The project focuses on middle classes in India to understand choices influencing consumption of domestic media.

Of particular focus is the home computer and the mobile phone; Using qualitative ethnographic methods, we explore and foreground particular socio-cultural contexts and behavioural practices of Indian families shaping decision making to buy and use domestic ICTs. We investigate

• How the mobile phone and the PC become objects representing social mobility and modernity in middle class families
• We map cultural patterns that emerge when India’s low to middle-income homes use and adopt the mobile phone and PC into their lives.

We have conducted studies in metropolitan cities of Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi and smaller cities and towns in the state of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh

Research Interns:Suneela Boddu, Sumitra Nair

Publications

• Rangaswamy, N (2009) Personalizing the shared mobile phone, panel paper on Mobile Money: Design for Inclusion, Internationalization, Design and Global development, HCII 2009, 19-24 July San Diego
• Rangaswamy, N (2007) The Aspiration PC: Home Computers and Indian Middle class Domesticity, 9^th International Workshop on Internationalization of Products and Systems, Merida, Mexico, June 2007
• Rangaswamy, N, Singh, S, Nair, S, "Shared Use of New Media in Urban Lower Middle-Income Households in India" Journal paper in submission
• Rangaswamy, N (2007) " Paying for ICT's: Allocating for a Changing Communication Repertoire in Middle Class Indian Homes", Paper presented at the panel on living and livelihoods at HOIT2007: Home/community oriented ICT for the next billion, August 23-25, IIT Madras, Chennai, India. Presentation
• Rangaswamy, N. (2005) Consumption Patterns of the Urban Indian Middle Class. International Conference on Ethnographic Praxis in Industry, November 2005, Seattle, USA