In the age of the information superhighway, it has become fashionable to argue that local communities are being supplanted by newly emerged "virtual" communities, writes Mary Corcoran
If we have access to information and communications structures, it is suggested, we are increasingly likely to live online. And if we are not busy surfing the Net, then we are parked in front of television sets that feed us a steady diet of mediocre American culture.
Suburban communities, freshly minted on greenfield sites a safe distance from the city centre, are frequently portrayed as the kind of nowhere places that sustain these trends. Think of the suburban dystopia portrayed by movies such as American Beauty and Arlington Road. But is this the reality? A study we are conducting of the village of Ratoath, Co Meath, suggests the picture is more complex.
There is no doubt that the newly suburbanised Ratoath, located about 30 kilometres north of Dublin city centre, would qualify as a 21st-century "wired" community. More than 80 per cent of households are equipped with a personal computer. Three-quarters of all households are connected to the Internet. Both statistics are significantly higher than the national average: in 2000 about one-third of all households in Ireland had a home computer, and about two-thirds were connected to the Internet.
Apart from being wired to the global communications system, the householders of Ratoath are also replete with entertainment hardware. More than half of households have three or more televisions. Although it is a relatively new technology, slightly more than half of households own a DVD machine. All but a handful of respondents in our survey possess a mobile phone, with the vast majority of households boasting two or more.
In the local national school, children aged between 11 and 12 report high levels of engagement with television, mobile phones and personal computers. The children are remarkably consistent in reporting their preference for cable over terrestrial television stations, their enjoyment of interactive TV and their pleasure in playing simulation computer games.
Among their favourite television programmes are The Simpsons, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Friends and South Park, all serials that originate in the US. Computer games which they enjoy include Age of Empires, Harry Potter and The Sims. For the vast majority of these 11- and 12-year-olds, mobile phones are viewed as a necessary fashion accessory, allowing for ease of communication with friends, and providing the reassurance of their safety for parents.
Here we have a portrait of the classic suburban community where children spend a good deal of their time in a fantasy world brought by courtesy of information technology. Their media dependence, it is argued, leads to the erosion of both a sense of reality and a sense of place. Furthermore, since technology is also a force of globalisation, it is possible that the children of Ratoath are being incorporated into a homogeneous consumer system. But are these conclusions sustainable?
Our research also shows that the community in Ratoath is relatively well bonded and that, for the children, the locality itself is still hugely important. The children strongly identify with Ratoath as a place that embodies many aspects of country life that they find appealing.
They also express concern about the erosion of that country life through excessive development. However, the growing population has the great advantage of bringing more people into the community and thus widening the children's social circles.
Children typically provide an important focus in Ratoath both because of their own ongoing interactions with other children living close by, which is a form of community-building in itself, and because they draw their parents into contact with parents of other children. Networks of parents develop around the spaces where children play and are the most common source of neighbourliness. Apart from the strong sense of community that is generated within estates, the children of Ratoath identify their participation in sports clubs, and in particular the GAA, as adding to their quality of life.
Local interactions in the estates, on the playing pitches and around a disused piece of land near the local church provide them with spatial reference points, which gives meaning to their everyday lives. Since more than half of families have moved out of the Dublin metropolitan area to Ratoath, the children grapple with the question of local identity on an ongoing basis. Are they "culchies", "boggers" or "townies"?
Those who moved out from Dublin are frequently perceived by friends and families as boggers, having forsaken their city identity for a rural one. The locals in Ratoath - the real culchies, if you will - are more likely to view the newcomers as "Dubs". Living on an estate in a place that is halfway between the city and the country leads many children to self-identify as "townies".
And then there is the crucial question of the GAA and which team to support. The rivalry between Meath and Dublin is alive and well and flourishing in Ratoath. One father who had moved from Dublin to Ratoath described how his son must wear his Dublin shirt underneath his Meath shirt in order to conform to his new identity and assuage the sensibilities of his grandfather.
What we can see in the village is that the idea of locality, and a sense of belonging to locality, are still very significant for the resident population. Traditional forms of community and practices of sociability co-exist alongside all the new-fangled technology. More generally, the everyday expressions of belonging act as important counterweights to global forces that threaten to render places indistinguishable from each other.
Dr Mary P. Corcoran is one of the co-investigators, with Dr Jane Gray and Dr Michel Peillon, on a study of social and civic life in the suburbs. All three are in the Department of Sociology, NUI Maynooth
Breda O'Brien is on holiday