Ageing with Smartphones in Ireland

Front matter

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Contents

List of figures

List of abbreviations

Series Foreword Acknowledgements

Introduction to Ireland

The Republic of Ireland, with a population of almost 5 million, shares the island with Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom with a population of around 1.8 million. Ireland declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1919 and this was acknowledged in 1921. The capital city of Dublin has a regional population of around 2 million, with Dublin city standing at around 600,000. One of our two fieldsites lies within the city itself; the other is in the region within an hour’s travel from Dublin. Ireland became a member of the European Union (then called the European Economic Community or EEC) in 1973.

The lifetime of most of our research participants has been an economic rollercoaster. Younger people find it hard to comprehend the social and economic transformation that Ireland has undergone within living memory. At the time of independence, 58 per cent of employed men worked in agriculture;” up until the 1950s this agriculture-oriented economy was constantly on the ‘verge of collapse’, resulting in both mass unemployment and mass emigration.’

Many of our participants were born into rural locations; even the present-day Dublin suburbs were countryside when they were young. They talk of collecting milk from the local dairy or working on the farm as a child. One man describes tasks like making the porridge in the morning and stew in the afternoon as the source of valuable skills that stood him in good stead in later life. Another recalls having to milk the cows before school each morning and remembers being ‘overworked as a child’. Whereas some recall childhood memories fondly, others comment bitterly on the deprivation — ‘I know poverty, I know what it smells like, I know what it tastes like’ — or on the socially conservative environment of their youth.

Emigration too has been a hallmark of twentieth-century Ireland, creating a diaspora that is widely dispersed around the world.* From 1922, Irish Independence saw a steady replacement of colonial authority with that of the Catholic church. Religious orders ran the health and educational systems and had a strong grip over government, creating something of a theocracy. Very many research participants commented on the deeply conservative beliefs held by their parents, if not themselves. Not infrequently differences of opinion about religion led to rifts within families that spanned decades and left lasting scars.

For older people, the transformation in these underlying religious beliefs and social norms over their lifetimes was as dramatic as that of the economic transformation. First gradually, then more quickly, life changed and most of our research participants saw a marked improvement in their standard of living and disposable income. Urban centres, particularly residential construction in Dublin suburbs, sprawled. As sociologist Tom Inglis argues, in one generation Ireland has transformed from being an isolated Catholic rural society revolving around agriculture to being a liberal-individualist, secular, urban society revolving around business, commerce and high-tech transnational corporations.” In the past 20 years the pace of change has been dramatic. In the early 2000s Ireland was identified as having an open global economy. The authority of the Church did not so much decline as abruptly collapse from the 1980s onwards following the key scandals of sexual abuse and the ill-treatment of unmarried mothers and children.° This development reached perhaps its apogee during fieldwork in 2018 with the convincing vote to repeal the constitutional ban on abortion. The scale of such change is also evident in issues such as homosexuality, illegal in Ireland in 1993. Just 22 years later, in 2015, Ireland represented the first country to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote and was hailed as the ‘vanguard’ of social progression by The New York Times.’

However, also seared into the consciousness of our participants was the depth of the economic crisis after 2008. The recession, sparked by the economic freefall of the global banking system, led to a bailout by the International Monetary Fund and EU.’ The period was characterised by high levels of unemployment, mass emigration, a collapse in domestic construction and austerity measures imposed by the European Central Bank.’ Among the other casualties of the crash were retirees who had invested their retirement packages or savings in the expectation of a decent income in the future, only to experience massive losses. By 2017, when the fieldwork began, the recession had largely passed, but many scars remained. Austerity had led to increasing levels of inequality and the percentage of the population at risk of relative poverty (if not absolute poverty) had risen to 21 per cent. Economic growth for 2017, however, was among the highest in the EU (at 7.3 per cent), due chiefly to the activities of the IT sector. Domestic activity was up 4.9 per cent and there was strong employment growth, while property prices in 2016 soared to rates of increase that mirrored the earlier ‘Celtic Tiger’ economic boom.

A long history of emigration had been halted by the attractions of Ireland as a site of immigration during its ‘Celtic Tiger’ period. With recession this was again reversed, only for the tide to turn once more as Ireland recovered its economic prosperity, such that by 2013 there were renewed invitations for emigrants to return.” One example was The Gathering, which was launched by the Irish Tourism Board. The Gathering encouraged Irish people to invite the Irish diaspora to return to Ireland to participate in 5000 events across the country.'' Here we see evidence of the Irish economic and social rollercoaster in action.

Fieldwork coincided with a new confidence, although the shadow of the recession is still present in many people’s lives.’ In the postrecession era Ireland became the fastest growing economy in Europe, while still dealing with the legacy of recession. Whereas a century ago ideals of rural life were closely associated with an authentic Irish identity and nationalist sentiment, today by contrast Dublin, as a European city, stands at the forefront of new continental sensibilities."

The period of fieldwork was one that reinforced this positive sense of European identity, set against a dramatic decline of the international reputation of the former colonial power of Britain. This was particularly true during the height of what were regarded as the somewhat farcical Brexit debates, a very common topic of conversation.'* These also created renewed anxiety about the future of the Northern Irish border and the potential economic slump of a no-deal Brexit. Additionally, fundamental state services such as housing had been cut during austerity, while health and welfare provision were still quite fragile. The word ‘crisis’ was a common adjective to describe both health and housing.

Housing represents a particularly potent cypher for the statecitizen contract in Ireland, with economic boom and bust measured in the popular imagination in bricks and mortar. The fact that Ireland saw the highest percentage increase in property prices during 2017 of any developed country, at 12.3 per cent (5.6 per cent in 2018), seemed reminiscent of the unsustainable pre-recession property boom. Income inequality is average for OECD countries. It would be more unequal, however, if Ireland’s redistribution of taxes from household income had not been so effective in reducing inequality, as a recent study shows. '°

By contrast, Irish politics is relatively stable with nearly a century of fairly predictable alternations between two parties that had origins in a bitter civil war: Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. These are generally regarded as now two sides of a centrist coin. Our two fieldsites, being mainly middle-class, would be strongly reflective of this largely liberal consensus. A further conspicuous factor is the sheer size of the Irish diaspora, which dwarfs the local population. A more recent emigration to the UK in the 1950s, and again in the 1980s, succeeded the better known migration to the US from the seventeenth century onwards.’ By contrast, immigration was relatively sparse within our fieldsites owing to high property prices. However, women from Eastern Europe and Brazil were increasingly evident within the local labour force, particularly in catering and childcare.

Today there is a generally positive sense of Irish identity at home and abroad. A growing sense of European identity has been boosted by the sense of European support for the Irish position during the Brexit negotiations. There is a keen interest in foreign travel, with the Irish generally finding that they are regarded as genial and egalitarian. At the same time many people either retained or were developing interests in icons of specifically Irish culture. These included Gaelic athletic sports (GAA) such as hurling, or traditional music. Many of our research participants took pride in the fact that Irish music and literature punches well above its weight, represented by figures ranging from the novelist Sebastian Barry to Fontaines D.C. (a post-punk band from Dublin), alongside a generally positive — albeit romantic and often crudely stereotypical — American-Irish identity disseminated through film and television.

Anthropology in Ireland

Historically, anthropological studies in Ireland focused on rural communities, family structure, inheritance and religion. The early classics such as The Irish Countryman (1937) and Family and Community in Ireland (1940) traced rural farming communities in transition,'® although other works such as Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics by Nancy Scheper-Hughes have since been criticised for representing Ireland as a ‘culture in demise, a social system characterised by pathogenic tendencies’. With the late twentieth century, however,” there has grown a sizeable body of work that focuses on contemporary Irish life.” This scholarship is both rich and varied. It has ethnographically explored the dark underbelly of urban life, in areas such as addiction,” migration, marginality and precarity, as well as expressions of creativity, language” and music.”

This volume continues these more recent trajectories, situating itself in the mainstream of contemporary Irish urban experience. We have deliberately chosen to engage more with the mainstream than the margins, focusing on everyday life for the majority rather than populations that require policy interventions, which are often the grounds for social science research. We appreciate the specificity of our fieldsites and participants, but also believe that the core of our findings could be extended beyond Dublin. In contrast to historical studies, we find our participants in cafés rather than in pubs, discussing WhatsApp rather than religion. Although this volume does represent an ethnography of ageing in Ireland, we are concerned with historical precedent only where there is evidence for continuity and we trace evolving ideas surrounding belief or affluence insofar as they are relevant for our participants. For example, being middle class but born into conditions of poverty may make this feel more like achievement than an entitlement — something that may in turn prove relevant to practices of sustainability or ideals of generalised equality.

A key priority for our participants was the use of their smartphone to communicate with family members and friends; we spent a good deal of time discussing the roles and responsibilities that arise from grandparenthood or intergenerational living. Irish family structures have undergone profound changes in recent decades and are characterised by a particular blend of tradition and modernity.” Historically, the family has occupied a core position in the social structure and religious ethos of Ireland. The strong presence of Catholicism played a formative role in ideals and practices surrounding the family, particularly for women. In their role as wives and mothers, women were one icon of the new Irish Free State and religious nationalism. Inglis argues that placing women at the centre of a state ideology based on moral superiority served to discourage them from participation in the public sphere of work or political life. For example, through the introduction of a marriage bar in the 1930s and its enforcement until 1971, women in the civil service were legally obliged to give up work on getting married. Both church and state thus encouraged women to concentrate on rearing children and caring for families.” However, the clerical scandals in the 1990s and 2000s have undermined the Church’s credibility, while shifts in economic profiles and a dramatic rise in living standards have both had a profound effect on modernisation processes.” A reversal of past attitudes to same-sex marriage, divorce and co-habitation have led to newly established norms.” What is distinctive about Ireland is not these liberal values per se, but the fact that they developed both later and faster than in many other regions of Europe.°°

While there has been a growth in secular values and some forms of individualism,*' the two-parent nuclear family is still the most typical environment in which children grow up in Ireland.” Divorce rates remain low (6 per cent) when compared to trends in other European countries. Many Irish parents rely on grandparents for regular childcare and there is an emphasis on extended family relationships. While most countries in Europe are concerned with increasing older populations and low birth rates, Ireland’s population is relatively young and fertility rates are among the highest in Europe” at around 1.9 children per woman.** Intergenerational ties are strong” and The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) has found that a high proportion of householders live near their parents — one of the reasons why grandparenting is a major topic for this volume.

The focus on ageing

Along with gender, age is one of the primary parameters by which societies throughout history have structured and governed themselves.” Through countless gerontocracies, older men have historically ruled much of the world. Yet since the 1960s this hegemony has been undermined by the increasing value placed on youth culture, facilitated by the association of new technologies with youth. In Ireland the ‘baby-boomer’ generation who were the first to create this positive association with youth cultures have now themselves aged.*” Today we see unprecedented icons of aged rock stars who continue to embody ‘youth’ values. As a result, there is a new ambivalence and uncertainty about what age is and what it may mean. The demographic sector we studied are unclear whether to claim the traditional authority of seniority or the status of youth.

This project began with the observation that academics who study ageing will tend to focus upon periods of life defined by age, either youth or the elderly. This might lead to a neglect of people who are in between. This is reflected in rather indeterminate, contested (and often relational)** labels for this period of life; life-cycle has become ‘life course’,*? old age becomes ‘third age’ and, along with the mid-life crisis, we have ‘life reimagined””° or indeed ‘smart ageing’.*! In many wealthier societies, age has also extended class discrepancies as those between the ages of 45 and 70 become the most asset-rich segment of the entire population; they represent a class that has settled its children and can now capitalise upon the new choices of consumer culture. Yet at the same time these ageing populations may face problems of isolation and loneliness linked to a loss of respect for the authority of seniority, though this may be alleviated by contact through new media.

As people become older, they may also find that, as Hazan noted,” ‘The aged are conceived as a mass of needs bound together by the stigma of age’. As their children move on and they experience mandatory retirement alongside the decline of religion, identities and life purposes may become less defined as previously dominant rolebased conceptualisations of personhood have declined. The next chapter will show how our expectations became challenged by our evidence. Research on ageing in Ireland with particular attention to the role of digital technology builds on extensive work such as the Global Ageing Experience Programme in Intel’s Digital Health Group,*? as well as research undertaken within academia.** Our research results have also been continually assessed against the findings of TILDA, The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing.*°