This collection examines the presence of minority communities and dissident voices in Ireland both historically and in a contemporary framework. Accordingly, the contributions explore different facets of what we term “Irish minority and dissident identities,” ranging from political agitators drowned out by mainstream narratives of nationhood, to identities differentiated from the majority in terms of ethnicity, religion, class and health; and sexual minorities that challenge heteronormative perspectives on marriage, contraception, abortion, and divorce. At a moment when transnational democracy and the rights of minorities seem to be at risk, a book of this nature seems more pressing than ever. In different ways, the essays gathered here remind us of the importance of ‘rethinking’ nationhood, by a process of denaturalisation of the supremacy of white heterosexual structures.

The Irish short story tradition occupies a unique space in world literature. Rooted in an ancient oral storytelling culture, the Irish short story has underwent numerous transitions, from 19th century Anglo-Irish writers such as William Carleton through to the 20th century's groundbreaking impact of George Moore's The Untilled Field. George Moore's work inspired the next generation of Irish Catholic writers such as Joyce, Frank O'Connor and Benedict Kiely, who foregrounded the backbone of the ...

As Ireland made the transition from a rural to a post-industrial society from the 1970s onwards, Irish women developed a significant political voice. Long excluded from participation in the civic arena, they organised to make new, challenging and specific demands on government. The relationship between feminist representatives and political decision makers is at the core of this book. It shows how Irish women developed the political skills required to represent women's interests to government effectively, and finds that the political activity of the women's movement in the Republic of Ireland contributed to the dismantling of a range of discriminatory policies against women. Galligan discusses the compromises made by both sides as the political system slowly moved to accomodate the feminist agenda. In doing so, she explores the dynamics of Irish politics from a different, yet complementary, perspective from the institutional approach which characterizes other studies of the Irish political system. This book clearly marks the significant points in the creation of a more woman-friendly society in Ireland from the 1970s to the present day. It is the story of women's rights in contemporary Ireland.

How diaspora activism in the Irish land movement intersected with wider radical and reform causes The Irish Land War represented a turning point in modern Irish history, a social revolution that was part of a broader ideological moment when established ideas of property and land ownership were fundamentally challenged. The Land War was striking in its internationalism, and was spurred by links between different emigrant locations and an awareness of how the Land League’s demands to lower rents, end evictions, and abolish “landlordism” in Ireland connected with wider radical and reform causes. Changing Land offers a new and original study of Irish emigrants’ activism in the United States, Argentina, Scotland, and England and their multifaceted relationships with Ireland. Niall Whelehan brings unfamiliar figures to the surface and recovers the voices of women and men who have been on the margins of, or entirely missing from, existing accounts. Retracing their transnational lives reveals new layers of radical circuitry between Ireland and disparate international locations, and demonstrates how the land movement overlapped with different types of oppositional politics from moderate reform to feminism to revolutionary anarchism. By including Argentina, which was home to the largest Irish community outside the English-speaking world, this book addresses the neglect of developments in non-Anglophone places in studies of the “Irish world.” Changing Land presents a powerful addition to our understanding of the history of modern Ireland and the Irish diaspora, migration, and the history of transnational radicalism.

The history of partition in the 20th-century is one steeped in

For almost three decades the troubles in Northern Ireland raged, claiming over 3,600 lives, with civilians accounting for almost half the fatalities. In this book, Jonathan Tonge examines the reasons for that conflict; the motivations of the groups involved and explores the prospects for a post-conflict Northern Ireland. The book: assesses the motivations and campaigns of the IRA, UVF and UDA and other armed groups discusses what each paramilitary group achieved through violence analyses the continuing controversies surrounding the Northern Irelands dirty war outlines the extent of collusion between British security forces and loyalist paramilitaries explores how governments and political parties shaped the peace process scrutinizes prospects for the political development of unionism and nationalism within a devolved power sharing framework examines whether the sectarian divide is strengthening or weakening concludes by assessing whether Northern Ireland can move permanently from violence and instability to become a normal peaceful polity, in which the war is merely a historic relic Written by an acknowledged expert in the field, Northern Ireland combines incisive analysis, original research and a lucid style to provide an important assessment of what has been described as an 800 year old problem.

What does it mean to be Irish today? Why do over 70 million people worldwide embrace their Irish heritage? Being Irish gathers a diverse group of 100 people - the famous and not so famous - each trying to give expression to that special something that is more or less recognizable as Irish.

This volume focuses on Muslims in Finland, Greece, Ireland and Portugal, representing the four corners of the European Union today. It highlights how Muslim experiences can be understood in relation to a country’s particular historical routes, political economies, colonial and post-colonial legacies, as well as other factors, such as church-state relations, the role of secularism(s), and urbanisation. This volume also reveals the incongruous nature of the fact that national particularities shaping European Muslim experiences cannot be understood independently of European and indeed global dynamics. This makes it even more important to consider every national context when analysing patterns in European Islam, especially those that have yet to be fully elaborated. The chapters in this volume demonstrate the contradictory dynamics of European Muslim contexts that are simultaneously distinct yet similar to the now familiar ones of Western Europe’s most populous countries.

Contributors to this text discuss what it is to be British or Irish, and how people come to describe themselves as such. The study offers a interdisciplinary comparative analysis of the cultural formation of the Atlantic Archipelago.

Papers presented at a conference held Mar. 2004, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick.