To determine the importance of a specific community-membership to an individual, simply ask them how they define themselves. A person who fires off about being a Cornell student, for example, regards belonging to that group (the university’s undergraduate body) highly. For me, I often define myself by where I’m from: a tiny little triangle snuggled amongst West Virginia and Pennsylvania, a isolated place known as Garrett County, Maryland. Garrett County epitomizes the term “community” in every sense of the word. Not only is it your typical rural small-town (complete with Amish buggies, front porches, and 13 stoplights), it also possesses many of the features of online communities that we learned about in class.
First, according to lecture slides, we could consider Garrett County a community because it has a web of affect-laden relationships that encompass a group of individuals and a measure of commitment to shared values, morals, meanings and a shared historical identity. Most people in Garrett County are related to each other and as a result, there are many affect-laden relationships: no, no incest, but many people marry others from Garrett County, thereby further strengthening the interconnectedness. Also, most people in Garrett County have an ingrained sense of what’s right and wrong and support these ideals by attending church regularly every Sunday, for example. Garrett County residents also share mutual trust (leave doors unlocked), common identity (clear when tourists come to the lake every summer), common norms and conventions (“do anything for anybody”), shared history, shared language (ya’ll, wershed, crik), common interests (everyone’s a registered Republican, we never have any Democratic candidates for county elections), and social support . . . among others.
Obviously, our small-town encompasses many of the aspects of online communities. But the real question is how do these online communities affect Garrett County? Well, considering that most Garrett Countyians live “too far out” in the middle-of-nowhere to even receive Internet, I would argue very little. This community has been built around old school standards and philosophies and has yet to be visably affected by CMC. We put election signs in our front yards, gossip at the supermarket, and meet our future husbands and wives in church. CMC has yet to be integrated seamlessly into our community. However, it’s interesting to note that CMC has impacted our community subtly. For example, due to the Internet, more people know about Garrett County as a tourist destination. So now we have increased traffic, which has changed the small-town dynamics. There are many other unique instances of CMC starting to shake things up (local businesses going online, banks creating accounts for online banking—which actually ended up in having my account number stolen), but I have yet to see a significant change.
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2 comments:
Sounds a lot like where my mom lives and where I went to High School, Wellsboro PA (home of the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon). When I was in high school, back in the birth of internet for home use, I actually found me and my friends in Wellsboro spending more time on line than my friends at my dad's house in FL. I always attributed that to that fact that there really wasn't much else for us to do, especially on the countless snow days. We couldn't get cable tv at our house because it was too far out of town, but we could get dial up. I do agree with you that the town as a whole didn't really "catch on" to quick changes in technology, but the younger generation did.
I really enjoyed hearing about your town. I grew up in Maryland, Alexandria, and NOVA, before I moved to New York. It definitely sounds like a tightly knit community and something i can relate to. Im used to living in a small town and can understand what you say about common identity.
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