Together or apart? Moral worlds and user modes of mobile devices in Volgograd marshrutkas

Abstract

This paper deals with how mobile devices function in the context of social order construction in public transport. Using ethnographic material that was collected in share-taxis (marshrutkas) in the city of Volgograd I show that gadgets are used in two user modes to create so-called moral worlds that defne the plurality and contextuality of social assemblages. Social order is not predetermined, it is created and maintained “on the move”. Passengers use gadgets to build “walls” and “windows” for direct communication with familiar and unfamiliar people in the cabin of the vehicle. Mobile devices are neutral in the moral sense, beyond “Good” and “Evil”, because inside of them there is nothing that connects or disconnects individuals and groups.