Priests,Publicans and the Irish Poor: Ethnic Enterprise and Migrant Networks in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Liverpool

Part of the outreach mission of one of the earliest Catholic parishes in Irish Liverpool, the St Patrick's Society developed into one of the largest collecting societies in Victorian Britain, offering burial benefit to tens of thousands of poor Irish migrants beyond the reach of organised labour or industrial insurance. Growth soon led to scandal and litigation, revealing a number of fault lines within the migrant community. Catholic clergy withdrew in protest as publicans and other ‘Micks on the make’ came to the fore, secular ethnic culture brokers who accentuated the ‘Irishness’ of the Society, running it as a machine which looked less to the respectability (or religion) of the members than to their assurance of an adequately funded ‘wake’. It was this ‘Irish’ image, as much as the alleged financial irregularities, which brought the Society into disrepute (and ruin), a judgement yet to be challenged by historians. The study examines this mutualist network and explains the rise and fall of an important, but until this point, unexamined feature of the communal life of the Irish neighbourhoods of Liverpool.     

Doing Authenticity: The Gendered Construction of Authentic Leadership

Authenticity has been a focus of much leadership research in recent years. Despite this interest, there has been a dearth of studies that explore the role of gender in the social construction of authenticity. To date, authentic leadership theories have tended to be either gender neutral or, where gender has been considered, it is argued that women as ‘outsiders’ are less likely to be accepted by their followers as authentic leaders. In this study we examine the media representations of the CEOs — one male, one female — of two major Australian retail banks during the global financial crisis. Our approach enables us to show that authenticity is something leaders ‘do’ rather than something they ‘have’ or ‘are’, and that being constructed as authentic depends on the leader performing authenticity in line with gender norms deemed appropriate for the socially constructed context in which they are expected to lead.     

Slave Ships and Coffin Ships: Transatlantic Exchanges in Irish-American Blackface Minstrelsy

Abstract

Irish participation in blackface minstrelsy underwent complex transatlantic exchanges as it jumped from the US to Ireland and back again from the era of the Great Famine through the end of the nineteenth century. Most research on Irish-American blackface minstrelsy treats the Irish in America as a homogenous group that used ‘blacking up’ to establish its ethnic whiteness. However, there were at least two distinct groups of Irish Americans who participated in blackface minstrelsy: Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. The latter’s incorporation into the history of minstrelsy means that we must reconsider assumptions about how and why the Irish performed blackface in both Ireland and America. Because Irish Protestants’ whiteness was never in question, theories of ethnic assimilation and working class anxieties do not adequately account for Irish gravitation to minstrel shows. Something else about Irish identity captivated performers and audiences. Moving beyond the racial assimilation mode, I argue that blacking up carried tensions of land dispossession, national identity, and ethnic conflict in Ireland into American culture.     

The hidden history of the PFIs: The repatriation of unmarried mothers and their children from England to Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s

The circumstances related to the ‘repatriation’, from Britain to Ireland, of Irish unmarried mothers and their children has still to be explored by social historians. One reason for this omission is connected to the absence of women and children within Irish historiography. None the less, adoption agency records throw light on the ‘repatriation’ process in the 1950s and 1960s. In seeking to understand the way that Irish unmarried mothers were responded to, it is necessary to have regard to the more encompassing and dominant professional discourse on unmarried mothers and child adoption during this period. Importantly, however, the treatment of these women and the practice of ‘repatriation’ needs also to take into account other historically rooted, exclusionary practices directed at Irish migrants to Britain.     

Learning from the ‘Trojan horse’? The arrival of ‘Anti-Social Behaviour Orders’ in Ireland

The Republic of Ireland is about to introduce Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) similar to those introduced in England under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Following Bourdieu and Wacquant, it is maintained that England is apt to play the role of a ‘Trojan horse’ transporting American responses to crime and ‘disorder’ into Europe. Moreover, the perspective of Bourdieu and Wacquant provides a more political and complete account of ‘policy transfer’ dynamics than is provided in most mainstream accounts. Nonetheless, there is still a need to recognise the sheer complexity of ‘policy transfers’ and, in the case of ASBOs, the particular Irish and wider European contexts are immensely significant. It is maintained that social workers and associated social professions in Ireland should support the Irish Coalition Against ASBOs as part of a strategy which seeks to promote social policies which are more in keeping with the aims of the International Federation of Social Workers.     

The Doing and Undoing of Gender: The Importance of Being a Credible Female Victim

It is increasingly argued that gender is something we ‘do’ (or ‘undo’) rather than ‘are’. The doing of gender, or the accomplishment of gender, becomes credible when it conforms (in broad terms) to certain normative conceptions of gender. Resistance to, or subversions of these norms, or the failure to appear credible, deny the individual a gendered authenticity. Attempts to unshackle notions of gender — to ‘undo gender’ and to accept the outcome as authentic, open and fluid — have been matched with concerns that this theoretically empowering process may result in the loss of political power — the notion of woman (or man) in whose name we can act being lost as the binary is eliminated. These tensions are explored in the context of the UK Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (rev. 1986) . This article demonstrates how the doing and undoing of gender in an employment tribunal accomplishes or negates the ‘authenticity’ of gender.     

Globalization,the Celtic Tiger and social outcomes: is Ireland a model or a mirage?

Ireland's Celtic Tiger economic boom has merited a great deal of attention as a successful model for small and peripheral states in this era of globalization. This article offers an alternative reading through examining social outcomes and interrogating the Irish model in the light of them. It seeks to answer the question whether Ireland offers a model to be followed or whether what appears to be a model is, on closer inspection, a mirage. The article begins by outlining the nature of the Celtic Tiger and surveying the mainstream interpretation of how Ireland's success shows it to be a model of what can be achieved through capturing the benefits of globalization. It then identifies the nature of the Irish model, examining the role of ‘social partnership’ and outlining the argument that Ireland is a ‘flexible developmental state’. Having described the principal features of Ireland's economic success and the means used to achieve it, as seen by mainstream scholars, the article then examines in some detail the distributional outcomes of the Celtic Tiger. Questions these raise for the positive reading of the Irish model open a more critical examination of the features of the model linked to the social outcomes described. This leads to a discussion that seeks to more adequately characterize the nature of ‘social partnership’ and of the Irish state, utilizing the concept of the competition state. The article concludes that, on closer examination, the Irish model turns out not to be a model of successful development, but a model of capital accumulation. To this extent it is a mirage and a warning about the social costs of economic success in the era of neoliberal globalization.     

Whose ‘wee country’?: identity politics and sport in Northern Ireland

This article responds to calls in this journal for increased attention to identity, culture, power and sport. It explores, for the first time, the lived realities of identity politics in a divided society, through interviews with 12 self-declared Irish nationalists and republicans that represented Northern Ireland. Important insights are revealed into national eligibility decisions for either Irish team, motivated mainly by ‘shop window’ visibility and being seen as the best of a peer group. Political and sporting nationalisms were not necessarily analogous. A significant original finding is that the lived experiences of being closer to ‘the other’ resulted in an overall reinforcement rather than dissolution of difference. Visual and oral ‘national’ symbols such as flag, and especially anthem, delineated such difference, being symbolic walls of the mind. ‘Our wee country’ was thus a polarised and polarising fantasy shield. The article concludes by reconsidering the role of sport as a lens through which to examine identity and its’ place as part of the ‘problem’ and ‘solution’.     

‘Operating in the Ethnic Sphere’: Irish Migrant Networks and the Question of Respectability in Nineteenth-Century South Wales

This study explores the problems of entry by middle-class Irish migrants into respectable urban elite networks in British towns. Although opportunities to participate in political, cultural and charitable institutions were plentiful in nineteenth-century urban Britain, few Irish migrants achieved such distinctions. In the context of south Wales, this was because there were few opportunities for Irish migrants to acquire the necessary occupational status for entry into public life. Those Irish who worked in ‘middle class’ occupations, were more likely to do so in the retail and service sectors than in the professions, from which ranks local ‘worthies’ were more likely to be drawn. As a result, they struggled to attain status and remained on the margins of respectable Welsh middle-class life. For these Irish, the ‘ethnic sphere’ provided an alternative network within which status and recognition could be achieved.     

Ulster Scots Identity and Culture: The Missing Voices

In recent years, the Ulster Scots cultural movement has become increasingly prominent, primarily among Protestants/unionists, in Northern Ireland. This movement is frequently seen as a form of cultural unionism that has emerged in response to sociopolitical change. Thus, Ulster Scots is typically seen as a response to the growing confidence of Irish nationalist culture and to a sense of dislocation among unionists in the face of UK devolution and changing conceptions of ‘Britishness.’ These notions reflect a potential politicisation of the movement and have led many to question the ‘authenticity’ of an Ulster Scots communal identity. In this article, we acknowledge the importance of sociopolitical conditions for the emergence of the Ulster Scots culture/identity. However, we challenge the suggestion implicit in much academic and nonacademic writing that this culture/identity is somehow contrived in response to such developments. Drawing on interviews and focus group discussions, we show the significance of Ulster Scots as a means of self-understanding and identification in everyday society. Crucially, these interviews were conducted not only with political and cultural leaders (who have hitherto been the focus of Ulster Scots research), but also with ‘grass-roots’ Ulster Scots people, for whom the official movement holds varying degrees of importance. We demonstrate that Ulster Scots functions as a cultural resource not only at the macro-level of official rhetoric, but also at the micro-levels of identity formation, self-understanding, and communal consciousness. We conclude that Ulster Scots is a ‘real’ and lived experience for a self-defined community and, hence, functions similarly to any cultural identity category.     

‘We are Irish Everywhere’: Irish Immigrant Networks in Charleston,South Carolina,and Savannah,Georgia

In the nineteenth century, Irish immigrants in Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia, showed a strong interest in the affairs of Ireland and its residents. Although a distinct minority in these ‘southern’ cities, they formed networks through societies, clubs, militias and Irish nationalist organisations to encourage social activities and ethnic connections among their fellow countrymen and those friendly towards Irish interests. These groups provided opportunities for upwardly-mobile immigrants to improve their social status in America, while retaining their ‘Irishness’. Charity towards new migrants was thus an important element in retaining ethnicity. Irish Protestants initially dominated these networks, but increasingly, as the century progressed, Irish and Irish-American Catholics came to prominence. Nonetheless, interdenominational networks remained strong. Class and sectarian divisions within the Irish communities of these two cities were not as deep or rigid as they were in some other Irish-American communities. Overall this study highlights the great importance of immigrant networks in assuring Irish integration into host societies.     

Duck-Hunting in Anger?

This presentation aims at addressing an apparent minor discrepancy between citations in Shevelov’s A Prehistory of Slavic (1964) and his Historical Phonology of the Ukrainian Language (1979). Shevelov (1964: 403) cites Russian селезень ‘drake’, also occurring in Ukrainian, and gives an Old Irish form selg, glossed as ‘hunt’, as a cognate. In Shevelov 1979: 94, however, Old Irish selg, unglossed, is offered as a cognate for Ukrainian селез?нка ‘spleen’ id., and other related Slavic forms, see also Trautmann 1923: 256, Pokorny 1959: 900–901, 987, Vasmer 1964–1973: III: 594–595, while his comment on Russian селезень cites no other cognates. For Old Irish selg itself, which, like селезень and селез?нка has two meanings, see Lewis &; Pedersen 1961: 18, 33; Thurneysen 1946: 139, Vendryes 1974: S-80–S-81.

Superficially, this would provide a very rare example of East Slavic *TolT reflexes developing to *TeleT, and not the regular, and expected *ToloT, but such examples should be treated with caution, cf. Shevelov loc. cit. Indeed, a glance at proposed Indo-European cognates of селез?нка/selg ‘spleen’ shows a degree of irregular development that points to a need for closer scrutiny by scholars, cf. Greek σπλ?ν, Avestan sp?r?za, etc., raising the question: what has happened to the Slavic *-p-? In contrast to Celtic, Slavic preserves Indo-European *p under most circumstances, and therefore one would expect it to be preserved in any cognate of the Greek and Avestan forms cited above. By simply juxtaposing Old Irish selg here, without further comment, Shevelov loc. cit. introduces a note of confusion for those interested in Slavo-Celtic cognates, and it is the purpose of this paper to disentangle such confusion, and to account for a situation whereby Slavic and Goidelic appear to use the same forms for the concepts of ‘duck’/‘hunting’ and ‘spleen’.     

SCALING GOVERNMENTALITY

This article explores contemporary uses of museum co-production for public policy through a sustained theoretical engagement with Tony Bennett's work on museums as an ‘object of government’. The specific focus is a theoretical discussion of the ‘logic of culture’ as it relates to new UK policy uses of participants' ‘experience’ as the desired site of authenticity at the very same time as the process of expressing this authenticity is located as a site for reform. It is argued that Bennett mobilizes two techniques of scale (fixing the analytic lens of governmentality and drawing on a strong scalar correspondence of power) in order to secure a relatively disciplinary reading of governmentality and to foreclose the resistant possibilities of cultural politics. Drawing on the differences between practices associated in UK museums with ‘access’ (which works through the dis-intensification of the difference between the museum and everyday life) and with ‘social impact’ (which requires a re-intensification of this difference in order to increase the visibility of effect), this article concludes by countering Bennett's more disciplinary uses of Foucault with the Foucault of ‘The Subject and Power’. It is argued that the ‘logic of culture’ can be calibrated to varying intensities in considering the coming-into-relationship between the museums and those-to-be-involved. It is specifically argued – following Foucault's spatializaton of ‘thought’ as distance (limit-attitude) and ‘counter-conduct’ as proximity – that the ‘logic of culture’ might be actively re-calibrated to use the spatialized dynamic of distance and proximity to create spaces which might allow the museum and its associated policy – not just those involved – to be affected by the co-production encounter.     

Dressing up Tinderella: interrogating authenticity claims on the mobile dating app Tinder

Mobile dating applications (‘apps’) have increased in popularity over recent years, with Tinder among the first to break into the mainstream heterosexual market. Since mobile dating intensifies the need to confirm that potential dates are not misrepresenting themselves and are safe to meet in person, Tinder’s success indicates that it has allayed these concerns regarding the authenticity of its users. This article combines Giddens’ conceptualization of authenticity, as the ability to reference a coherent biographical narrative, with Callon’s sociology of translation to investigate Tinder’s framing of authenticity within mobile dating. Applying a walkthrough method that interrogates Tinder’s technological architecture, promotional materials, and related media, this hybrid theoretical framework is used to identify how Tinder configures an actor-network that establishes its app as the solution to users’ concerns, enrols individuals in using its features in authenticity claims, and popularizes Tinder’s framing across public discourse. This network of human and non-human actors frames authenticity as being established through one’s Facebook profile and adherence to normative standards relating to age, gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic status. However, user discourses on other social media identify and challenge negative outcomes of this framing, with normativity fostering discrimination and Facebook verification failing to prevent abusive behaviour. This case study of Tinder paves the way for future investigation into user responses to its framing. Furthermore, it demonstrates the efficacy and broader applicability of this theoretical approach for identifying both human and technological influences on the construction of authenticity with digital media.     

Accommodation or rejection? Teenagers’ experiences of tensions between traditional and new speakers of Irish

This article analyses narratives presented by teenage Irish‐speakers about encounters between new speakers of Irish and locals in Gaeltacht (traditionally Irish‐speaking) areas. It demonstrates how two conflicting ideologies of legitimate language promoted by the state in the establishment and maintenance of Irish as ‘the national language’ alienate young new speakers of Irish and young Gaeltacht‐based Irish‐speakers from each other and from the language by construing the Gaeltacht as a resource for the nation, generating unrealistic expectations from new speakers and corresponding resentment from their Gaeltacht peers. The analysis of this case contributes to wider debates about the impact of language revitalisation policies on young people, and explores the tension that may arise between the aim of increasing the number of a language's speakers and the desire to retain its traditional functions in the communities where it has been best maintained.     

Imagined Irish Communities: Networks of Social Communication of the Irish Diaspora in the United States and Britain in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

The discussion in this essay clarifies three neglected aspects of the comparative destinies of the Irish in America and Great Britain. First, it explores an apparent if generally unrecognised discrepancy between theories of nationalism and those of ethnicity, attempting to close a loophole in the literature. Secondly, it assesses what being Irish meant to the networks bridging the diasporic experience in the old country and adopted lands. Thirdly, it looks at tours overseas, mainly to the United States, by nationalist figures from the vantage point of the formation of an imagined community or network. It is suggested that the disjunction and a degree of misunderstanding about the networking process arises because the literature presumes an already existing or nearly formed Irish Catholic identity among the immigrants on arrival in new lands. Charles Stewart Parnell's trip in early 1880 also allows elucidation of theoretical paradigms. This linkage of theory and a specific form of ethnic networking yields a fresh dimension to the debate about immigration. Finally, in conclusion the analysis offers a new angle on the curious phenomenon of a resurgence or expansion of Irish ‘ethnicity’ or purported ‘new Irishness’ in the United States and elsewhere from around 1960.     

One-dimensional times: a dialectical response to the Irish Times’ coverage of the global financial crisis

A growing literature claims that critique of neoliberal capitalism after the global financial crisis (GFC) has been ‘captured’ within the logic of capital. Such research argues that ‘capture’ is achieved through a process whereby critique of neoliberalism is transformed into arguments for more neoliberalism. This creates a one-dimensional ‘recovery’ discourse. Drawing on Marcuse’s theory outlining ‘one-dimensional society’ and critical discourse analysis, this study assesses the relevancy of such claims for an Irish medium, the Irish Times, through an examination of GFC-related discourse during 2009–2010. This study finds that economic discourse in the Irish Times is captured when organisational bias allows pro-neoliberal actors from business and government privileged access to discourse production. We engage a call from organisation studies for a dialectical reading of captured discourse. We end with a discussion of the limits of this reflexive approach to capitalism’s contradictions for disrupting its ongoing hegemony.     

‘DWELLING IN DISPLACEMENT’

This paper is a successor to an earlier one (Malone, Community, Work & Family, 4(2), 195–213, 2001) which described the development of a ‘community saved’ among first-generation Irish immigrants in North-West London, UK. A distinct and health-enhancing ‘sense’ of community founded on mutual helping networks, a belief in family ties, the importance of paid work and the Roman Catholic Church was identified within this Irish immigrant group. For the second generation or London Irish, upon whom this paper focuses, ‘community’ and ‘sense’ of community have meanings which differ significantly from those of their first-generation forebears. The London Irish describe the anonymity they experience within their contemporary urban ‘home’ and yearn, instead, for an idyllic but mythical ‘homeland’ — the rural Ireland of long ago. Disparities between the two groups yield insights into those elements which truly shape experience of ‘community’ and ‘sense’ of community and which can only be understood within the conceptual, geographical and intellectual boundaries of what has been called the ‘diasporic space’.

Ce papier suit à un précédent (Malone, Community, Work & Family, 4(2), 195–213, 2001) qui a dépeint le développement d'une ‘communauté sauvé’ parmi les immigrants irlandais de la première génération au nord-ouest de Londres. Un ‘sentiment de communauté’, à la fois marqué et assanisant, et fondé sur des résaux d'assistance réciproque, le croyance dans les liens familiaux, l'importance du travail salarié, et l'Eglise Catholique, a été identifié parmi ce groupe immigrant irlandais. Pour les immigrants de la deuzième génération, ainsi nommé les ‘London Irish’, et sujet de ce papier-ci, ‘la communauté’ et ‘le sentiment de communauté’ ont des significations très différentes de la première génération. Les London Irish parle de l'anonyme de leur expérience dans le domicile urbain, ils brûlent de revoir le ‘terre patrie’, idylle mythique d'un Irlande rural du bon vieux temps. Ces différences fournissent des aperçus des éléments qui forment l'expérience de ‘la communauté’ et du ‘sentiment de communauté’, éléments qui ne sont compris que dans les bornes de la conception, de la géographie et de l'intellect, bornes de ce qui a été désigné ‘l'espace diasporique’.     

Desire caught by its tale: The unlikely return of the merman in Madonna's Cherish

‘Will Come Forth in Tongues and Fury’ uses the pretext of a Simon Ortiz poem, ‘Irish Poets on a Saturday and an Indian,’ to identify and analyse the unacknowledged links between US and British variants of colonialism. In particular the categories of race and space are engaged, as is the colonial technology of the reservation.     

Language educators’ regard for variation in late modernity: Perceptions of linguistic variation in minority contexts

This article investigates language educators’ regard for linguistic variation in a minority language context. It argues that teachers function as language norm authorities who may influence the linguistic practices and ideologies of students, and that this role takes on added significance in minority language contexts where access to the target language may be limited. Data are presented from a study on the linguistic ideologies of Irish language educators – ‘new speakers’ who acquired the language mainly thorough the education system. Participants’ ideologies on variation in modern spoken Irish were explored using semi‐structured interviews incorporating a speaker evaluation design. Although participants valorise traditional dialectal varieties of Irish, in line with established hierarchies, ideological frameworks are contested so that new ways of using Irish are beginning to gain overt acceptance. The results reveal the manner in which hierarchies of language variation in the Irish language are in flux in our contemporary late‐modern period.