Answering back: the telephone, modernity and everyday life

Abstract

This article, based on ethnographic research on a small island off the coast of South West Ireland, studies the role of the telephone in changing the social relationships on the island. It compares the impact of the telephone with that of television. Television was seen by the islanders as ahistorical. It was seen as the new and as impacting decisively on their way of life. The telephone, on the other hand, was seen as a continuation of older forms of communication. The article traces the implications of the shift from a communal telephone to private domestic telephony and contrasts the islanders' adaption with that of the Amish. It argues that telephony has facilitated interaction with modernity and that the question is not whether modernity has eroded community but, rather, in what form has community been preserved. Its conclusion is positive, that the impact of telephony, both on its own and in combination with broadcasting, has been progressive and liberating, the old patterns of communication behaviour being replaced with the relaxed, democratized practices of public discourse.