Square Inch Anthropology

This phone serves as an example of "piggybacking" on a brand. Something about the LCD display of a ballerina frolicking in front of what appears to be some sort of European manor in tandem with the ISO 9001 certificate (which I'm assuming is also fake) printed on the handset doesn't exactly fit Sony's traditional design approach. I'm interested what lead the manufacturer of this (likely counterfeit) telephone to decide that Sony would be the best brand to adopt as their own - why Sony? Also, what was the thinking behind the need to adopt a better-recognized brand instead of creating their own? Did they ever consider what would happen if they ended up being really successful and selling lots of phones (lots of, "Sony" phones)? Did they see anything ethically wrong with doing this? Seeing this, do you think a Sony employee would be more outraged at the blatant theft of their brand, or optimistic that the purchasing (and hopefully enjoyment) of this telephone would drive sales of other Sony products?

The unfolding of the mutual recording process is a bit different in this case from others I've experienced in Myanmar, in that the main novelty is not my foreign-ness, but rather my tattooed status. Similarly, the most interesting thing to me in this becomes this cellphone owner's perception of what is "most novel" about me - something worthy of recording. In your present context, what is the most "share-able" thing about you? The first and most remarkable thing that would be recorded by a stranger. How would it be recorded? How would such an attribute of yours change by cultural context?

In the foreground the old skool rotary phone makes up the centerpiece of this microenterprise, often preferred on account of not needing electricity to operate. This phone stand is likely positioned within a cellphone-dense area, as opposed to other more "communal" phone stands. Communal style stands are often less formal enterprises, positioned out on the sidewalk and having at least two phones in order to serve both residents/passerby making outgoing calls and also a volume of incoming calls for the non-cellphone owning occupants of the adjacent buildings (for whom the phones at the stand are their main (land)line of communication to those wanting to reach them at home). 

The placement of the phone stand's chairs conveys several pieces of information. One is the expectation of customers' seating preferences (lower than the phone - around eye-level to the dial when seated and with back facing the interior of the shop-house to somewhat muffle voices and afford a modicum of privacy. Another is the pair of chairs set outside that are likely not intended to accommodate two individuals queueing up, as the uncertainly of how long a phone conversation would last, coupled with the relative commonality of phone stands such as this on Yangon's streets mean that it would almost certainly be better worth one's time continuing the search for an open phone stand further down the road (plus the emphasis Myanmar's culture places upon not wanting to make someone feel bad, done in this case perhaps by multiple people sitting next to them and glaring/tapping their feet impatiently).

The mirrored tall chair + short chair setup is more likely meant to accommodate a single waiting individual (in taller stool) and any belongings they may be carrying. 

What will this be replaced by when cellphone ownership has reached a particular level? How would you define such a "level"?

Shift gears to the background microenterprise of the watermelon vendor. The owner makes generous use of the ubiquitous plastic stools seen on the streets of Myanmar, but only one of the three she owns is for sitting. Another stool holds her lunchbox, while a third keeps the bowl containing watermelon preparation/carrying implements off of the ground. This seating setup sends the message of "no waiting" - the owner does not want customers loitering in front of her table. The reasons for this vary, and can include anything from not wanting to limit the size of her goods display area to afford customers a space to consume watermelon, to simplifying the process of clearing away any traces that there was ever a business there in the event of an unscheduled crack-down on informal/unlicensed sidewalk enterprises. Having a bunch of seated customers sitting in front of your house eating watermelon could put a fatal dent in your case for plausible deniability. Unless, of course, you immediately go for the ol' "These are all my relatives, and we're having a picnic! Won't you join us, Mr. Officer? Here, take some watermelon!" plan.

Getting back to the original point - in both enterprises, chairs function to "keep things off of the ground" - though it isn't always people they are meant to be accommodating, and instead may be treated act as smaller, inexpensive tables when space or money is a constraint.

The tying of a phone to these bottles of water with plastic twine renders the water much more challenging to sell, basically making the bottles a permanent, un-sellable fixture on account of the challenges in removing a water bottle or, if you are a thief, removing the phone from the water bottles. The demonstrated need to secure this phone showcases an interesting downside to this "wireless" (battery-powered, cable-free) CDMA handset, within which is contained a thumbnail-sized piece of plastic and metal worth about US $1000: portability becomes steal-ability/liability when SIM cards are this valuable.

Indeed, this wire-free portability makes the microenterprise of "human telephone booths" possible, where people (usually children) act as a portable, common phone-bearer, running to hunt down people lacking landlines and cellphones that live within their rough "service range" and acting as message-takers when those being called are unreachable. 

PS: Article for the inaugural issue of Makeshift

How does the character of inventories change by location? How does place influence goods stocked? Near schools, for example, toys, candies, and comic books abound. What about less obvious locales? Next to a hospital, plastic bedpans are for sale amongst the usual suspects of instant coffeemix and processed pastries. Outside of the passport office, salespeople ditch the powdered drink mix and cigarettes in favor of smaller retail spaces, focusing instead upon glue sticks, paper/plastic envelopes, a multitude of felt-tip and ballpoint pens. 

These retailers' inventories serve as a convenient visual guide to what is "given" in a resource-constrained - but public - context such as a public hospital, or passport office. One can reasonably expect that if they're hawking it out here, they ain't got none "in there" - or can one? Perhaps this is meant to allow one to save time on the passport office's daunting "glue queue" (or the hospital's even more daunting "shu-shu queue") that may await inside. Surprised there is no gluestick rental stand (less surprised that there is no bed-pan rental stand). 

The sign reads: "COPIES | Writing accessories | Phone (local/long-distance)." What more could a passport applicant want (besides someone to do everything for them, of course)?

In Myanmar, display and usage behavior around landline phones is that
for both privacy purposes and to spread awareness of the service the
usual practice is to keep phones on a separate table outside of the
managing retail space, creating a separate "phone area." As with other
electronic instruments in this rainy and resource constrained
environment, phones come with their own standards of protection for
the object from the elements.

This particular desk sits in front of an internet cafe, a space with
which the phones on top of it share a communication function with the
computers within the store. With the advent of Skype, Google Phone,
and other VoIP services, acoustic intrusion from one set of users to
the other seems unlikely. Whether on the phone or using the computer
as a phone, you will always be in earshot of a possibly private
conversation, although computers are superior to phones for
conversations of this nature as the more sensitive elements can be
communicated through text in the chat windows accompanying some of
these calling applications.

When I first noticed these phones, I was interested mostly in the
approach this net cafe has taken to protection of their hardware
through the use of particularly colorful and attention-grabbing means.
While another shop chose to repurpose a transparent document storage
envelope to protect their phones (the other photograph) - perhaps more
securely than cloth - the nature of the protective cloth itself has
the potential to draw the attention of passerby in a way that the shop
using transparent covers does not. Do phone (and other object)
protection solutions in this resource-constrained context sit along a
continuum of functionality at one end and attention
grabbing/attractive at the other? How do standards for protection and
display differ between an object whose service is being advertised to
passerby versus one where use is reserved for employees?