Untitled - socium.ge

The network society in Catalonia 237networked sociability that connects people online and off-line, building ontheir elective social networks (see chapter 9 in this volume). Our study ofCatalonia, while broadly confirming these general findings, adds an interestingtwist. What happens to Internet-based sociability in a context of highdensity and frequency of face-to-face social relationships? Indeed, for a nontraditionalsociety, meaning a society that is fully part of the advanced globaleconomy and of the modern European world, Catalan society is characterizedby an extraordinary level of territorially based community, persistence ofstrong family ties, a wide network of face-to-face friendships, and an activepractice of neighborliness.This specific pattern of sociability seems to be determined by a low levelof geographical mobility in the life cycle. Indeed, 66.9 percent of people in oursample were born in Catalonia (a country of relatively small territorial size),and for those between 15 and 29 years, the percentage increases to 92.6percent. This is in sharp contrast with the parents of those we interviewed, whowere born in the majority in the rest of Spain (52.3 percent). Here again,history and culture interact. The mass migrations to Catalonia in the 1960s and1970s were fully integrated into Catalonia, and, once there, migrants and theirchildren remained territorially stable. The picture for the future is less clear, asrapid immigration from outside Spain has taken place since the 1990s, bringingthe proportion of non-Spanish born population in just five years from 2percent to at least 7 percent of the Catalan population. It is highly doubtful thatthe integration of these immigrants in the coming years will proceed assmoothly as the previous one. But, for the time being, and for the analyticalpurposes of our study, Catalans are territorially rooted and highly sociable.In the five years preceding our study, 76 percent of our sample were alreadyliving in Catalonia. And their family is nearby: 53.3 percent of their fathersand 55.6 percent of their mothers dwell in the same municipality, and aboutanother 25 percent of their parents live somewhere else in Catalonia. Thishelps us understand the stunning finding that about one-third of our sample seetheir parents every day, and two-thirds at least once a week. Furthermore, 61percent of people in our sample live in a family in which all the members ofthe family have dinner together every day, and another 17.7 percent at leastfour times a week. Outside the family, when they have friends who live in thesame municipality, 32 percent of our sample see these friends every day, andabout 45 percent at least once a week. Some 40 percent see their neighborsevery day, and an additional 30 percent every week.Under these conditions it is not surprising that the use of the Internet for thepurpose of sociability is very limited. But we have analyzed, nonetheless, theeffects of the use of the Internet on sociability patterns. In this regard, weconfirm the results of international research: the use of the Internet adds tosociability rather than subtracts from it. Internet users have a larger number of