Are the Irish different?

Tom Inglis

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780719095832
• eBook ISBN: 9781847799562
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the extent and nature of Irish social and cultural difference. It is a collection of twenty-three short essays written in a clear and accessible manner by human scientists who are international experts in their area. The topics covered include the nature of Irish nationalism and capitalism, the Irish political elite, the differences and similarities of the Irish family, the upsurge in immigration, Northern Ireland, the Irish diaspora, the Irish language, sport, music and many other topics.The book will be bought by those who have an academic and personal interest in Irish Studies. It will be attractive to those who are not familiar with the theories and methods of the human sciences and how they can shine a light on the transformations that have taken place in Ireland. Tom Inglis, the editor of the collection, is a sociologist who has written extensively on Irish culture and society.

---

1

---

Introduction

Tom Inglis

There was a moment during the European Soccer Championships in 2012 when it seemed that Irish cultural difference was, once again, being firmly etched into the annals of global culture. Although their team had been heavily defeated by Spain, and eliminated from the competition without having won one of its matches, supporters of the team who had travelled in their thousands across Europe, instead of perhaps booing the team from the pitch, cheered and clapped them. They then began to chant and sing long after everyone else had left the stadium. Eventually the police were brought in to escort them out.

The Irish soccer supporters had gained a reputation during previous World and European soccer championships for being the best soccer supporters in the world. Everywhere they went, they tried to bring good humour and fun, to engage the locals with their banter and craic. In some ways they could be seen as popular Irish cultural ambassadors, spreading a different knowledge, understanding and appreciation of what it is to be Irish. Their performance could be read as a different way of dealing with loss. It mirrors what happens at many funerals. There is often laughter, music, song and dance, as well as a lot of drink, at Irish wakes. It could be argued that, if there is anything different about the Irish, it is the way they deal with desire and death.

The Irish have been characterised in many different ways, as good humoured charming, hospitable and gregarious. They love a good time. They love to tease, engage in verbal word play and spar with each other. Yet they are seen to avoid intimacy and be drawn to tragedy.¹ Many of these characteristics and other traits have been linked to the legacies of colonialism. These include a tendency to avoid confrontation, to inwardly reject but publicly comply with power, to hide success and ambition and to engage in self-deprecation.²

But whatever the legacies of colonialism, there have been others who, in the tradition of characterising Ireland as an island of saints and scholars, have pointed to the unique strengths of the Irish character. Richard Kearney, for example, has claimed that, over the centuries, the Irish developed a powerfully different way of thinking. In positing the unique qualities of the ‘Irish Mind’, he wanted ‘to debunk the myth of the mindless Irish’ and ‘the colonialist portrayals of the Irish as brainless savages’. He argued that there is a complex, rigorous logic to Irish mythical thought that gives meaning to people’s lives and that has been passed down through generations from Celtic times. ‘From the earliest times, the Irish mind remained free, in significant measure, of the linear, centralising logic of the Greco-Roman culture which dominated most of Western Europe . . . In contradistinction to the orthodox dualist logic of either/or, the Irish mind may be seen to favour a more dialectical logic of both/and: an intellectual ability to hold the traditional oppositions of classical reason in creative confluence.’³

In emphasising the dialectical logic of the Irish mind, Kearney was attempting to go beyond Matthew Arnold’s concept of the Celtic Soul and to assert that the Irish, like the Celts generally, were ruled not just by reason and rationality but also by fantasy and imagination. In this view, along with an accumulated material history that makes the Irish different, there has also been an accumulation of thinking differently. In response to a number of environmental, social and cultural factors, the Irish developed ways of thinking, of perceiving, reading and understanding the world and an ability to adapt to different conditions. The Irish mind appears to have a universal, eternal quality that has enabled the Irish, not necessarily uniquely but to a greater extent than others, to think outside the standard box of Western logic of either/or. It is this ability, inherited through generations, which has been the foundation of Irish cultural difference. The Irish mind has enabled the Irish to balance and accommodate imagination and intellect, emotion and reason, poetry and science.

The idea that the Irish have some essential, inherited cultural characteristics was picked up by the Industrial Development Authority (IDA). In an international advertising campaign in 2006, it took up the theme of ‘the Irish mind’ that had been developed by Kearney and his colleagues. It placed adverts in numerous papers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, Time and The Economist, claiming that the Irish were creative, imaginative and flexible, with agile minds and a unique capacity to initiate and innovate without being directed.⁴

The chapters in this book could be seen as a good example of the Irish mind at work. They are written by human scientists who explore, in accessible, lively and innovative ways, whether the Irish are significantly different and, if so, what are the origins, nature and significance of these differences? It would be difficult, and undesirable, to try to summarise the arguments and points the various contributors make. And so, almost as an appetiser, I will try in this introduction to give just a flavour of some of their insights and understandings about Irish difference.

National difference

It is easy to talk up difference, to persuade ourselves and others that there is something unique about the Irish. We are no different from any other nation or ethnic group. It is part and parcel of maintaining ideological coherence and solidarity. We may no longer believe that we are an island of saints and scholars, exporting a unique brand of Catholicism around the world. But we still like to think of ourselves as different. Perhaps this is what the Irish soccer supporters were trying to do, to export Irish bonhomie. We are able to think differently when it comes to defeat and loss. We have the gift of the gab, a unique sense of humour and fun, and an ability to help others join with us in having ‘great craic’. Maybe this is the new story we tell about ourselves: told and retold, acted and re-enacted, wherever the Irish gather, at home and abroad, in cafés, restaurants, pubs and clubs. It is a story told to tourists and visitors. It is a story reiterated in advertisements and in marketing strategies to promote pubs and drinking. And, like all stories, if they are told often enough they come to be believed. As the sociological dictum goes, if people believe things are real, they are real in their consequences.⁵

Of course, the notion of cultural difference is not just an Irish story, but a story of nations and ethnic groups all over the world. The story of modernity revolves around people coming to see and understand themselves as belonging to nations. When it comes to national difference, the Irish may then be the same as the French, Dutch, Spanish, Italians and every other nation in that we make mountains out of a molehill when it comes to cultural difference. But the difference may be minimal. It may well be that, as with individual sense of self, the notion that there is something unique or exceptional about national difference is an illusion of the market, the media and nation-states within the world capitalist system. It is easy to believe in images. For example, as has been suggested, we might say of the Irish that they are pub-dependent, sharp tongued and witty. They are modest and self-deprecating and like to engage in free-association humorous conversation. Again, many of these cultural traits might be linked to our colonial history. However, these cultural traits were those the anthropologist Kate Fox identified as being quintessentially English.⁶

There was no such thing as the Irish nation in the past. There were tribes. And yet now the Irish nation – and the notion of being Irish – have become taken for granted. And despite globalisation and cosmopolitanism, the notion of Ireland, being Irish and Irish cultural difference is growing. People might idolise the era of the Gaelic League, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), the Catholic Church, Fianna Fáil and de Valéra’s dreams as the golden years of Irishness. But the reality is that Irishness was only in its infancy then. Today it is produced and reproduced in political and economic discourse: ‘we’ lost the run of ourselves during the Celtic Tiger years. The sense of ‘we-ness’ is generated more through participation in globalised sport than it is through speaking Irish. The notion of Irish difference is reproduced through the tourist industry, the worldwide celebrations of St Patrick’s Day, the export of the Irish pub, the success of Riverdance and the celebration of the Irish diaspora.

If we are to look beyond national myths, stories and images of the Irish, if we are to transcend notions of different minds and personality traits, it might be an idea to start with aspects of social life and to try to see if there are real and substantial differences in the way the Irish do economics and politics. If there is anything different about Ireland, it could be argued that it lies in the way it went from being a relatively insular, agricultural economy in the middle of the last century to becoming by the end of the century, one of the most open, advanced and globalised small economies in Europe. However, as a liberal economy on the periphery of Europe, Ireland did not develop the social contracts and internal control mechanisms that enabled core Europe economies to deal with the crises in the capitalist system. Indeed it was the combination of a dependence on foreign direct investment, a reluctance to increase taxes and, then, latterly a policy of incentivising property development that led to Ireland having the highest level of external debt among the major countries of the world. If Ireland was different within world capitalism, it was in the peculiar way it went from boom to bust.

Catholicism and colonisation

Although there were other European nations that made Catholicism a keystone of national difference, there were many factors that made the Irish project different. The idea of creating a society that had a collective vision and commitment without being socialist became an ideal of the Catholic Church during the latter half of the twentieth century. Before and after Independence, there were many who thought that Ireland could become a shining example of the type of Catholic society epitomised in de Valéra’s ideal Ireland, epitomised in his St Patrick’s Day speech of 1943. However, the opening up of Irish society and culture to global cultural flows and the decline of the Church’s monopoly over morality meant that ideal was never realised.

The Church did, nevertheless, have a profound influence on Irish society and culture. The extent to which the Catholic Church shaped and influenced Irish politics has been the subject of much research and debate. While much of this research has focused on Church–state relations, it is important to emphasise that one of the factors that made Ireland different was the extent to which the Church shaped Irish civil society and, in particular, became the backbone of the way most Irish people saw and understood themselves and the world in which they lived. It was the way in which the Church developed and sustained links between the political parties, at local and national level, particularly within Fianna Fáil, that enabled it to become a key pillar not just in civil society generally, but in political elite society.

The power of the Catholic Church in politics stemmed from the power it developed in the modernisation of Irish society and, in particular, the controlling of sexuality, marriage and fertility. During the first half of the twentieth century, the Irish developed a particular aversion to marriage. Whereas the rest of Europe was moving to early and more numerous marriages, in Ireland fewer men and women married and, when they did so, they were older than their European counterparts. However, even though the Irish married later and less frequently, they still managed to have more children than most other Western couples. This was because many of those who did marry had large families. While this may be directly related to the delayed arrival of contraception, it may also be related to the absence of a discourse and the level of communicative competency about sexuality and fertility control between husbands and wives. In a culture in which sex was hidden and silenced, it may have been a source of shame and guilt. However, for many couples, having large families was often a means of attaining status, honour and respect.

Fewer people marrying and, when they did, marrying late gave rise to large numbers of bachelors and spinsters. As in many other aspects, it was not that the Irish were exceptional or even significantly different in the numbers of unmarried men and women, it is rather that the practice of delaying marriage combined with many not marrying at all gave rise to cultural habits that were quite different. While much has been written about bachelor groups, particularly in relation to pubs and drinking patterns, there has, until recently, been little social research on single women. The history of the Irish spinster has yet to be written. In the meantime we have to rely on literature to identify and describe their experiences.

When it comes to looking for the key to Irish cultural difference, rather than start with the mind, it might be better, then, to employ a form of historical materialism that examines what happened to Irish people as bodies operating in places. Such an approach would examine the structures, contexts and places in which people lived, particularly in homes, schools, churches and pubs. The emphasis would be on identifying, describing and analysing the practices of everyday life, how children and young people were disciplined and controlled, particularly in terms of physical punishment, and the repression of sex, desire and pleasure. This could then be related to the cultural strategies in adult life and how Irish people developed cultural traits of piety, humility and chastity.

There is much to suggest from history that the Irish had a peculiar attitude to children. Not only did so few married couples have so many children for so long, but many of these children ended up being incarcerated in industrial and reformatory schools where they were subject to physical and sexual abuse. There are many different reasons why this happened, but some of them relate specifically to the Catholic Church’s teachings about sexuality, the culture of silence and the power and governance structures of the Church.

This raises questions about the robustness of Irish Catholicism. It would seem that what makes Irish Catholics similar to other European Catholics, and different from American Catholics, is that the clerical sex abuse scandals have led to a distaste for and disenchantment with the Church. Mass attendance continues to decline rapidly and there is less sense of belonging to the Church. This is in contrast to America, where Catholics seem to have withstood the challenges of the sex abuse scandals and, more generally, the undermining forces of individualisation and secularisation.

Although there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the reasons for Irish cultural difference lie in the peculiar way in which Ireland modernised and, in particular, in the central role of the Catholic Church in the modernisation process, it would be wrong to underestimate the impact and effect of colonisation. For a long time, the history of Ireland was characterised by systematic plantations and the suppression of religion, culture and language. The legacies of these colonial strategies were imprinted on Irish minds, bodies and souls for generations, particularly in relation to the way the Irish related to sex and alcohol. And yet, there is evidence from other postcolonial societies that the cultural and psychological legacies of colonial rule are often very similar. So what may make the Irish different is not so much that they developed a social, cultural, moral and personal sense of inferiority, but the ways in which they did this.

The longest-lasting impact of colonial rule in Ireland was the conflict in Northern Ireland. The legacies of the violence have been deeply imprinted on both Catholics and Protestants, Republicans and Loyalists. What perhaps made the conflict different was the nature of everyday sectarian life, the violence employed by the opposing sides and the strategies of the British state to contain the conflict. The long, deeply rooted history of sectarian conflict means that any path to reconciliation will be long and difficult. While there is plenty of evidence to show that the 1998 Good Friday agreement has achieved peace between the two communities, there is less evidence to show that the deep-rooted oppositions that festered for more than four hundred years, and are embedded in segregation and inequality, can be easily reconciled in a generation or two.

One of the outcomes of the Famine and the practice of having large families for generations was that the Irish developed a diaspora that, in comparison to those of many other European countries, is not only larger, but has spread wider and developed deeper roots in the numerous host countries to which the Irish have dispersed. If we...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Irishness and nationalisms
• 3 Where is Ireland in the worlds of capitalism?
• 4 Just another bubble economy?
• 5 A Catholic vision of Ireland
• 6 The Irish political elite
• 7 The Irish family – different or not?
• 8 Single women in story and society
• 9 The Irish body
• 10 Sexual abuse and the Catholic Church
• 11 The difference between Irish and American Catholicism
• 12 Postcolonial legacies and the Irish psyche
• 13 Thinking about Ireland and the Irish diaspora
• 14 Being Irish and male in Britain
• 15 The new Irish and the Irish nation
• 16 Conflict and reconciliation in Northern Ireland
• 17 Irish language, Irish nation
• 18 The difference of Irish music
• 19 The GAA and the sporting Irish
• 20 Feeling at home in contemporary Ireland
• 21 Searching for and explaining difference
• 22 A new vision of Irish studies
• 23 Irish studies between the past and the future
• Index