{"title":"Payal Arora","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"next-billion-users-book-payal-arora-9780674983786","title":"The Next Billion Users","description":"A digital anthropologist examines the online lives of millions of people in China, India, Brazil, and across the Middle East—home to most of the world’s internet users—and discovers that what they are doing is not what we imagine.  New-media pundits obsess over online privacy and security, cyberbullying, and revenge porn, but do these things really matter in most of the world? The Next Billion Users reveals that many assumptions about internet use in developing countries are wrong.  After immersing herself in factory towns, slums, townships, and favelas, Payal Arora assesses real patterns of internet usage in India, China, South Africa, Brazil, and the Middle East. She finds Himalayan teens growing closer by sharing a single computer with common passwords and profiles. In China’s gaming factories, the line between work and leisure disappears. In Riyadh, a group of young women organizes a YouTube fashion show.  Why do citizens of states with strict surveillance policies appear to care so little about their digital privacy? Why do Brazilians eschew geo-tagging on social media? What drives young Indians to friend “foreign” strangers on Facebook and give “missed calls” to people? The Next Billion Users answers these questions and many more. Through extensive fieldwork, Arora demonstrates that the global poor are far from virtuous utilitarians who mainly go online to study, find jobs, and obtain health information. She reveals habits of use bound to intrigue everyone from casual internet users to developers of global digital platforms to organizations seeking to reach the next billion internet users.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49732283793681,"sku":"NGR9780674983786","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50323493585169,"sku":"GOR009718177","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51502807646481,"sku":"GOR011017735","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0674983785.jpg?v=1751040873"},{"product_id":"more-than-just-a-home-book-payal-arora-9781837976522","title":"More than just a Home","description":"Over time and space, sociology has given varying importance to the study of the house. The house is often a locus of special attention when a couple is formed, and the investments made in a neolocal residence constitute a complex social fact. There is much to be known about the importance of and the relationships between home and family.   Rooted in diverse theoretical approaches and multi-method research projects, this edited collection provides a broad understanding of the house as a plural, diverse and meaningful space. Paying attention to specific occupational, gender and age patterns in home spaces, chapters also consider how digital technologies, including the 'smart home', as well as the recent COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent 'turn to home' have impacted family life on a micro level. Exploring relationships between the family and the material and symbolic dimensions of the home, authors discuss the trajectory and composition of the household, the gendered division of labor, work-family and education-family dynamics, care work and more.   Considering the ways in which a family socially constructs a home, this is a much-needed investigation into how the house, its architecture, spatial arrangements and internal and external divisions shape and reshape family relationships in the face of constant challenges and change.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49754063700241,"sku":"NGR9781837976522","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51055146172689,"sku":"NIN9781837976522","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52484323672337,"sku":"NLS9781837976522","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/183797652X.jpg?v=1750898565"},{"product_id":"from-pessimism-to-promise-book-payal-arora-9780262049306","title":"From Pessimism to Promise","description":"A radical paradigm shift in the way we think about AI and tech, taking hope and inspiration from the aspirational users of new technologies around the world.  When it comes to tech, the mainstream headlines are bleak: Algorithms control and oppress. AI will destroy democracy and our social fabric, and possibly even drive us to extinction. While legitimate concerns drive these fears, we need to equally account for the fact that tech affords young people something incredibly valuable a rare space for self-actualization. In From Pessimism to Promise, award-winning author Payal Arora explains that, outside the West, where most of the world s youth reside, there is a significant different outlook on tech: in fact, there is a contagion of optimism toward all things digital. These users, especially those in marginalized contexts, are full of hope for new tech.  As AI disrupts sectors across industries, education, and beyond, who better to shine the light forward, Arora argues, than the Global South, the navigator of all manner of forced disruptions, leapfrogging obstructive systems, norms, and practices to rapidly reinvent itself? Drawing on field insights in diverse global contexts such as Brazil, India, and Bangladesh, Payal describes what drives Gen Z to embrace new technologies. From Pessimism to Promise discusses the shift to relationally-driven approaches to design; how to create 'algorithms of aspiration'; how to reimagine the digital space for sex, pleasure, and care; and, what we can learn from feminist digital activists and women s collectives in the Global South on shared digital provenance and value, as well as indigenous approaches to sustainability, that challenges sacred ideas on degrowth, circular economy, and the doughnut economy. Arora also takes heart in the power in numbers, as the users from the majority world infuse algorithms with everyday aspirations, pushing for a new digital order.  Timely and urgent, From Pessimism to Promise makes a deeply compelling case that it is not naive to be optimistic about our digital future. On the contrary, it is our moral imperative to design with hope.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50270190338321,"sku":"NGR9780262049306","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51000626807057,"sku":"NIN9780262049306","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53597658022161,"sku":"CIN0262049309VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0262049309.jpg?v=1750843742"},{"product_id":"dot-com-mantra-book-payal-arora-9781409401070","title":"Dot Com Mantra","description":"Billions of dollars are being spent nationally and globally on providing computing access to digitally disadvantaged groups and cultures with an expectation that computers and the Internet can lead to higher socio-economic mobility. 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In doing so, this book offers fresh and critical perspectives in areas of contemporary debate: informal learning with computers, cyberleisure, gender access and empowerment, digital intermediaries, and glocalization of information and media.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52486867091729,"sku":"NLS9781409401070","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53036431900945,"sku":"NIN9781409401070","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781409401070.jpg?v=1759859893"},{"product_id":"leisure-commons-book-payal-arora-9780415887113","title":"The Leisure Commons","description":"This book investigates Web 2.0 cyberleisure space by drawing parallels to another leisure space that shares its rhetoric of being open, democratic, and free for all: the urban park. It bridges the urban with the digital commons, revealing fresh insights on corporatization, privatization and democratization of new media spaces.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52522010149137,"sku":"NLS9780415887113","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53035012718865,"sku":"NIN9780415887113","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780415887113.jpg?v=1760574342"},{"product_id":"leisure-commons-book-payal-arora-9781138688049","title":"The Leisure Commons","description":"This book investigates Web 2.0 cyberleisure space by drawing parallels to another leisure space that shares its rhetoric of being open, democratic, and free for all: the urban park. 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