A degree of what we could call 'de-localization' has accompanied the deepening globalization of recent decades. The house dances in the 1993's, for instance, was one measure of the depth of local space and local allegiance and the connections of family and place. Clearly in situations of such local social life, marriages were still strongly localized. In my grantlfather's generation, in the early decades of the twentieth century, most people in the countryside married within a cluster of townlands in their own parish. Jump forward a generation or two and as car mobility increased, so the 'marriage distance' gratdually expanded, so that today's national and intcenational marriage and relationship networks reflect linkages with a much wider world.