On the Jugaad Image: Embodying the Mobile Phone in India

This essay uses media assemblage analysis to pose ontological questions of the embodiment of mobile phone technologies. The name for this throughout much of South Asia is jugaad, meaning a pragmatic workaround. In other words, this essay analyzes mobile telephony in India by foregrounding a sensorial ethics of habituation as central to understanding contemporary media assemblages. As one of the most competitive and fastest growing mobile markets in the world, India's heterogeneous mobile cultures provide an excellent window into the processes of globalization, consumerism, digital control, piracy, bodily habituation, and new media assemblages.