Rural Politics in County Meath, Ireland: Ethnographic and Historical Studies

Author: 
Year:
Pages:376
ISBN:0-7734-3077-6
978-0-7734-3077-8
Price:$239.95 + shipping
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This book studies the agrarian and political aspects of a local community in Mead County, Ireland. Based on field research this book is a careful study of how the social dimensions of the community have evolved over the last seventy years. It takes into account policies from a meta-political level down to a micro-level.
This study also looks at the way politicians in Ireland make government more responsible to the needs of local communities, even though this power was largely lost by the 1970’s. It also shows the meta-political forces that shape the community.

Reviews

“What singles this book out... is its combination of fine-grained case-study research with a very long-term perspective, by ethnographic standards.”

-Richard Jenkins,
University of Sheffield

“By all accounts, Professor Wilson is one of two or three top scholars on the anthropology of Ireland, and of Europe. As he documents, Ireland did not stand still as the European Union evolved. Rural towns became suburban, new industries sprouted, capital flowed into new sectors of the rural economy, and then, recently, capital disappeared and housing developments stand empty…should be required reading for any course dealing with the social sciences and Europe, specifically Ireland.”

Hervé Varenne,
Columbia University

“The author has located his work with respect to academic debate in a very effective and original manner. He has also focused his investigations on a complex field of socio-cultural forces in a way that sheds new light on a host of important issues and problems. As a result, the volume is able to make original contributions to scholarship in multiple disciplines.

David Nugent,
Emory University

Table of Contents

1. Preface by Richard Jenkins
2. Ethnography, History and Local Politics in County Meath, Ireland
3. Ethnography and Anthropology in Ireland
4. Culture and Class in Meath
5. Ethnography and the Past Politics of Local Government in Meath
6. Political Leadership and Brokerage in Meath Local Government
7. Farmers, Tax and the Transformation of Irish Politics
8. Codology and the Ethnography of Politics
9. Revisiting Political Culture in County Meath
10. Bibliography
11. Index

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