Irish Ethnologies

Diarmuid Ó Giolláin

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780268102371
• eBook ISBN: 9780268102401
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

Irish Ethnologies gives an overview of the field of Irish ethnology, covering representative topics of institutional history and methodology, as well as case studies dealing with religion, ethnicity, memory, development, folk music, and traditional cosmology. This collection of essays draws from work in multiple disciplines including but not limited to anthropology and ethnomusicology.

These essays, first published in French in the journal Ethnologie française, illuminate the complex history of Ireland and exhibit the maturity of Irish anthropology. Martine Segalen contends that these essays are part of a larger movement that "galvanized the quiet revolution in the domain of the ethnology of France." They did so by making specific examples, in this instance Ireland, inform a larger definition of a European identity. The essays, edited by Ó Giolláin, also significantly explain, expand, and challenge "Irish ethnography." From twelfth-century accounts to Anglo-Irish Romanticism, from topographical surveys to statistical accounts, the statistical and literary descriptions of Ireland and the Irish have prefigured the ethnography of Ireland. This collection of articles on the ethnographic disciplines in Ireland provides an instructive example of how a local anthropology can have lessons for the wider field.

This book will interest academics and students of anthropology, folklore studies, history, and Irish Studies, as well as general readers.

Contributors: Martine Segalen, Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, Hastings Donnan, Anne Byrne, Pauline Garvey, Adam Drazin, Gearóid Ó Crualaoich, Joseph Ruane, Ethel Crowley, Dominic Bryan, Helena Wulff, Guy Beiner, Sylvie Muller, and Anthony McCann.

INDEX

Academy of Irish Cultural Heritages, 14

actor-oriented approach, 114–15, 118

agriculture

and the Celtic calendar, 187, 191

knowledge struggles within, 111–12, 115

and reproduction, 192, 195

scientific bias in, 118–19

See also farmers

AIDS (literary trope), 148

Albert Bender Collection of Asian Art (exhibit), 70

Alliance Party, 134

Almqvist, Bo, 9, 80

Alvares, Claude, 118

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, 196

Ancient Music of Ireland, The (Petrie), 12

Andersen, Hans Christian, 181

Anglo-Irish Dialect of North Roscommon, An (Henry), 9

Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921), 56n9, 92

Anthropological Association of Ireland, 13

anthropology

concept of place in, 19, 32

criticism of, 23, 24

current trends in, 29–32

development in Ireland, 11, 13–15, 21–24

in Europe, 9, 15

and folkloristics-ethnological studies, 81–82

in France, viii

letter writing as research strategy, 45, 55

and literature, 142, 153

multiple approaches to, 20–21

politics in, 28–29

and public space, 127–29, 135

researcher-informant relations in, 79–80

science analyzed by, 117–18

shifting focus of, 24–29

studying sideways in, 142–44, 153

Anthropology in Action (Bryan), 128

Anthropology of Ireland, The (Wilson and Donnan), 82

Aphrodite (goddess), 180

apprenticeship system, 47

April 1922 attacks, 96

breaking silence on, 99–100

political debates over, 103

student history projects on, 107n28

and An Tost Fada show, 101–2

“Understanding Our History” conference, 100–101, 102–3

See also IRA (Irish Republican Army)

Araner Mundart, Die (Finck), 9

Aran Islands (Ireland), 5–6, 21

Arce, Alberto, 115

Archetti, Eduardo, 142

Arensberg, Conrad

archive of, 55n1

community studies approach, 21–22, 24, 36–37

Family and Community in Ireland, 11, 22, 36, 39, 54–55, 56n12

Harvard-Irish Survey, 21–23, 39–43

informants of, 10, 46–48, 49–54

letters of, 37–38, 45, 49, 55

relations with informants, 53–54

Arensberg, Vivian Garrison, 55n1

Aretxaga, Begoña, 28

Argonautica (poem), 181

Aristotle, 195, 196

Art of the Pacific (exhibition), 67

Arts et traditions populaires (journal), ix

Atargatis (goddess), 181

Aubane Historical Society, 101

balladry, 165–66

Ballymacthomas research project, 85–86

Ballymenone, 82

Bandon (Republic of Ireland), 95, 99

Bandon Grammar School, 98

Barrett, M. T. (Ciarán Bairéad), 11

Barry, Sebastian, 145

Batbedat, Jean, 170

Battle of Ballinamuck, 158–59, 160

external recognition of, 169–73

and Gunner Magee, 166–67

local heroes in, 163–64

official commemorations of, 170–72

official reports on, 163–64

Schools’ Scheme project on, 164–65, 166

sources on, 168

Battle of the Boyne (1690), 130

Béaloideas (journal), 7, 13, 78, 79, 87, 169

Béascna (journal), 13

Beaumont, Gustave de, 3

Beck, Ulrich, 116

Belfast (Northern Ireland)

changing nature of space in, 128–29

divisions in, 136

parades in, 129–35

political changes in, 134

public space use in, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Irish Ethnologies
• Re-Placing Ireland in Irish Anthropology
• Epistolary Research Relations: Correspondences in Anthropological Research: Arensberg, Kimball, and the Harvard-Irish Survey, 1930–1936
• Ireland’s Ethnographic Horizons
• Folkloristic-Ethnological Studies in Ireland
• Pluralism and Silence: Protestants and Catholics in the Republic of Ireland
• The Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS): The Site of a Symbolic Struggle over Knowledge
• From Civil Rights to Carnival: The Anthropology of Public Space in Belfast
• Stories of the Soil: In the Irish Literary World
• Locating Local Tradition: The Sociocultural Construction of Irish Folk History
• The Irish Mermaid: Man’s Alliance to Woman, Nature, and Death in a Peasant Culture
• A Tale of Two Rivers: Riverdance, A River of Sound, and the Ambiguities of “Tradition”
• List of Contributors
• Index