5101 | 3 September 2004 08:44 |
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 08:44:54 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
Conference, Sunderland, The Word, The Icon and The Ritual | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: Conference, Sunderland, The Word, The Icon and The Ritual MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Alison Younger alison_younger[at]yahoo.co.uk Dear Patrick, We have almost finished the programme for the conference we are hosting at the University of Sunderland, but would still be interested in proposals from those wishing to speak on issues relating to the diaspora. We are also keen to invite anyone along to participate even if they don't wish to give a paper... Programme below... Slainte mor Alison Irish Studies Conference The Word, The Icon and The Ritual 12th to 14th November, 2004 University of Sunderland's Sir Tom Cowie Campus at Saint Peter's Keynote speakers include: Professor Stephen Regan (University of Durham) Professor Willy Maley (University of Glasgow) This event, which combines an academic conference with a celebration of Irish culture will include a performance of English Heart: Irish Soul by a professional company on the evening of Friday 12th November, followed by exhibition dancing and a ceilidh with refreshments in the National Glass Centre, on Saturday 13th and a poetry reading on Sunday 14th by Eilis Ni Dhuibhne followed by an optional guided tour of the National Glass Centre. With thanks to the Irish Embassy, London for their support. Cead Mile Failte. | |
TOP | |
5102 | 3 September 2004 18:22 |
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 18:22:22 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
BOOK REVIEW, JOHN McDONAGH, Brendan Kennelly: A Host of Ghosts | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: BOOK REVIEW, JOHN McDONAGH, Brendan Kennelly: A Host of Ghosts MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Email Patrick O'Sullivan The following book review has kindly been made available to us by IR-D member Alison O'Malley-Younger. Our thanks to Alison. Paddy ________________________________ BOOK REVIEW BY Alison O'Malley-Younger University of Sunderland alison_younger[at]yahoo.co.uk JOHN McDONAGH, Brendan Kennelly: A Host of Ghosts 2004 Dublin, Liffey Press ISBN 1-904148-44-1 Let me preface this review with a quotation from Joseph Heller's Catch-22: "He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it". This is clearly NOT an accusation that could be levelled at John McDonagh in his book, Brendan Kennelly: A Host of Ghosts, a study which is clear, accessible, thought provoking and intellectually stimulating, a lively combination of common-sense witticism and critical reflection on a poet who the author defines as "one of Ireland's most important poets" who has languished somewhat in the critical wilderness. The virtue of reading this comprehensive critical introduction to Kennelly's corpus, is that it sets the poet's work in a biographical-developmental frame in the astute and informed introduction, capturing the complexity of Kennelly as a poet and a man while offering a stylistic and thematic introduction to the poet's prolific output. It then proceeds, chapter-by-chapter to combine various theoretical paradigms with close readings in what amounts to an eloquent synthesis of theoretical stringency, potent irony, wit and verve written by an author who has an enviable familiarity with the works of Kennelly . From the outset McDonagh sets out his theoretical and thematic stall, establishing Kennelly's key themes as the loss of language; the harsher realities of rural and urban life; 'betrayal, violence and passionate love' asserting throughout the interdependence of the poet's life and artistic achievement while foregrounding the 'crucial cultural significance' of Kennelly's 'dangerous, challenging and tautly constructed body of work'. The resulting text is verbally acute and jargon-free, a critically coherent and, on occasion playful critique of Kennelly the 'self-professed cute hoor' from Kerry. McDonagh has assembled the book in five chapters entitled: Getting up Early, Old Loyalties: The Boats Are Home, Spilling Selves: Cromwell, The Chaos of Mind: Medea and Following the Judasvoice with a culminating conclusion: Blitzophrenia: Brendan Kennelly's Postcolonial Vision, Blitzophrenia being, according to the author, the 'defining characteristic of [Kennelly's] long and varied career. The book contains important new insights and informed and detailed analyses beginning in Chapter one wherein the author examines recurring poetic motifs and images introduced in the earlier poems and developed in the later, 'epic' collections. Placing Kennelly in the company of other 'emerging and established poetic voices, including Seamus Heaney, John Montague, Thomas Kinsella and Richard Murphy, McDonagh hails the early poetry (including the heavily anthologised 'My Dark Fathers' and 'The Pig Killer') as 'the emergence of a major new poetic voice' that examines the icons and chimeras surrounding identity both personal and collective, individual and national. This approach is developed in chapter two wherein the author examines seminal and formative moments in the life of the poet, aligning these to the 'reevaluation and reappropriation' of memories in Kenelly's corpus of works. Highlighting the roles of storytelling and singing in the 'formation of cultural identity' McDonagh examines their importance to both the form and content of Kennelly's poetry while tracking the de-mythologising imperative in the same. This chapter addresses the manner in which Kennelly's poetry is a deeply nuanced conduit for voices from the lyrical in 'The Singing Girl is Easy in Her Song' to the menacing in 'The Stick'. Covering the themes of education and childhood this chapter elucidates the manner in which Kennelly is a poet of extremes: at once the ludic jester of 'Poetry My Arse' and the attentive observer of violence in poems such as 'Beatings'. One of the highlights of this book for me is the chapter on Cromwell wherein McDonagh examines themes such as nation and imagination in the conceptual frameworks of reappropriation and desacralisation. In the Introduction to Cromwell Kennelly suggests that: 'Because of history, an Irish poet, to realise himself, must turn the full attention of his imagination to the English tradition. An English poet committed to the same task need hardly give the smallest thought to things Irish', hence the inclusion of Edmund Spenser in both the poem and its analysis. Discussing the epic scope and genre of the collection McDonagh points to the manner in which Kennelly reconfigures the English sonnet, allowing his poetic persona Buffun to wield it in his search for self-identity and identifying the self. This chapter included theoretical paradigms from the Freudian to the Bhabhalian: the Psychoanalytic to the Postcolonial, it offers edifying Orientalist readings utilising the theories of Said to define Kennelly's 'destabilising hermeneutical poetics' in a register that is academic, insightful, engaged, engaging and extremely readable. McDonagh's chapter on Kennelly's version of Medea re-emphasises the theme of betrayal and the device of storytelling prevalent in Kennelly's works. Contextualising the play in women's stories overheard by Kennelly in a Dublin hospital in 1986 McDonagh foregrounds the universality of the sense of female victimisation that is at the heart of the play along with Kennelly's authorial connection with Jason. This chapter's foci are the importance of 'versions', the vicarious 'voicing' of women, de-mythologising and violence. It is a critique of the misogyny of male authority which takes the conceptual fabric of Euripides' original and makes it into something new that speaks to Kennelly's own culture. In the Introduction to the Book of Judas Kennelly explains that in Cromwell 'I tried to open my mind, heart and imagination to the full, fascinating complexity of a man I was from childhood taught, quite simply, to hate. A learned hate is hard to unlearn.' The Book of Judas, the subject of chapter five develops this notion, highlighting the obvious (and for Kennelly, recurring) theme of betrayal in the central figure of Judas Iscariot. Comparing Kennelly to Heaney, McDonagh enters into a fascinating analysis of Kennelly's view of the role of the poet, poetic authenticity and 'the untrustworthiness of words, memories and ideas'. Identity, its instability and formation is foregrounded in the potent image of Christ and Judas in a Lacanian dyad, fundamentally interdependent and necessarily linked. McDonagh deftly and skilfully brings to the fore the way in which Kennelly turns the notion of betrayal on its head by depicting Judas as a scapegoat in the design of Christ's martyrdom. It is the ultimate act of desacralisation and, some would say blasphemy but it highlights one of Kennelly's greatest strengths, the ability to locate his work in the middle of the interpretative battlefield between the authentic and the inauthentic, 'the fake and the real thing'. What is Blitzophrenia? A postcolonial, polyvocal poetics that exists to challenge cultural monoliths and icons and indices of Irishness, a cultural correlative and poetic corrective to historical and stereotypical binarisms, a multiplicity of voices that coalesce in a 'selfswamp'. This is what I understand from McDonagh's final theoretical chapter, which is refreshing in its accessibility, its brevity, its tightness and its clarity. This chapter concludes a book that says exactly what it will do on the sleeve, that is to 'provide a comprehensive critical introduction to the broad corpus of his [Kennelly's] work'. It is a stimulating and valuable contribution to the field of Irish Studies and Kennelly scholarship that provides thought-provoking reading, concise critical evaluation, exacting scholarly research and valuable bibliographic information. This book should be welcomed and will almost certainly be cited in subsequent studies of Kennelly. If it is not, it should be as it retrieves from the critical wilderness a poet who is described by Geert Lernout as "All things to all men, and a proper Irishman too". "the robust, ever-smiling Kerryman with a touch of genius" - Brendan Kennelly. Alison O'Malley-Younger [Dr] Department of English University of Sunderland Priestman Building Green Terrace Sunderland Tyne and Wear UK | |
TOP | |
5103 | 3 September 2004 18:33 |
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 18:33:20 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
Book Review, Edmundo Murray, Devenir Irlandes | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: Book Review, Edmundo Murray, Devenir Irlandes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Email Patrick O'Sullivan The following book review by Sergio Kiernan appeared in The Buenos Aires Herald, 30 July 2004. I am grateful to Sergio Kiernan, and to The Buenos Aires Herald, for = kindly making the review available to the Irish Diaspora list. Our thanks... P.O'S. BOOK REVIEW=20 By Sergio Kiernan Published by The Buenos Aires Herald, 30 July 2004 In search of the real Irish Review of Devenir Irland=E9s, by Edmundo Murray Eudeba, May 2004 Edmundo Murray's book on the Irish in Argentina gleefully explodes old myths. This scholarly work analyzes in detail four original sources, two collections of letters and two brief autobiographies, written by Irish settlers in the 19th century and by their Argentine-born children. The picture that emerges is surprising: when we listen to them, the Irish = and Irish-Argentines of the period sound Victorian and British. There is no nationalism, no folklore, no leprechauns, not even a little Parnellism = in their writings. Our ancestors were no-nonsense immigrants working hard = to get ahead, and tended to see themselves as Britons abroad. The only references to the situation in Ireland are a passing one to "unjust = laws" and the constant urging of relatives and friends to emigrate to = Argentina, where things were much better. Exactly what you find in contemporary = memoirs by English settlers such as Richard Seymour, who published =93A Settler = in the Pampas=94 as an adventure yarn and an economics pamphlet for emigration. Argentine-born Edmundo Murray is a scholar, writer and historian. He = lives and teaches in Geneva, where he also edits a website on Irish Migration Studies in South America and was a founding member of the Irish = Argentine Historical Society. "Devenir Irland=E9s", published by the University of Buenos Aires' Eudeba, is the result of a long and detailed work of collecting letters sent by Irish emigrants to Argentina to friends and relatives in Ireland and Australia. The first document in the book is a short memoir by Edward Robbins, a = native of Co Offaly that arrived in Argentina at 47, a widower with seven = children married to a Mullingar widow with four children. In Robbins' telling, getting to Argentina in 1849 implied sailing in coffin ships: the family arrives in Buenos Aires so sick that they have to spend weeks = quarantined. Edward's wife dies and soon after one of his children and one of her daughters die as well. After paying the doctors and burying his family, Robbins has spent his capital, a hefty eighty pounds, and starts looking = for a job. Things do improve, but the 1852 fall of Rosas and the ensuing = civil war leave him seriously in debt again. Robbins' story as an immigrant is = not a success one. He is the exception. The following section of the books collates the = letters of the Haysland, Co Wexford, Murphys, a large family that loved = Argentina --"The best country under the sun"-- and spent years bringing neighbors, relations and relatives here. "The longer people stay in Ireland, the = worse for them" writes John James Murphy in June 1865. "The situation there = gets worse by the day. I am convinced that there will be no changes in the = law that will benefit the farmers who lease their land and there will always = be an open rift between landlords and farmers, with the latter kneeling = down." In contrast, Argentina is a land of opportunity. "What surprises the just-arrived the most is to find this country so different from what = they imagined it like. Most people there think that we live in a = half-civilized half-wild place; a sort of natural desert out of a Synbad tale. (...) = Dear friends, believe me when I tell you that a man can be happier and more independent here than the largest farmer in Ireland, with a third of his flock." Later the same year, John James writes a long letter to his = brother Martin trying to convince him to up and come: "Those who stay in Ireland = are completely blind to their future; they should hurry while they have the means to come and while Argentina is in a position to admit them". Since his sources are private correspondence and family papers, Murray's book provides a window into daily life in Argentina in the second half = of the nineteenth century. The letters contain complains about the cold in = the Pampas, tales of Indian raids, and orders for socks, trousers and = worsted woolens, "unavailable here". Murphy actively smuggles in farm implements = and machinery, asking his family to send them as baggage under the name of = the Irish he hires. =20 The third section is dominated by this fascinating domesticity. The collection of letters sent to John James Pettit by his many Argentine cousins is a trove of daily-life details and a very early testimony of Irish-Argentine life. Pettit was born in Argentina of Irish parents who = took him to Australia when he was a toddler but who never lost touch with his family here, relatives he never met in person. Sally Moore is the most prolific writer in this section, which collects letters from the mid-eighteen sixties, during the war with Paraguay. From Buenos Aires Sally writes about marriages, deaths, births and = accidents in a rather large family already stretching from Santa Fe to the Indian border west of the city. She tells John James that they don't "get along = too well with the locals, but we prefer them to the English, perhaps because they are Catholic". Another writing cousin, Fanny, disagrees: "The = people in our country are mostly very ugly, dark and with black hair and eyes. = They are like savages. As of education, only a few can read and write and = those who can are regarded with respect by the lower orders. Their most common weapon is the knife. They carry a very long one on their backs and they = pull them out on any pretext. They are very good to foreigners, and very = poor. Their women sew for a living. The upper classes live in towns. Very few = of the English live in towns." As the years pass, cousins die "because his blood is weak" or go crazy = but recover. Brothers and cousins try to avoid going to the war by lying = about their place of birth or securing British consular protection. The Moores = and Pettit trade newspapers and constantly complain about copies getting = lost or stolen in the mail (some things never change...) and comment on = disasters such as a locust invasion, several dry spells, dust storms and constant bouts of cholera. Sarmiento's election is well received ("He has been to = the United States and speaks English"), and Sally muses on why so many Irish take to the drink as soon as they disembark (she is specially concerned about the ridicule before "the natives, who never drink"). Pettit's cousins are more complex figures than the immigrants in the = first two chapters. They were born here and never set foot in Ireland, but considered themselves British, if not English. They write not as = "natives" but as old Argentine hands, long-serving expats commenting on a country = they know well but remains foreign to them. The last chapter of Devenir Irland=E9s is another short memory, that of = Tom Garrahan, an Argentine-born farmer and a self confessed "seco" with a remarkable memory for figures. Life for Garrahan is a never-ending = buying and selling of sheep and cattle, a succession of leases and deals he = writes down for his children never missing a profit margin or a net price. Life = is lightened by the odd dance --"I don't drink and I don't smoke, and I couldn't afford to dress up for the dances"-- and by meeting famous customers such as Hip=F3lito Irigoyen, who buys some cows from him. = There is Sixto, the peon who speaks English with a brogue, and Sunday games with = the Lobos Hibernian Club, of which Garrahan is predictably treasurer. And = there is a hint to that mystery that so interested Borges, the intermarriage = of the Irish and the Basque: they shared leases and regarded each other as colleagues of a sort. Murray edited and translated the letters and memoirs --he is preparing = an English-language edition-- and provided hundreds of footnotes that can = be read sequentially or as separate chapters. He assumes his own voice only = in brief introductions to every collection and in a short, sharp final = chapter on the mysteries of nationality. There he explains his idea of how the Irish, in order to become Argentines, had to lose their fear of things Argentine and start seeing England as an enemy of the old country. =20 I wish he had said more about that, but they say that it is better to = leave the table hungry. And anybody who reads this book will be hungry for = more. BOOK REVIEW=20 By Sergio Kiernan Published by The Buenos Aires Herald, 30 July 2004 | |
TOP | |
5104 | 3 September 2004 21:11 |
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 21:11:17 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
Article, Reflections on a White Man's Journey | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: Article, Reflections on a White Man's Journey MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Email Patrick O'Sullivan For information... P.O's. Reflections on a White Man's Journey The Diversity Factor 1 April 2004, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 17-22(6) John Farragher Abstract: As a young, white, Irish Catholic man growing up in the Boston area, John Farragher never had to think about his race or ethnicity. He never had to make decisions about the acceptability of his physical appearance or be concerned about his physical safety. In this article, John candidly shares insights and experiences of his journey as a white man learning about his own privilege and power. His final thoughts offer a roadmap for other white men who are ready to learn. Document Type: Research article ISSN: 1545-2808 SICI (online): 1545-2808(20040401)12:2L.17;1- Publisher: Elsie Y. Cross Associates, Inc. | |
TOP | |
5105 | 3 September 2004 21:13 |
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 21:13:57 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
The Past is Another Planet | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: The Past is Another Planet MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Email Patrick O'Sullivan For information... Tidying up some items left over from before the holidays... The Past is Another Planet: The Absence of Funding for Global Historical Research Patrick Manning Northeastern University is a little essay in the online journal, World History Connected... The essay was written to mark the CLOSURE of Patrick Manning's World History Center. He makes points we have made on Ir-D before - and which I touch on in my article for New Hibernia Review last year... His last paragraphs include this section... 'The center's closure, for lack of local or national funding, is a clear reflection of the low priority of global historical studies. Part of the problem lies with the historical profession. Historians think of history as local studies, and think of world history as an accumulation of local studies. When they define a job a "world history" they mean a job to teach freshman surveys, and they want a faculty member who knows about a couple world regions (outside the U.S. and Europe). This rarely has to do with research...' Full text at http://worldhistoryconnected.press.uiuc.edu/1.2/manning.html P.O'S. | |
TOP | |
5106 | 3 September 2004 22:36 |
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 22:36:13 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
Francis Davis, "The Belfastman" | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: Francis Davis, "The Belfastman" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Kerby Miller MillerK[at]missouri.edu Subject: Re: Francis Davis ["The Belfastman"] W. P. Ryan's old THE IRISH LABOUR MOVEMENT (ca 1920) refers on p. 130 to the 19th-century writings of "the muslin weaver, Francis Davis, 'The Belfastman,' a Munsterman who went to Belfast. . . . Very earnest, much against part spirit and sectarianism, he wrote a great deal [poetry, apparently, but perhaps also essays] in the fluent, rhetorical Young Ireland style...." Can anyone provide any information about Davis and his published works? Apparently, he wrote for the post-famine NATION in Dublin, but were his essays, etc., ever published in book form? Many thanks, Kerby | |
TOP | |
5107 | 3 September 2004 22:49 |
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 22:49:36 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
Book Review, Lenihan, | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: Book Review, Lenihan, Conquest and Resistance: War in Seventeenth-Century Ireland MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Email Patrick O'Sullivan For information... P.O'S. =20 -----Original Message----- Subject: REV: Trim on Lenihan, _Conquest and Resistance: War in Seventeenth-Century Ireland_ H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by H-Albion[at]h-net.msu.edu (August 2004) P=E1draig Lenihan, ed. _Conquest and Resistance: War in = Seventeenth-Century Ireland_. History of Warfare Series. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001. = viii + 382 pp. Figures, maps, notes, bibliographies, index. $112.00 (cloth), ISBN 90-04-11743-1. Reviewed for H-Albion by D. J. B. Trim , Early Modern Research Centre, University of Reading Military Mismatch: The English and Scottish Conquest of = Seventeenth-Century Ireland This handsome looking volume, a contribution to Brill's excellent = History of Warfare series, comprises ten thematic essays which explore the seventeenth-century Irish experience of war, from political and social contexts, military finance and logistics, and strategic geography, to = the actual conduct of a range of different types of military operations. = They are topped and tailed by editorial pieces, which try to pull the various threads together and advance arguments for the volume as a whole; but = while the editor deserves praise for providing a conclusion as well as an introduction, the conclusion is essentially a contribution to = early-modern military history's most significant debate--over whether there was a "military revolution" in the period--and relates military developments = in seventeenth-century Ireland to the military revolution theory. Ten thematic essays fall into two halves. Five assess strategic considerations in various local and international contexts. Tadhg =D3 hAnnrach=E1in surveys the role of European powers in Irish military = affairs from 1596 to 1691 (the effective terminal date of the seventeenth = century in this volume); John Young considers Hiberno-Scottish relations, = especially the passage of military forces between the Hebrides and Ulster from 1641 = to 1691; John McGurk focuses on how topography influenced the conduct of = the final English campaigns against Tyrone, in 1600-03; the editor develops = the theme of geographical influences on strategy and operations in an essay = on the period 1641-91; and Paul M. Kerrigan considers English, Irish rebel, = and French naval strategy in the same half century. The remaining five = essays are more diverse in subject matter. James Scott Wheeler boils down his work from two substantial books in a study of logistics and military finance over the period 1598-1692. Weapons and tactical systems between 1594 and 1691, and siege warfare between 1648 and 1691, are considered by Donal O'Carroll and James Burke respectively. Two "war and society" studies round out the volume: = Raymond Gillespie surveys the effects of war on Irish towns and cities from the 1570s to 1691, and Bernadette Whelan examines women and warfare between 1641 and 1691. Overall, the volume follows Lenihan's argument in his introduction that = the military potential of England and, later, Great Britain, was = immeasurably greater than that of Irish Catholics. McGurk, Wheeler, and Kerrigan evaluate the logistical and naval strategies that exploited this = advantage. The disparity between Ireland and the English-cum-British kingdom was = such that an effective Irish military response to conquest and colonization = was only feasible in the favorable archipelagic and continental European circumstances explored by Young and =D3 hAnnrach=E1in. Defeat or victory ultimately depended on relative military performance = in maneuver, battle, and siege--operations evaluated by Lenihan, O'Carroll, = and Burke. Whelan's study of the role of women as victim, survivor and (occasionally) combatant, and Gillespie's insightful analysis of Irish = towns bring out well the impact of the unequal struggle on Irish society. The conclusion pulls a number of strands together in arguing that a = military revolution can be witnessed in seventeenth-century Ireland and that the application of the military revolution was an important factor in the conquest of Ireland. The volume's main weakness is that most of it is actually on the period 1641-91. One can have no argument with the terminal date: "the Irish century of warfare has a definite conclusion" (p. 21). But given the = title, and the fact that Tyrone's rebellion (the so-called "Nine Years' War") was only defeated in 1603, it would be reasonable to find a seventeenth century that runs from 1594 to 1691. Possibly the Nine = Years' War--which dwarfs all subsequent military events in Ireland until the = great rebellion of 1641--would have been better left to a volume on sixteenth-century Ireland, yet, given this volume's title, one = reasonably expects more on the first four decades of the seventeenth century. Five = of the ten main essays deal only with events in the 1640s and after (and = one, that by Burke, commences with Cromwell). Of the remaining five, only = one chapter, McGurk's, is focused only on events before 1641. And among all = the broad thematic surveys, McGurk's intensive case study of 1600-03 seems = oddly out of place. Thus, only four essays actually cover the whole of the seventeenth century, even though Lenihan begins his introduction by stressing the value of a comparative approach that ranges across the seventeenth century. It is not clear why some essays deal only with post-1641 events. Was Ireland not important in English/British (and Spanish!) naval strategy before 1641? There was certainly just as much to-ing and fro-ing of = troops, ranging from small groups of volunteers, to large-scale forces, between Scotland and Ireland in the half century which preceded 1641 as that following it. Siege warfare probably was more common from the 1640s, = but Kinsale, in 1603, doomed Tyrone's rebellion to defeat and was thus one = of the most significant military events--much less sieges--in seventeenth-century Ireland. That a chapter called "Siege Warfare in Seventeenth-Century Ireland" does not even mention it, and also = overlooks the important sieges in the early days of the great rebellions, is = absurd and a reproach to the editor. Burke's chapter is, in fact, basically a narrative of important sieges between 1648 and 1691, but other contributors stick well to the task of producing analytical essays; these are often conceived in broad terms, = and this makes for stimulating chapters. Thus, Kerrigan relates naval = strategy to Mahan, one of the most influential writers on maritime strategy, = while Whelan's study is theoretically informed and conceptualizes its subject broadly, delivering a rounded picture of women's relationship with war. = The inclusion of an essay on the difficult (and therefore often overlooked) areas of logistics and finance is to the editor's credit. It is a pity = that Wheeler does not place events in Ireland and the British Isles in a = wider context of the supply of war in this period, but he brings out well how English/British superiority left the Irish gravely disadvantaged. The Catholic challenge in 1689-90 was only as effective as it was because = France deployed "large amounts of logistical and naval support to offset = superior English resources" (p. 207). O'Carroll very effectively puts tactical and technological = systems in a European context, capably summarizing developments over the century 1594-1691 as a whole (though he is too pessimistic about cavalry before 1640, having misconstrued developments in the Netherlands), as a prelude = to a narrative of particular campaigns that brings out "the fundamental weakness of the Irish infantry, lack of firepower" (p. 252). Lenihan's = own thematic essay, on strategic geography, at times fails to distinguish appropriately between strategy and tactics, but his conclusion that = "ethnics geography patterned Irish warfare at least as much as physical = geography", so that "geographical determinism is inappropriate" is an important contribution to early-modern Irish history and to military studies more generally. Gillespie similarly has produced a study that is of = relevance to the growing literature on early-modern urban life as well as to Irish = social history. Overall, the thematic focus of essays is a definite virtue, allowing continuity and change to emerge. Arguably it might be helpful if = Lenihan's conclusion were less narrowly focused, but it makes a telling = contribution to the military revolution debate and there is certainly ample scope for readers to draw comparative insights for themselves. The volume is not as well produced as it should be. Most of the = problems are slight, but taken as a whole they detract from the book's quality, = if only by distracting one from the text. Lenihan's introduction uses parenthetical references; but =D3 hAnnrach=E1in and Young then use = footnotes, before McGurk cites sources using both systems. The next five chapters, = and the final two, all use parenthetical referencing, but in between = Gillespie cites with footnotes again. This is off-putting (and hints at some slackness of the editorial reins) but, more fundamentally, parenthetical referencing is better suited to the social or political sciences, where authors are generally summarizing a body of secondary literature, than = to historical scholarship, which tends to draw on a more complex (and = therefore not easily cited) range of sources. In those chapters that are heavily archivally-based, such as Wheeler's, parenthetical references become particularly cumbersome, and distract from the text. At least all = chapters, regardless of citation method, are consistent in providing = bibliographies. There is no list of contributors. Many of them are well-known names, but not all, and it would be helpful = to know more about them. There is also no list of figures, maps, or illustrations; the table of contents lists a list of illustrations, but = it is not to be found inside! This is especially annoying since the volume does contain illustrations and maps. On the plus side, the index is comprehensive. The thematic and generally broad nature of the essays and the provision = of bibliographies make the volume an excellent resource for students, at undergraduate as well as postgraduate level. One hopes that the = publisher puts this into paperback, because it would make a valuable addition to = the libraries of any institution that has classes on seventeenth-century = Irish history, or on general military history--but Brill's absurd hardback = prices will no doubt put many librarians off this collection, rendering it accessible only to scholars able to consult it at major research = libraries. This would be a pity, for despite the problems highlighted in this = review, _Conquest and Resistance_ will stimulate early-modernists, military historians, and historians of Ireland and British-Irish relations, to = all of whom it is recommended. Copyright (c) 2004 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, = and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks[at]mail.h-net.msu.edu. | |
TOP | |
5108 | 4 September 2004 08:36 |
Date: Sat, 4 Sep 2004 08:36:42 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
Francis Davis 2 | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: Francis Davis 2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Sean Mc Cartan smccartan[at]utvinternet.com Subject: Francis Davis From Queens University Library Belfast: Earlier and later leaves : or An autumn gathering / by Francis Davis ; with Davis, Francis, 1810-1885 1878 * 3 copies - Earlier and later leaves: or, An autumn gathering / By Francis Davis, "The B Davis, Francis, 1810-1885 1878 * 1 copy - Lispings of the lagan / By Francis Davis, (The Belfast man.) Davis, Francis, 1810-1885 1849 * 1 copy - Miscellaneous poems and songs / By Francis Davis, (The "Belfast man.") Davis, Francis, 1810-1885 1847 * 1 copy - ----- Original Message ----- > From: Kerby Miller > MillerK[at]missouri.edu > Subject: Re: Francis Davis ["The Belfastman"] > > W. P. Ryan's old THE IRISH LABOUR MOVEMENT (ca 1920) refers on p. 130 to the > 19th-century writings of "the muslin weaver, Francis Davis, 'The > Belfastman,' a Munsterman who went to Belfast. . . . Very earnest, much > against part spirit and sectarianism, he wrote a great deal [poetry, > apparently, but perhaps also essays] in the fluent, rhetorical Young Ireland > style...." > > Can anyone provide any information about Davis and his published works? > Apparently, he wrote for the post-famine NATION in Dublin, but were his > essays, etc., ever published in book form? > > Many thanks, > > Kerby | |
TOP | |
5109 | 4 September 2004 08:52 |
Date: Sat, 4 Sep 2004 08:52:12 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
John P. Duggan, | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: John P. Duggan, Herr Hempel at the German Legation in Dublin: 1937-1945 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Email Patrick O'Sullivan For information... Herr Hempel at the German Legation in Dublin: 1937-1945. John P. Duggan Reviewed by Robert S. Redmond in Contemporary Review, March, 2004. Full review freely available at http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2242/is_1658_284/ai_114594460 P.O'S. Hitler's man in Dublin - Herr Hempel at the German Legation in Dublin: 1937-1945 - Book Review Contemporary Review, March, 2004 by Robert S. Redmond Herr Hempel at the German Legation in Dublin: 1937-1945. John P. Duggan. Irish Academic Press. [pounds sterling]35.00. 352 pages. ISBN 0-7165-2764-4. 'The letter of credence dated 22 June 1937 from Hitler to King George VI, tells us something of the odd position of the Irish Free State at the time. It recommends Eduard Hempel as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the German Government. It hoped Hempel would 'earn the goodwill of His Majesty and deepen the bonds between the British and German people'. Hempel was a career diplomat who put protocol above all else. During his time in Dublin, he had to deal with different pressures...' | |
TOP | |
5110 | 4 September 2004 08:58 |
Date: Sat, 4 Sep 2004 08:58:48 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
Review of The Encyclopaedia of Ireland | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: Review of The Encyclopaedia of Ireland MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Email Patrick O'Sullivan For information... The Encyclopaedia of Ireland - Reviewed in New Statesman, Jan 5, 2004 by Maurice Walsh Full review freely available at http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FQP/is_4669_132/ai_112448322 P.O'S. An immodest proposal - The Encyclopaedia of Ireland - Book Review New Statesman, Jan 5, 2004 by Maurice Walsh 'In Peace in Ireland, his recent book on the Northern Irish Troubles, Richard Bourke tells a revealing story about Richard Crossman, secretary of state for social services during Harold Wilson's government of 1966-70. Referring to riots that had occurred at the Orange parades of 12 July 1969, Crossman wrote in his diary: "There had been commotions on St Patrick's Day, it may have been." Although Northern Ireland no longer poses quite such a challenge, today's ministers would do well to have a firmer grasp of the local parade calender than Crossman. Keeping The Encyclopaedia of Ireland to hand might help...' | |
TOP | |
5111 | 6 September 2004 20:21 |
Date: Mon, 6 Sep 2004 20:21:11 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
Ir-D Web Review, Bannerji et al, Of Property and Propriety | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: Ir-D Web Review, Bannerji et al, Of Property and Propriety MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Email Patrick O'Sullivan For information... http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=200671069094538 Himani Bannerji, Shahrzad Mojab, and Judy Whitehead, eds. Of Property and Propriety: The Role of Gender and Class in Imperialism and Nationalism. Anthropological Horizons Series. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. xii + 244 pp. Bibliography. $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 08-0204380-1; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 08-0208192-4. Reviewed by Lisa Pollard, Department of History, The University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Published by H-Gender-MidEast (September, 2003) 'This eclectic volume, edited by a sociologist, an anthropologist, and an education faculty member, aims to add "legs" to the study of colonialism and post-colonialism. The chapters in Of Property and Propriety historicize the struggle between feminism, "the woman question," imperialism, and nationalism in a number of contexts, uncovering and highlighting the multitude of voices through which struggles against patriarchal states--both colonial and indigenous--have been articulated. The book thus gives alternatives to a tendency in colonial and post-colonial studies to view male and female nationalists' response to colonial discourse about women and the nation as monolithic, and as arising simply in reaction to colonial rule...' This book includes a chapter by Dana Hearne "Contesting Positions in Nationalist Ideologies in pre-Independence Ireland", of which reviewer Pollard says... 'Hearne's chapter provides an excellent overview of modern Irish history, its feminist and workers' movements, and concludes that a multiplicity of nationalisms were sidelined and silenced by the triumph of conservative, Catholic, patriarchal state nationalism there after World War I. Hearne also illustrates the legacy of activism, stating that while feminist and workers' challenges to the nationalism of the church, the South, and the clan were not successful, they did provide a "potentially transformative" vision of national liberation...' P.O'S. | |
TOP | |
5112 | 6 September 2004 20:31 |
Date: Mon, 6 Sep 2004 20:31:14 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
TOC Journal of Social Issues, September 2004, Volume 60, Issue 3 | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: TOC Journal of Social Issues, September 2004, Volume 60, Issue 3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Email Patrick O'Sullivan The latest issue of the Journal of Social Issues is a Northern Ireland special... The Cost of Conflict: Children and the Northern Irish Troubles, edited by Orla T. Muldoon. http://www.spssi.org/jsi_issueinfo.html http://www.ingenta.com/journals/browse/bpl/josi Orla is to be congratulated on a very thoughtful piece of work. I have pasted in, below, the full TOC - some familiar names... As I absorb all this I might post to IR-D the abstracts of articles of special interest. Or someone else might comment... On a train of thought... An earler issue of the journal this year marked... The 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education: Interethnic Contact and Change in Education in the 21st Century Journal of Social Issues Volume 60, Issue 1 - 2004 edited by Sabrina Zirkel San Francisco, CA 94133-4640 P.O'S. Journal of Social Issues September 2004, Volume 60, Issue 3 Publisher: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues 1. Children of the Troubles: The Impact of Political Violence in Northern Ireland Orla T. Muldoon Journal of Social Issues, September 2004, vol. 60, iss. 3, pp. 453-468(16) Blackwell Publishing 2. Young Men as Victims and Perpetrators of Violence in Northern Ireland: A Qualitative Analysis Jacqueline Reilly; Orla T. Muldoon; Clare Byrne Journal of Social Issues, September 2004, vol. 60, iss. 3, pp. 469-484(16) Blackwell Publishing 3. Secular Trends in Substance Use: The Conflict and Young People in Northern Ireland Kathryn Higgins; Andrew Percy; Patrick Mc Crystal Journal of Social Issues, September 2004, vol. 60, iss. 3, pp. 485-506(22) Blackwell Publishing 4. Children and Socio-Cultural Divisions in Northern Ireland Karen Trew Journal of Social Issues, September 2004, vol. 60, iss. 3, pp. 507-522(16) Blackwell Publishing 5. Identity Change in Northern Ireland: A Longitudinal Study of Students' Transition to University Clare Cassidy; Karen Trew Journal of Social Issues, September 2004, vol. 60, iss. 3, pp. 523-540(18) Blackwell Publishing 6. Peace and Progress? Political and Social Change Among Young Loyalists in Northern Ireland James W. McAuley Journal of Social Issues, September 2004, vol. 60, iss. 3, pp. 541-562(22) Blackwell Publishing 7. Teachers' and Ppils' Educational Experiences and School-Based Responses to the Conflict in Northern Ireland Rosemary Kilpatrick; Ruth Leitch Journal of Social Issues, September 2004, vol. 60, iss. 3, pp. 563-586(24) Blackwell Publishing 8. The Development of Intergroup Forgiveness in Northern Ireland Frances McLernon; Ed Cairns; Miles Hewstone; Ron Smith Journal of Social Issues, September 2004, vol. 60, iss. 3, pp. 587-601(15) Blackwell Publishing 9. Young People and Political Involvement in Northern Ireland Jean Whyte; Ian Schermbrucker Journal of Social Issues, September 2004, vol. 60, iss. 3, pp. 603-627(25) Blackwell Publishing 10. After the War Comes Peace? An Examination of the Impact of the Northern Ireland Conflict on Young People Tony Gallagher Journal of Social Issues, September 2004, vol. 60, iss. 3, pp. 629-642(14) Blackwell Publishing 11. Introduction for Louis A. Penner's SPSSI Presidential Address Geoffrey Maruyama Journal of Social Issues, September 2004, vol. 60, iss. 3, pp. 643-644(2) Blackwell Publishing 12. Volunteerism and Social Problems: Making Things Better or Worse? Louis A. Penner Journal of Social Issues, September 2004, vol. 60, iss. 3, pp. 645-666(22) Blackwell Publishing Publisher: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues | |
TOP | |
5113 | 7 September 2004 11:32 |
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2004 11:32:58 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
CFP ACIS University of Notre Dame April 13-17, 2005 | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: CFP ACIS University of Notre Dame April 13-17, 2005 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Email Patrick O'Sullivan For information... P.O'S. http://www.nd.edu/~irishstu/conferences.html http://www.acisweb.com/data/cfp.php CALL FOR PAPERS Ireland Beyond Borders American Conference for Irish Studies Annual General Meeting April 13-17, 2005 University of Notre Dame South Bend, Indiana "Ireland Beyond Borders" hopes to explore new conceptions of Ireland, Irishness, and Irish Studies that challenge the boundaries that = politics, the academy, and culture have set for them. The theme is intentionally open-ended. Topics might include, for example, globalization, partition, = the Internet age, gender and sexuality, critical race theory, popular = culture, music, dance, the visual arts, contemporary literature, the Irish = language, or Irish studies as an academic discipline; however, that list is not intended to be prescriptive or exclusive. We encourage submissions that reach across traditional disciplinary boundaries, and submissions on = topics outside the areas of history and literary criticism. The deadline for submitting proposals is October 15, 2004. Participants must be members = of the American Conference for Irish Studies. Visit www.acisweb.com to = become a member. We will mark the 25th anniversary of the Field Day Theater Company with appearances by founding members Seamus Deane and Stephen Rea. Other = featured speakers include Nuala O'Faolain, Angela Bourke, Tom Kilroy, Joep = Leerssen, Cathal =D3 Searcaigh, David Roediger and James R. Barrett, and Katie Trumpener. There will also be performances by Irish dancer Jean Butler = and musical group Alt=E1n. Margaret Corcoran's show An Enquiry will be on = display in the Snite Museum of Art and the Special Collections department of the Hesburgh Library will mount an exhibit highlighting the = recently-acquired Loeber Collection of Irish Fiction. An Irish film series will run at the Performing Arts Center throughout the conference. We encourage participants to submit panel proposals. We will give equal consideration to individual proposals. However, we have found that = panels organized by the participants are often more coherent and generate = better discussions than those put together by the conference organizers. We recommend three participants per panel. We will be happy to accept = proposals written in Irish. Panel Proposals: Submit one 250-word abstract from each participant = along with a cover letter giving the title and a brief description of the = panel. Individual Proposals: Submit one 250-word abstract, including a title, = your contact information, and a brief description of the paper. Electronic Submission: Email proposals to acis2005[at]nd.edu. Surface Mail: Send proposals to: ACIS 2005 Keough Institute for Irish Studies 422 Flanner Hall Notre Dame, IN 46556 For more information, visit the Keough Institute website or contact = Susan Harris at sharris2[at]nd.edu or Sarah McKibben at smckibbe[at]nd.edu. | |
TOP | |
5114 | 9 September 2004 09:49 |
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 09:49:57 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
Germans envy Ireland | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: Germans envy Ireland MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Email Patrick O'Sullivan I have remarked before on the strange and special place Ireland has = within certain present day western European discourses - see, for example, my = notes on 'An Irishman at the Basque World Congress' on irishdiaspora.net... A further, interesting, example, from Hugo Hamilton, in The Guardian = this week... P.O'S. The loneliness of being German 'In striving to exorcise their past Germans have surrendered their = ability to love themselves and their country. Perhaps this is why they envy = Ireland - a country they see as having all the emotions they have lost. = German-Irish novelist Hugo Hamilton on a people still in denial...' Tuesday September 7, 2004 The Guardian 'In 1957, Heinrich B=F6ll published his famous travel book Irisches = Tagebuch, which was later translated as Irish Journal. The Irish hated it and the Germans loved it. For the Irish it had too many donkeys and stone walls, = too much dreaming and backward innocence. For the Germans, however, it was precisely these simple things that became so attractive. They carried = the book with them in their rucksacks, searching for a kind of emotional connection to the people and the landscape. It gave them a sense of innocence and belonging, an inner life of feelings that was denied to = them in their own country...' Full story at... http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1298617,00.html | |
TOP | |
5115 | 9 September 2004 09:54 |
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 09:54:31 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
Roddy Doyle interview | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: Roddy Doyle interview MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Email Patrick O'Sullivan ...A wide-ranging interview with Roddy Doyle, in The Guardian, earlier this week... Some paragraphs pasted in below... P.O'S. 'Sexy Dublin? It's a con' 'He's just written a third book for infants but Roddy Doyle is better known for the novels and films that depict a violent, impoverished Ireland. So what does he really think about his homeland?' Emma Brockes Monday September 6, 2004 The Guardian Roddy Doyle: 'We've done an incredibly good job of selling ourselves as the land of the writing, singing, little people.' Photo: Eamonn McCabe '...The Ireland of those books - violent, impoverished, flattened by the church - is not supposed to exist any more. With a fervour the English are spared, all Irish writers are required to define what it means to be Irish, partly as a result of their own self-mythologising, partly through the tenacity of the stereotypes applied to them. In any case, says Doyle, being Irish has changed "about 17 times" in the last hundred years. He finds the image put out by the tourist board of Ireland these days hilarious in its cheek, particularly since all around the world people have swallowed it. "It's a big con job," he says. "We have sold the myth of Dublin as a sexy place incredibly well; because it's a dreary little dump most of the time. Try getting a pint at one in the morning and you'll find just how raving it actually is."... Earlier this year, Doyle got into trouble for suggesting, off the cuff, that James Joyce "needed a good editor". He had practically to go into hiding; everyone from the New York Times to Icelandic radio was after him. But it still amuses him to kick against the po-faced orthodoxies of literary Ireland. "You know," he says, "Shaw left when he was 16 and Oscar Wilde was Irish, but you could just as accurately say he was British; the Isle of Man was probably their natural home, somewhere half way. And yet we've done an incredibly good job of selling ourselves as the land of the writing, singing, little people. I've been asked why does Ireland produce so many great musicians, and the answer is it doesn't. When you count the great musicians Ireland has given the world in the last 20 years, you can do it on one hand."...' Full story at http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1297900,00.html | |
TOP | |
5116 | 9 September 2004 11:59 |
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 11:59:43 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
Article, Potato Paradoxes | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: Article, Potato Paradoxes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Email Patrick O'Sullivan This article by Sherwin Rosen has turned up in our nets - as the databases move backwards... I have not been able to get hold of an Abstract. But the article seemed worth bringing to the attention of the IR-D list - since we are here in another of those extensive footnotes that you have to write in Irish history, famine history and in Irish Diaspora Studies. There is much discussion in the economic literature of possible 'Giffen goods' - 'goods' in the sense of 'products' or stuff - or the 'Giffen paradox', where the demand for a certain foodstuff might actually rise as the price rose. Named after evidence that someone, possibly Robert Giffen, gave to the British parliament. A web search will turn up much discussion... For example... http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/prin/txt/MUch/prefap2.html Sherwin Rosen makes a point that I have not seen made before - that potatoes are capital goods as well as being consumption goods. A sizeable fraction of the potato crop is needed for seed potatoes, and this can produce unusual market dynamics. Rosen concludes... 'Since the Giffen paradox is not useful for understanding the Irish experience, is it asking too much of future writers of elementary texts to find another example?' I have pasted in the Rosen reference, below, plus a reference to McDonough & Eisenhauer - an article which covers similar ground but is not listed by Rosen. P.O'S. 1. Potato Paradoxes Sherwin Rosen The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 107, No. 6, Part 2: Symposium on the Economic Analysis of Social Behavior in Honor of Gary S. Becker. (Dec., 1999), pp. S294-S313. 2. Journal of Economic Issues / September 01, 1995 / Sir Robert Giffen and the great potato famine: a discussion of the role of a legend in neoclassical economics. Sir Robert Giffen and the great potato famine: a discussion of the role of a legend in neoclassical economics. McDonough, Terrence Eisenhauer, Joseph Journal of Economic Issues September 01, 1995 giffen legend, potatoes, demand curve, giffen, robert giffen, giffen paradox, irish potato, price, neoclassical paradigm, giffen phenomena, marshall, potato famine, story, samuelson, positively sloped It is widely believed that British economist Sir Robert Giffen observed Irish peasants consuming increasing quantities of potatoes as potato prices rose during the mid-nineteenth century famine. The conventional explanation for this purported behavior assumes that potatoes were strongly inferior goods and constituted a large portion of the typical Irish consumer's budget; consequently, the demand curve for them was upward-sloping. The historical evidence, however, appears to contradict this view. Indeed, the very nature of a famine implies that this behavior could not have been characteristic of the populace as a whole. There is no way to buy more potatoes when there are fewer potatoes. Thus, the Giffen legend concerning the great potato famine... | |
TOP | |
5117 | 9 September 2004 14:46 |
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 14:46:54 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
Article, Potato Paradoxes 2 | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: Article, Potato Paradoxes 2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Thomas J. Archdeacon tjarchde[at]wisc.edu Subject: RE: [IR-D] Article, Potato Paradoxes Abstract of Rosen Abstract Price and quantity data prove that Irish potatoes in the 1840s were not Giffen goods. Intertemporal trade-offs required by the fact that a sizable fraction of the potato crop is needed for seed crops can produce unusual market dynamics. The Irish experience is well described by a normal demand model in which a permanent decline in the productivity of seed potatoes was at first mistaken as a transitory crop failure. These mistakes provoked "oversaving" of seed crop in a population in dire circumstances. With the benefit of hindsight, consumption of seed crop capital was warranted. Erroneous expectations of potato productivity by growers delayed necessary agricultural adjustments and contributed to the catastrophe later on. -----Original Message----- Email Patrick O'Sullivan This article by Sherwin Rosen has turned up in our nets - as the databases move backwards... I have not been able to get hold of an Abstract. But the article seemed worth bringing to the attention of the IR-D list - since we are here in another of those extensive footnotes that you have to write in Irish history, famine history and in Irish Diaspora Studies. Potato Paradoxes Sherwin Rosen The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 107, No. 6, Part 2: Symposium on the Economic Analysis of Social Behavior in Honor of Gary S. Becker. (Dec., 1999), pp. S294-S313. | |
TOP | |
5118 | 10 September 2004 13:44 |
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 13:44:10 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
Article, Parliamentary Democracy in Ireland | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: Article, Parliamentary Democracy in Ireland MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Email Patrick O'Sullivan The July 04 issue of the journal, Parliamentary Affairs, is a special issue on PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY TODAY: with an Introduction by Malcolm Shaw There follow articles on Parliamentary Democracy in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom... ending with a further Overview by Malcolm Shaw I have pasted in below the Abstract of Neil Collins, Parliamentary Democracy in Ireland Parliamentary Affairs is an OUP journal http://pa.oupjournals.org/ which over the years has covered some Irish issues, mostly to do with events in Northern Ireland. You can sign up and see a free sample issue - but it's not an especially interesting issue. P.O'S. ISSN 0031-2290 electronic: 1460-2482 publisher Oxford University Press year - volume - issue - page 2004 - 57 - 3 - 601 article Parliamentary Democracy in Ireland Collins, Neil abstract Among the currently significant themes in Irish parliamentary democracy are corporatism, clientelism, corruption and centralisation. Ireland has corporatist institutional arrangements of the type found in several small European countries. They provide consensus and stable policies but challenge the vitality of parliament. Similarly, clientelism is examined in the light of its potential to undermine the role of the legislative function in a political system that promotes high levels of constituency service. The article also addresses the problem of political corruption from the perspective of its impact on the political system and the balance between parliamentary and judicial means of dealing with it. Finally, the recent plan to decentralise the civil service is discussed. | |
TOP | |
5119 | 10 September 2004 16:46 |
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 16:46:36 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
Tony Hendra, Father Joe | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: Tony Hendra, Father Joe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Linda Dowling Almeida lindaalmeida[at]hotmail.com Subject: Father Joe I'm not sure if this has been discussed already, but I have just started reading Tony Hendra's memoir called Father Joe. The first fifty pages is a quite frank account of anti-Catholic, anti-Irish attitudes in England in the mid-1950s. I don't know how it continues, but Hendra's account is an interesting perspective given some of the discussion we have had about Irish navvies in the post-war period. Anybody read Father Joe? Any comments? Linda Dowling Almeida New York University See http://www.tonyhendra.com/ http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?1400061849 | |
TOP | |
5120 | 10 September 2004 18:17 |
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 18:17:57 +0100
Reply-To: Patrick O'Sullivan | |
Shalom Ireland, RTE, Sunday, September 12 | |
Sender: The Irish Diaspora Studies List
From: Patrick O'Sullivan Subject: Shalom Ireland, RTE, Sunday, September 12 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable From: Michael_Kenneally=20 kenneal[at]alcor.concordia.ca Subject: Shalom Ireland Dear Paddy, IR-D members may be interested in this notice I received from Valerie = Lapin Ganley, the director of this film. Best wishes, Michael Kenneally From Valerie Lapin Ganley I am pleased to announce that RT=C9 will help bring in the New Year with = the Irish premiere of Shalom Ireland, a one-hour documentary about = Ireland=B9s remarkable, yet little known Jewish community. The special pre-Rosh Hashanah broadcast of Shalom Ireland will be Sunday, September 12 at = 8:00pm on RT=C9, Network 2. | |
TOP |