Maps, movements and mobilities: Facebook and ‘checking-in’ among young men in Pune, India

This article examines the political significance of Facebook’s check-in feature as used by lower-middle class young men in the western Indian city of Pune. Drawing on the literature on urban transformation and building on the local notion of timepass, I argue that young men produce new spatial configurations of the city on Facebook. In doing so, they make legible their own narrative of what it means to be young in the city as a counterpoise to both the lifestyles of those who frequent Pune’s newer locations of leisure and the educational aspirations that facilitate access to these spaces.