The political mobilization of Irish farmers

L'article cherche une explication à la rébellion agraire en Irlande à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle. Bien que le niveau de mécontentement en Irlande rurale ait étéélevé lorsque la rébellion a éclate, une telle situation n'était pas sans précédent. Le mécontentement avait été tout aussi intense auparavant (surtout durant la première moitié du dix-neuvième siècle) sans de conséquences politiques semblables. Afin de comprendre pourquoi c'est à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle que les tenanciers ruraux irlandais se sont rebellés, il faut se rendre compte qu'un nouvel ensemble de conditions sociales favorables à la mobilisation politique rurale sont apparues durant les décades qui ont précédé la rébellion. Sans épuiser le sujet, l'auteur suggère que ces conditions étaient un leadership fourni par le mouvement nationaliste et une base organisationnelle fournie par un nombre de structures, en particulier la relation de coopération qui s'est développée durant la période qui a suivi la famine entre les tenanciers ruraux et une partie de la population des villes. L'étude supporte la thèse de la mobilisation plutôt que celle du mécontentement pour l'analyse des mouvements de contestations. This paper seeks to explain why an agrarian rebellion broke out in Ireland in the late nineteenth century. Although the level of discontent in rural Ireland was certainly high when the rebellion broke out, such a situation was not unprecedented. Discontent had been just as intense at earlier points in time (most notably during the first half of the nineteenth century) without similar political consequences. In order to understand why it was in the late nineteenth century that Irish rural tenants rebelled, we have to recognize that in the decades preceding the rebellion there had developed a new set of social conditions that facilitated rural political mobilization. Without exhausting the subject, the author suggests that these conditions consisted of leadership provided by the nationalist movement and an organizational base, provided by a number of structures, among which special emphasis is given to the cooperative relationship that emerged in the postfamine period between rural tenants and a segment of the town population. The study gives support to the mobilization rather than to the discontent thesis for the study of social protest.     

Leadership succession among the Hutterites

Quarante-deux colonies huttérites ont étéétudiées en vue de determiner jusqu'à quel point la succession des chefs s'éffectue selon un modèle de complète égalité des chances. Il est possible d'expliquer les variations dans le degré d'inégalité des chances au sein des colonies en employant une hypothèse de 'la démographie des possibilités.' Cette hypothèse est la suivante: la variation dans le degré d'inegalité des chances tel qu'il apparaît dans une colonie est directement relié au rythme auquel l'accroissement de la population (accroissement du potentiel des éventuels détenteurs de postes-clés) excède l'expansion organisationnelle (expansion des ouvertures pour les postes-clés).
Forty-two Hutterite colonies were examined in order to determine the degree to which succession to leadership positions departs from a model of complete equality of opportunity. Variation in political mobility patterns within colonies is explained by utilizing a 'demography of opportunity' hypothesis. This hypothesis posits that the degree of inequality of opportunity exhibited by a colony varies directly with the degree to which population growth (growth in the supply of potential position holders) exceeds organizational expansion (expansion in the supply of positions).     

Happiness and Virtue in Positive Psychology

Positive psychologists aspire to study the moral virtues, as well as positive emotions, while retaining scientific objectivity. Within this framework, Martin Seligman, a founder of positive psychology, offers an empirically‐based argument for an ancient and venerable theme: happiness can be increased by exercising the virtues. Seligman's project is promising, but it needs to pay greater attention to several methodological matters: (1) greater care in defining happiness, so as to avoid smuggling in value assumptions of the sort suggested by the title of his book, Authentic Happiness; (2) more attention to the gap between happiness as overall satisfaction and specific gratifications (enjoyments); (3) the danger of sliding to subjectivism by equating self‐assessments of virtue with objectively‐justified values of the sort Aristotle had in mind; (4) awareness of how “positive” emotions and attitudes presuppose value assumptions.     

Ní cothram na Féinne é sin: Cricket,Lexicography and Cultural Purity in Ireland1

This article explores the relationship between the game of cricket and the Irish language in Ireland. In our analysis, dictionaries are invoked as indices of formations of cultural purity and political power, documents of defiance, tools of codification, assertions of confidence, representations of linguistic identity. By examining the treatment of the term “cricket” in Irish language dictionaries from the eighteenth-century to the present day, we find an index of cultural values, responding and adapting to ongoing changing cultural power and capital. This demonstrates how the game, and its translated presence in the lexicography of the native language, functions as a form of cultural hybridity in the nineteenth-century, yet is cleansed in the twentieth as part of the process of Irish cultural purity (as it fights for an established postcolonial nationhood). The article offers a new way of understanding social and linguistic conventions, in the context of the colonial/postcolonial, and how such conventions function in the field of sport. Given the dominance (with the exception of India) of English as the lingua franca of sport's colonial and ludic diffusion, the article's ability to access and interrogate the processes of inclusion/exclusion in the linguistic and sporting Irish setting marks it out as an original and innovative way of understanding how cultural transfers occurred and were later annulled.     

THE ROLE OF FINANCIAL LITERACY IN DETERMINING RETIREMENT PLANS

Workers nearing retirement face many important, and often irreversible, choices. We collected detailed demographic and financial literacy data on over 1,500 workers nearing retirement at three large companies to assess how individuals are planning for retirement. Many respondents display limited knowledge and understanding of public and company‐provided retirement benefits. Controlling for basic demographics and wealth, we find that misconceptions about eligibility ages and plan generosity influence workers' expected age of retirement. Although retirement‐related decisions will affect workers' well‐being for the remainder of their lifetimes, many do not possess enough basic financial knowledge to confidently make optimal choices. (JEL J26, J320, J240)