Location And Dislocation In Contemporary Irish Society

This volume of essays fills a number of gaps in the existing literature on emigration and provides a wide-ranging treatment of Irish emigration in contemporary Irish society and the expanding Irish diaspora. By addressing the issues from a world perspective, the contributors suggest that emigration is not simply a cultural tradition or behavioural trait of the Irish but a social-class and gendered response to structures operating in Irish society and the global economy generally. The geographical focus ranges across Britain, the United States and Europe. It will appeal to those interested in modern Irish emigration, women's studies, national identity, popular culture, literary criticism, the sociology of contemporary Irish society and those working in the rapidly growing field of diaspora studies.

Accompanying DVD is a videorecording of the television program produced by Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Paul Wagner Productions in association with Radio Telefís Éireann, and originally broadcast in 2004.

Ireland and its inhabitants have often been described as being ‘sports mad’. As a relatively small geographical entity, Ireland, north and south, has produced a disproportionately high number of world class sports men and women who have excelled at the highest levels of their chosen sport. The significance of sport in Ireland though extends far beyond the achievements of such individuals. Sport has historically assumed a centrality in the lives of the island’s inhabitants, a fact that can be measured by the numbers and commitment of participants as well as the emotional and financial investment of fans. This book seeks to address the ways in which Irish aptitude and ebullience for sport has manifested itself in those parts of the world that have or have had relatively large Irish communities. The first part of the book explores the diffusion of Gaelic games to a number of centres of Irish immigration and examines the social, economic, political and psychological impact that these games had in helping the Diaspora adjust to life in what were often inhospitable environs. The second part of the book extends the analysis by examining the contribution of Irish sports men and women to the sports culture that they encountered in their new homes and assessing the ways in which their involvement in these sports allowed them to come to terms with and make their way in their new locales. This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal, Sport in Society

What does it mean to be of Irish descent? What does Irish descent stand for in Ireland? In Northern Ireland? In the United States? How are the categories of “native” and “settler” and accounts of ethnic origin being refigured through popular genealogy and population genetics? Of Irish Descent addresses these questions by exploring the contemporary significance of ideas about ancestral roots, origins, and connections. Moving from the intimacy of family stories and reunions to disputed state policies on noble titles and new applications of genetic research, Nash traces the place of ancestry in interconnected geographies of identity—familial, ethnic, national, and diasporic. Underlying these different practices and narratives are potent and profoundly political questions about who counts as Irish and to whom Ireland belongs. Examining tensions between ideas of plurality and commonality, difference and connection that run through the culture and science of ancestral origins, Of Irish Descent is an original and timely exploration of new configurations of nation and diaspora as communities of shared descent.

Disputed Territories investigates the significance of land for contesting cultural identities in comparable settler societies. In the regions of Australasia and southern Africa, European visions of landscape and nature have engaged with southern hemisphere environments and the cultures of indigenous peoples. Amid conflicts over land as a material resource, there has also been an intellectual contest over the aesthetic, iconic and cultural meanings of natural forms and species.Arising from a programme of seminars held at The University of Western Australia, this collection of eminent international authors assembles contributions from anthropology, geography, history and literary studies. The combination of diverse methods and theoretical approaches establishes the ways that land and nature constitute disputed territories in the mind, as well as material resources subject to pragmatic negotiations.

Irish music enjoyed popularity across Europe and North America in the second half of the twentieth century. Regional circumstances created a unique reception for such music in the English Midlands. This book is a musical ethnography of Birmingham, 1950–2010. Initially establishing geographical and chronological parameters, the book cites Birmingham’s location at the hub of a road and communications network as key to the development of Irish music across a series of increasingly visible, public sites: Birmingham’s branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann was established in the domestic space of an amateur musician; Birmingham’s folk clubs encouraged a blend of Irish music with socialist politics, from which the Dublin singer Luke Kelly honed his trade; Irish solidarity was fostered in Birmingham’s churches. Each of these examples begins with a performance at Birmingham Town Hall in order to show how a single venue also provides musical representations that are mutable over time. The culmination is Birmingham’s St Patrick’s Parade. This, the largest Irish procession outside Dublin and New York, manifests an incoherent blend of sounds. The audio montage, nevertheless, creates a coherent metanarrative: one in which the local community has conquered a number of challenges (most especially that of the IRA bombings of the area) and has moved Irish music from private arenas to the centre of this large civic event.

The presence of Irish writers is almost invisible in literary studies of London. The Irish Writing London redresses the critical deficit. A range of experts on particular Irish writers reflect on the diverse experiences and impact this immigrant group has had on the city. Such sustained attention to a location and concern of Irish writing, long passed over, opens up new terrain to not only reveal but create a history of Irish-London writing. Alongside discussions of MacNeice, Boland and McGahern, the autobiography of Brendan Behan and identity of Irish-language writers in London is considered. Written by an internal array of scholars, these new essays on key figures challenge the deep-seated stereotype of what constitutes the proper domain of Irish writing, producing a study that is both culturally and critically alert and a dynamic contribution to literary criticism of the city.

Based on original research with Irish women both at home and in England, this book explores how questions of mobility and stasis are recast along gender, class, racial and generational lines.