ABSTRACT
As these newspaper headlines suggest, we are bombarded almost daily with crisis narratives, the notion that something is not working as it should or could. That there is a problem to be addressed, or that there has been a decline in some shape or form is a constant theme of media discourse. It seems to be endemic to social change that these changes are in some ways seen as marking the decline or end of something. Behind such narratives are a certain fear and often the notion of some golden age in the past against which the present can and should be judged. When the motor car was introduced, it was seen by some as the harbinger of an age of community and religious decline. Mobility would encourage people to change their habits of local and religious commitment. It is true that such changes might have played a role in the evolution of different social habits, but whether they marked a decline is a different question. More recently, the advent of the internet and mobile technologies have similarly been surrounded by crisis narratives as to their negative influence on social practices, in particular people’s capacity to communicate ‘properly’ and to engage in ‘appropriate’ social interaction.
