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other Africans [ 4], may explain local nurses’ ease
with the frequent communication over a CB radio
but discomfort with a system of storing messages
for recipients to collect later [ 5]. Digital social networking can enable virtual surveillance beyond
static identity representations (e.g., Facebook
“Info”) or asynchronous updates. However, villagers do not use the perpetual contact enabled
by Mxit (a mobile application used by 11 percent
of South Africans that enables cheaper delivery
of short messaging than SMS) or Twitter, and it
appears they offer sparse resources to structure
mutual awareness and interdependence.
Indeed, villagers tend to use ICT to display
bonds within face-to-face communication, such
as gathering vast numbers of contacts in cell
phones when they meet people but not calling
them, or using digital photos in long conversations [ 6]. Villagers are disadvantaged in communicating effectively in SNS in the absence of salient
emotional and physical resources. For instance,
a contact I had introduced to villagers updated
her status to report the death of a beloved family
member, and a day later, a villager posted to the
contact’s wall: “hope u’rre doing well and hope 2
see u this year. Anyway how is life? Have a good
time.” Maybe he did not notice the numerous
condolences posted on the contact’s wall. More
likely though, his response is natural in a village
where burial is commonplace and people devote
10 percent of their income to funeral plans, where
ancestors are believed to have a continued pres-
ence and, as he later said about a death in his
family, “it is part of life.”
Many Facebook postings refer to the lack of
anonymity in village environments, “where
everyone wants to know your business.” In the
village in which I work, I notice the way the fur-
niture of rural life entwines with the identity
of those who spend their life mostly outdoors.
From birth to burial, and beyond, the landscape
is a grammar and a vocabulary for identity and
relationships [ 6]. The physical place is part of
people’s interdependence and shapes perform-
ing identity, and I notice a tact in performing
identity [ 6] that couples location with modern or
traditional expectations. Villagers who attend
college in the city share cultural capital, such as
tastes and values, with other Facebook users and
draw on vocabularies and grammars of identity,
