends these insights to digital technologies, showing how waiting for a device, much like waiting for paperwork, wages, or transport, becomes a key site where social relations are articulated and ethnographic understanding emerges (see also Hetherington 2011). What is analytically significant here is the conditions under which access was made possible and temporarily sustained: content took a back seat in relevance. The phone’s usability depended on continuous bodily coordination, improvised infrastructure, and visible effort. Access was collectively produced and conspicuous.

Importantly, mobile phones in the village were rarely stable personal objects. Although ownership was commonly recognized, possession was often temporary and contingent. One of the most common reasons for this instability was the need to charge phones elsewhere. Because few households had regular access to electricity, phones were frequently left with those who owned generators or had access to fuel or solar panels. As a result, phones often circulated independently of their owners, sometimes for several days at a time. This circulation was central to how phones were understood locally. As Inone et al. (2021) note in Solomon Islands, mobile devices are communication tools “around which social and cultural relationships and meanings coalesce.” Their movement through social networks is therefore an expression of ownership, a constitutive feature of their social life. Circulation had methodological consequences. Asking about a phone often meant being told that it was elsewhere, left with someone who could charge it. In such moments, the device itself was unavailable for observation, and explanation necessarily shifted toward where the phone had gone, who was responsible for charging it, and when it might return. These explanations frequently unfolded over time rather than in a single encounter, as waiting became part of the research process.

Mobile phone absenteeism, waiting for a phone, was described as an ordinary part of village life. Waiting, in this sense, was framed as a temporary inconvenience which was an expected condition of mobile phone use. The temporary separation of people and their phones had important consequences for how phones were understood as objects. Villagers frequently emphasized that a phone was “not really yours” while it was being charged somewhere else. Ownership was thus partial and situational, dependent on access to power and on relationships with others who could provide it.

For the ethnographer, access to phones was similarly partial. Observation was often deferred, rescheduled, or abandoned altogether because the material conditions of phone use placed the device beyond immediate reach. This is normal for ethnographic research in Melanesia and in other similar places. Waiting for a phone to return, just like political anthropologists may have to wait for a ministerial office to re open, became a routine aspect of fieldwork, shaping the tempo of research and the kinds of interactions that were possible. These conditions also shaped everyday movement within villages. Phones were not consistently carried on the body, particularly when they could not be charged. During routine activities such as walking between houses, fishing, or attending meetings, phones were often left behind. When asked about this practice, people explained that without power there was little point in carrying a phone. This pragmatic assessment complicates assumptions about constant connectivity or bodily attachment to digital devices. A phone with a depleted battery, missing from the body, did not require explanation. This meant that the presence of a phone could not be assumed. Moments of use were episodic and observation had to be opportunistic rather than planned. From this vantage, circulation structured when observation, explanation, and participation could take place. The movement of phones, their periodic disappearance, and the waiting they required were integral features of the phenomenon under study.

Anthropological research on mobile phones has consistently, since early work in Jamaica, emphasized their embedding in everyday social relations rather than their novelty as technical devices (Horst 2012; Horst and Miller 2006). Mobile phones are taken up in ways that reflect local moral economies, infrastructural conditions, and patterns of social dependence. Studies of mobile phone use in rural and low-infrastructure settings show that access is often contingent, shaped by constraints such as electricity availability and network coverage rather than individual preference alone (Tenhunen 2008, 2018). From this perspective waiting, and partial access are success stories of adoption, and ordinary conditions of mobile phone use. A substantial body of anthropological research has challenged assumptions of individual ownership and continuous access in studies of mobile phone use, emphasizing instead shared devices, negotiated availability, and uneven connectivity (Horst 2012; Horst and Miller 2006). Tenhunen’s work on mobile telephony in rural India demonstrates that intermittent access to electricity and networks is a structural condition shaping communicative practices and social expectations (Tenhunen 2008, 2018). Similarly, Archambault’s ethnography of mobile phones in Mozambique highlights how complicated these narratives of technological empowerment can be (Archambault, 2017). Meanwhile, Burrel’s ethnographic work has shared the experiences of invisible users in urban Ghanian internet cafes, where people make relationships across distances previously only traversed by elites (2012). Across contexts such as rural India and Africa, intermittent access shapes use. What distinguishes the Melanesian case here is not a syncopation, per se, but how it reorganizes ethnographic method itself. This article extends this literature by examining what ethnographic engagement looks like when access itself is delayed or otherwise unavailable and when phones are known ethnographically through movement and waiting rather than continuous use. For technographic research conducted in such contexts, waiting is therefore not optional. It is through these conditions that the social relations underpinning digital technologies become most visible, and it is through adapting to them that ethnographic knowledge about mobile phones is produced.

Breakdown as data

Breakdown has long been recognized as a privileged moment for eliciting explanation. When routines fail, whether through violence, malfunction, or institutional collapse, participants are often compelled to articulate assumptions that ordinarily remain tacit (Desjarlais 1997; Jackson 2014). In this sense, moments of mobile phone failure in the Lau Lagoon function analogously to other ethnographic sites of disruption documented in the ethnographic record, across diverse locations including Washington D.C. and Havana (Bell et al., 2018; Kohn and Sire 2022). Viewing malfunction as a loss of data misses out on what ethnography is often about, astute researchers treat it as an ethnographic resource that prompts retrospective narration. This is about moral controversies, like the boys doing a digital flaneur, and social calibration. Rather than being treated as exceptional events, these moments of technical and social disruption were incorporated into everyday assessments of what phones could and could not do. When phones stopped working, people often explained that they had been “spoiled” (spoelem) through misuse, overcharging, or exposure to water. Breakdown was rarely understood as a purely technical matter. Explanations of failure were embedded in narratives about care, responsibility, and circulation. Responsibility for damage was a frequent topic of discussion, particularly when phones had circulated among several users. Because devices were often with others to be charged, determining how damage had occurred was not always straightforward. Questions about failure therefore became questions about who had last used the phone and, under what conditions. Importantly it is a gauge of care and conceptions of responsibility.

Unsurprisingly, when a phone failed to perform as expected, people were prompted to recount where it had been, who had handled it, and what might have caused its current state. Breakdown thus generated retrospective narratives that rendered visible the otherwise mundane circulation of devices through social relations. They were narratively traced through their past usage. Science and technology studies have long argued that technological systems become most visible at moments of breakdown, when taken-for-granted infrastructures fail and require attention. In low-infrastructure contexts, moments of failure often generate social commentary, positioning breakdown as a productive site for technographic inquiry and opportunity for insights.

Attributions of spoilage frequently carried moral weight, even when framed matter-of-factly. Problems could include breaking screens, overcharging or exposure to water. These were accidents, sure, but often people were concerned that the cause may be deeper, as outcomes of particular actions or lapses in care. These moments required listening for judgments about responsibility and obligation embedded within them. Importantly, breakdown did not necessarily render a phone useless. People distinguished between complete failure and partial functionality, and these distinctions shaped decisions about retention and disposal. As noted in the field, phones that could no longer make calls were often described as “still useful” if they could play music or videos. In such cases, a phone’s communicative capacity was diminished, yet its value as a media device remained intact. This partial functionality complicated simple binaries of working versus broken. Phones that could no longer perform their primary communicative function might still circulate for entertainment purposes or be retained for access to stored files. People sometimes explained that it was better to keep a broken phone than to discard it, because parts or files might still be needed. Decisions about what to do with a disrupted phone were therefore shaped by assessments of what it could still do under prevailing infrastructural conditions.

For ethnographic research, these moments of breakdown proved particularly revealing. Phones were often most thoroughly explained when they failed. It was during these moments that people articulated expectations about proper care. Such explanations emerged in response to specific incidents of malfunction. Methodologically, breakdown functioned as a point of entry into otherwise tacit forms of knowledge. While routine phone use often passed without comment, failure prompted reflection and explanation. Treating breakdown as data, rather than as an interruption to data collection, made it possible to attend to the social relations and moral judgments that surrounded mobile phones in everyday life.

Building on this insight, recent ethnographic work has emphasized repair and maintenance as key sites for understanding sociotechnical relations (Jackson 2014). The idea here is to show how breakdown reorganizes the conditions of ethnographic engagement itself. Failure structured when explanation occurred, what could be observed, and how knowledge about phones was articulated. For technographic research conducted in low-infrastructure contexts, breakdown is a methodological condition through which ethnographic knowledge is produced. Because I paid close attention when phones failed to function as expected, my technography made visible the the social interactionsthat sustain digital technologies in everyday life.

Methodological consequences

The disruption of mobile phones shaped local practice and they structured the terms under which ethnographic research could be conducted. Conventional techniques such as interviews or planned observation were often difficult to sustain because phones were frequently unavailable at the moment when questions were asked. Ethnographic engagement was therefore shaped by the same material constraints that governed everyday phone use. Ethnographers have shown how interviews fail, and participant-observation opportunities dissolve under real field conditions. Not only that, many have shown how these failures themselves reveal the social organization of the field (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007). The technographic challenges described here are missed encounters with unavailable objects. These ruptures resonate with these concerns. What is essential is the object around which constraints coalesce.

Methodologically, this research aligns with sociotechnical approaches to smartphone ethnography that privilege longitudinal participant observation over discrete moments of elicitation. As I have argued elsewhere, such an approach is centered on object-centric, semi-structured interviews embedded in extended participant observation and informed by anthropological approaches to technology (Hobbis and Hobbis 2024). In practice, however, even object-centric interviews were often interrupted or even outright abandoned due to the lack of presence of the object itself. Rather than offering generalized accounts of phone use, people tended to explain their practices retrospectively and situationally, in response to specific constraints or failures. Explanations were embedded in everyday activity and closely tied to material conditions. Questions about phones were frequently answered indirectly, through demonstration or shared activity. This pattern shaped both the timing and the form of ethnographic explanation.

For most of the time in the field, direct questioning often proved ineffective, because the use of phones was embedded in routine activity that did not ordinarily require articulation. Phones became objects of discussion primarily when they failed or could not be accessed. Ethnographic encounters were therefore often organized around moments of interruption rather than moments of smooth use. This required a shift in ethnographic expectation. Instead of treating the lack of explanation as a lack of data, I came to understand it as an indication of how phone use was embedded in everyday life. Explanation emerged when routine was disrupted, and it was at these moments that people articulated how phones were supposed to be valued. People frequently showed what phones could do, how they were charged, or how they were repaired, rather than describing these practices abstractly. In this context, villagers appeared more interested in showing what phones could do than in talking about them in general terms. Participant-Observation and co-presence therefore became central methodological tools, while direct questioning receded in importance.

These demonstrations were often brief and situational, occurring when phones were available and functional. For the ethnographer, this meant being attentive to opportunity instead of relying on scheduled encounters. Knowledge about phones was produced through shared activity. Activities such as watching a video together, listening to music or even observing a repair. Only when I later did my smartphone research protocol towards the end of my field stay was I able to, with great logistical challenge, formally elicit phones (See Hobbis and Hobbis, 2024b). Methodological access was thus contingent, episodic, and it was certainly dependent on material conditions. And so, dependence on others shaped the conditions of research. Mobile phones relied on social relations to remain functional, and this dependence structured both use and explanation. People frequently emphasized that phones depended on others, whether for power, credit, content or someone to communicate with. This dependence was just part of regular village life.

Observation and participation were therefore contingent on social positioning and cadence. Ethnographic access mirrored the same dependencies that structured everyday phone use, reinforcing the need to treat these conditions as methodological facts. Methodological debates in digital anthropology have emphasized the need for ethnographic approaches that move beyond platform-centric or technologically deterministic analyses, situating digital practices within everyday social life (Horst and Miller, 2012; Pink et al., 2016). While these approaches have been instrumental in legitimizing ethnographic engagement with digital phenomena, they often implicitly assume stable access, continuous connectivity, and the ethnographer’s ability to observe use as it unfolds. And, why wouldn’t one assume stable access in, for example, Silicon Valley? By foregrounding disruption as routine conditions of research, it suggests that technography in low-infrastructure contexts requires methodological attentiveness to moments when technologies cannot be accessed and demonstrated, and when ethnographic insight emerges through waiting for interaction.

These conditions shaped what could be observed and how the relationships with interlocutors developed over time. Treating these constraints as constitutive of method, rather than as limitations, allowed ethnographic practice to align more closely with the realities of everyday life in the village. Methodologically, this approach resonates with technographic traditions that attend to technologies as socio-technical configurations unfolding in practice rather than as stable analytical objects (Jansen and Vellema 2011). While digital ethnography has offered valuable tools for studying mediated practices (Pink et al., 2016), technographic attention to material constraint and infrastructural dependence is particularly suited to contexts where digital technologies are unstable for a variety of reasons. In such settings, ethnographic knowledge emerges through absence and failure. And that knowledge is as fragile as ever. The previous generation to me used carbon paper to take notes, separating them into two piles and storing them with desiccant in waterproof bags in separate locations. On my first trip I struggled to keep external hard drives duplicated and free of viruses. As Elise and I struggled to figure out how to upload the data to the cloud system we were worried something would cause it all to be lost. Worst, my Sony DSLR camera I bought 10 years ago for my first trip needed updates in order to transfer that data by cable to a laptop so we waited until arriving in Brisbane to buy an external SD port in order to back those images and videos up.

Conclusion

Near the end of an evening mass at St. Michael’s Church, one of the practices introduced by the new priest was enacted: members of the congregation were invited to address the assembly on matters they considered important. On this occasion, a woman stood and delivered an impassioned speech about what she described as the moral decay of village life. Soccer games played by young men on the school field after church, she argued, were morally acceptable; they kept young men occupied and away from alcohol and cannabis. The FIFA World Cup, however, was another matter entirely. World Cup matches were broadcast in the middle of the night. The Jenny TVs that dotted parts of the village had inconsistent reception. Dramatically, the strongest signal was reportedly found near the women’s toilet area. According to the speaker, some young men had broken basic rules of traditional gender taboos and Christian propriety by entering this women’s space late at night with their so-called “mistress,” Jenny, to watch soccer matches. This transgression, she insisted, was intolerable and had to be stopped. Her speech was met with murmurs of agreement throughout the church. This episode is not offered as an ethnographic reminder of how digital technologies appear in everyday life: intermittently, unevenly, and entangled with moral judgment, spatial regulation, and infrastructural constraint. The Jenny TV was more than medium because of where it could be watched, when it could be accessed, and under what conditions. Its significance emerged through constraint.

Infrastructural absence should not be treated as background noise in technographic research: as a temporary obstacle to be managed. In contexts where electricity is scarce, access is negotiated, and devices are fragile, delay, waiting, breakdown, and dependence are constitutive conditions of technographic method. The point here is concerned with the ethnographic method under material constraint specifically in the domain of technographic research. By treating disruption as constitutive conditions of ethnographic practice, I pursue an understanding of how knowledge is produced through imperfect, uneven, and relational fieldwork encounters. In doing so, my agenda is to assert that technography, when conducted in low-infrastructure contexts, exemplifies rather than departs from ethnography’s core methodological commitments.

Ethnographic engagement is often structured by non-presence rather than presence, by interruption rather than continuity. Recognizing this shifts attention away from the prêt-à-porter assumptions of access and functionality common in Media Studies approaches to ethnography and toward the practical conditions under which both technology and ethnography are sustained. The argument developed here is not confined to Melanesia, nor does it suggest that mobile phone use in the Lau Lagoon represents a universal pattern. It speaks to a broader methodological relevance for ethnographic research conducted in isolated geographies or low-infrastructure settings, or in contexts where digital technologies are intermittent, shared, or socially distributed. In such settings, ethnographic participation unfolds through waiting, partial access, and dependence on others, conditions that are central to research processes. Returning to debates on technography, infrastructure, and waiting, this article argues that material constraints are constitutive conditions of ethnographic practice itself (Lemonnier 1992). Attending to moments of disruption reveals how mobile phones are embedded in social relations that extend beyond moments of use, and how ethnographic knowledge is produced through these interruptions. By treating infrastructural limitation as analytically and methodologically generative, the article contributes to broader discussions about how ethnographers can engage with digital technologies in contexts where their operation is fragile, uneven, and socially distributed.

Mobile phones can be positioned as discrete objects acted upon by human subjects. They can also, as the ethnographic vignettes presented here show, demonstrate how agency emerges through moments of technical engagement in which subject and object cannot be analytically separated. This is what technography shows so clearly. In the case of the boys walking through the village with a smartphone tethered to a solar panel, the phone did not function as a passive device used by an individual and it did not show the user as an autonomous subject exercising choice. Instead, use was constituted through bodily coordination, improvised infrastructure, and collective visibility: one body moved in relation to another, the device remained operational only through continuous adjustment, and access was sustained through shared effort. Similarly, moments of breakdown and repair showed how technical objects became knowable through actions and social representations. When a phone failed, it prompted retrospective narration about where it had been, who had handled it, and how it had been cared for, collapsing technical diagnosis into moral evaluation. In these moments, phones were external objects to be interpreted, were users sovereign subjects acting upon them and the two interlaced at one moment as demonstrations of how action-upon-matter unfolded as a situated technique: human intention, material constraint, and social relation were mutually constitutive. These moments allow technography to move beyond a subject–object framework and instead trace how technics are produced in practice and exchange.

Critically, my approach here differs subtly from studies that foreground infrastructure primarily as an object of analysis or that implicitly assume continuous access to devices. While such work has made essential contributions to understanding the sociotechnical conditions of digital life, the concern here has been with how those conditions reorganize ethnographic practice itself. The shift is modest but consequential: from analyzing infrastructure to analyzing how infrastructural constraint structures method.

These methodological conditions also shape ethnographic relationships. Dependence on others for access to devices, power, or media situates the ethnographer within the same networks of obligation, negotiation, and waiting that sustain everyday technological practice. Circulation and partial access raise questions of responsibility and presence that are lived through method rather than resolved analytically, underscoring the ethical texture of technographic work without transforming it into a normative claim. Under conditions of infrastructural limitation, technographic research proceeds through interruption, partial presence, and attentiveness to what fails to appear. Basically, I am jealous of Stephan Dalsgaard. Working elsewhere in Island Melanesia, he can effectively continue research ties with the local community through Facebook (2016). I can’t. At least not with any efficiency. Yes, as a text, Facebook itself is a source of data I have used (Hobbis and Hobbis 2024), but not as a direct communication channel. If technography were to begin not from assumptions of connectivity and functionality, but from fragility it would look less like the systematic documentation of use and more like an engagement with the conditions that make both technology and ethnography possible at all.