Metageographic communities: A geographic model of demassified societies

摘要

A metageographic community (MGC) is a construct that identifies patterns of an increasingly demassified society and accounts for flexible spatial dynamics facilitated by personal media. It acknowledges the meaning individuals ascribe to local places, to the breadth of their social networks over distance, and it incorporates communications media as essential to dynamic community building and persistence. In addition to providing a theoretical foundation for this construct, I have created a model by which to evaluate the coherence of demassified communities at four levels of association. A preliminary application of this model to two "invisible" ethnic groups in the United States has revealed that the coherence of even very small groups might depend on more than traditional characteristics of religious adherence, language retention, propinquitous clustering, or local landscapes. These communities have developed distanciated networks built on the frequency and types of long-distance interactions as well as the complexity of domestic and transnational networking; that is, they incorporate and depend on multiple locations. An MGC does not dissipate with distance, nor is it restricted or defined by limitations of place or boundary, although each place adds its own richness. By developing MGCs, even small, dispersed groups, such as older ethnic groups, transnational migrants, refugees-or other spatially "fuzzy" networks-can build a persistent and effective community across otherwise heterogeneous social or political space. As a dynamic, demassified entity, MGCs can have tremendous political, cultural, and economic influence not limited by physical or political boundaries.