The self in a time of constant connectivity:romantic intimacy and the ambiguous promise of mobile phones for young women in Gilgit, northern Pakistan

Abstract Ubiquitous mobile phones have transformed not just our modes of communication but our self-perception. In facilitating a direct personal connection, be it via a call, a text message, or social media, they present the unprecedented challenge of synchronicity, in which users must simultaneously navigate different social contexts and plural identities. In the area of Gilgit, northern Pakistan, young women in particular struggle with social scrutiny of their mobile phone use, given the latter’s potential to facilitate illicit relationships. They counter such threats to their moral integrity by consciously limiting their range of interlocutors. They invoke “trust” and curate a more transparent, congruent version of themselves as pious yet competent and sophisticated digital users. This allows them to creatively adapt new technologies and, most importantly, to implement and promote an Islamically sanctioned form of courtship. By prompting processes of individuation, mobile phones paradoxically restrict the enactment of plural selves yet allow for creative improvisations