Master of Arts / Department of English / Katherine Karlin / Fintan O’Toole proposes that Irish modernist writers could afford to be “opaque, allusive, densely textured” (410). Contrastingly, he posits that contemporary Irish writers, who engage in the simple ritual of words, believe that “the accumulation of potent and precise detail, if it is sufficiently thoroughly imagined, will call the universe into being” (412). The later microcosmic approach to storytelling has the power to speak to the same philosophical ideas, falling away from “the high ambition of Irish modernism” (412). “Roinnt Scéalta: Some Stories about Irish People” examines financial globalization and social progress in Ireland through careful observation of daily life, simple fragments of Irish characters’ lives, stripped-down to small moments that stand for larger public truths: Irish wives still want holidays to Europe, Irish men still wish to gamble and be independent of authority in their work, young adults still emigrate to America. Yet there are new truths: Black children speak Irish in Gael scoils, children of Polish and Chinese immigrants play hurling and Gaelic football in Croke Park, and African men set up window-washing services in small Irish towns. These stories evoke the voices of the displaced to convey the ways in which Ireland is shifting, socially and economically: Frank has lost his job as a painter, and the strain it causes on his marriage forces him into a job for a large corporation; Peo, having demolished his way through Dublin to pave space for apartments he could never afford and businesses he would never patron, finds work providing simple comfort to Buffalo, who is at the mercy of state-supported healthcare and monthly welfare checks; Iarla is convinced by Seán that moving to America will remedy his sense of deflation toward the Irish job market. While the progression of social norms is queried in these stories, they still reinforce and embody many of the sweeping generalizations associated with Irish fiction. This collection delves into the minds and morals of the displaced Irish working class, focusing oftentimes on the pub and the inner-workings of local, social politics in a fictional small town on the skirt of Dublin’s southside.

The increasing recognition of the myriad ways that peace may be enacted, contested and manipulated in different places has highlighted the complexity of peace. Peace making is now understood as a process rather than an event, made and unmade in the material and non-material socio-spatial relationships that people find themselves in. In this research I employ a qualitative case study methodology to describe how peace is made and unmade on Lough Neagh, the United Kingdom’s largest freshwater lake and the main source of Northern Ireland’s domestic water supply. I examine the everyday social relations of the users of this lake and the meanings, both material and non-material, that people have about this large water body. I ask how these local everyday practices and opinions intersect with broader politics within NI. I add to the growing body of literature within geography that recognizes that peace is made in many different ways, at different scales and in different places. / 10000-01-01

abstract: Culture played an intrinsic role in the conquest of Ireland in the sixteenth century, and the English colonial project, so often described in political and military terms, must be reexamined in this context. By examining sixteenth century spatial and literary representations of Ireland and Irish culture it becomes evident that the process described by Timothy Mitchell, called enframement, was being imposed upon the Irish. Enframement is the convergence of two aspects of power, the metaphysical and the microphysical. Metaphysical power worked through maps and literature to bring order in the conceptual realm, allowing the English to imagine Ireland as they wished it to be. Microphysical power created order in the material world, by physically changing the appearance of the landscape and people to conform to England's laws and norms. The English justified their policy of colonization by representing Ireland and Gaelic culture as wild or barbarous, and hoped to achieve their colonial ambition by physically coercing the Irish into adopting the "superior" English culture. When the Irish continued to rebel against English rule, the colonizers began employing methods of extreme violence to subdue the Gaelic people. At the same time, they began to practice more extreme forms of cultural colonization by attacking those aspects of Gaelic culture which most resisted conformity to English standards of civility. The Gaelic legal system, called Brehon law, redistributive inheritance, cattle herding and traditional forms of Irish dress were denigrated to assert English authority over the Irish people. English fear of the negative effects of Gaelic culture were exemplified by the Anglo-Irish lords, who were originally of English descent, but had "degenerated" into Irish barbarians through the use of Gaelic culture. This retrograde process could also occurred when an English person practiced marriage, childbirth, wet-nursing or fosterage with Irish persons. These interactions, and the consequences which came from them, were often described in terms of infection and disease. Thus culture, operating on multiple levels, and how that culture was represented, became a powerful site for colonial power to operate. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis History 2015

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En décembre 1881, une jeune Irlandaise arriva au Caire avec son mari. Elle avait déjà beaucoup lu sur Urabi, mais c'est au Caire qu'elle eut de la chance d'avoir rencontré le nationaliste égyptien qui se révoltait activement contre le régime de Khedive et contre l'intervention britannique. Cette jeune femme était Lady Augusta Gregory, généralement connue en tant que dramaturge et folkloriste, et surtout comme la cofondatrice de l'Abbey Theatre, avec W.B. Yeats. La présente thèse prend comme point de départ cette note de l'échange entre deux nations en train de se libérer de la domination de l'Empire britannique, aussi bien que leur trajet commun qui consiste en se définir et se comprendre à travers le rôle que le théâtre joue au fil de ce parcours. Notre étude prend donc en considération l'Irlande, avec son nationalisme culturel et son théâtre politiquement engagé, en tant qu'étude de cas à comparer avec la place du théâtre en Égypte dans les années 1960. Dans ce contexte, l'étude se fonde sur l'hypothèse que, grâce à sa capacité performative, le théâtre se dote du pouvoir de s'engager dans la politique de son temps et, en quelque sorte, de s’y imposer son influence. Elle explore notamment les pièces égyptiennes et irlandaises de la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle afin d'analyser le rôle du théâtre et du spectacle, actuel et potentiel, à l'égard du champ politique, tant dans ce contexte particulier que sous d'autres angles. En étudiant les œuvres de Tawfiq al-Hakim, Mikhail Roman, Yusuf Idris et Salah Abdul-Saboor, aussi bien que celles de Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness et Samuel Beckett, la présente thèse non seulement tente de cartographier l'esthétique politique des temps incertains et des lieux apparemment disparates, mais elle envisage également les dynamiques de la révolte en tant que mise en scène de par sa nature, ce qui révèle la pertinence de l’étude par rapport aux expériences du monde contemporain. / In December 1881, a young Irish woman arrived in Cairo with her husband. She had already read much about Urabi, but in Cairo she had a chance to meet the Egyptian nationalist, who was actively revolting against the Khedive’s rule and Western, especially British, intervention in the region. This young woman was Lady Augusta Gregory, most famous for her role as a dramatist and folklorist, and most importantly as a co-founder of the Abbey theatre with W.B. Yeats. This dissertation starts on that note of exchange between two nations trying to liberate themselves from the British Empire and is especially interested in the role of the theatre in the process. The thesis, thus, looks at Ireland with its cultural nationalism and its politically engaged theatre as a case study and compares it to the role of the theatre in Egypt in the 1960s. It begins with the assumption that theatre with its performative capacity has the power to engage with and to an extent affect the politics of its day. As such it explores plays from Egypt and Ireland in the second half of the 20th century in order to look into the role theatre and performance have played and can potentially play in politics, in these specific contexts and beyond. By examining works by Tawfiq al-Hakim, Mikhail Roman, Yusuf Idris, and Salah Abdul-Saboor, alongside Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness and, of course, Samuel Beckett, this dissertation helps map not only the political aesthetics of unsteady times and seemingly disparate places, but it also reflects on the dynamics of revolt as a staged act in and of itself, which highlights its relevance to our contemporary world.

This inquiry analyzes the necessity for the Irish Repeal Party's alliance with the Catholic Church, especially during the two crucial years prior to the Great Famine, The Repeal Party during this time sought to defend the predominantly rural subsistence Irish society against British policies of coercion and assimilation. The main organization at the national and popular level to unify this Irish resistance to British policies was the Irish Catholic Church. Daniel O'Connell acted as the bridge between the Parliamentary Irish Repeal party and the Catholic Church. This was closely linked to his aims and methods which he conceived in the immediate practical terms of Irish survival against the threat of cultural and economic extinction. He therefore rejected as unrealistic the more absolutist doctrine of nationality of his Young Ireland critics and rivals within his party. He recognized that their ultimate ideals of physical resistance to the almost total military control that Britain exercised over Ireland would be futile, and possibly disastrous for the Irish people. He insisted, instead, on "moral force" and Constitutional methods to achieve peaceful co-existence with Ireland's more dominant neighbour, Britain. His Catholic alliance was essential to these pragmatic and constitutional ends. The introductory chapters set the historic framework for this most important phase of the British-Irish conflict from 1844 to 1846 which was centered around a struggle for control of the Irish Catholic Church. Ireland's development is traced from a position of almost complete domination and control by Britain and a lack of organized resistance at the Act of Union in 1800, to a political voice and organized resistance at a national and popular level in 1844. In this historical process, Daniel O’ Connelly Repeal Party, supported by the Irish Catholic leaders, acted as a major catalyst. Next, the trial of Daniel O'Connell in 1844 on charges of sedition against the British government is examined as a model in miniature of the British-Irish conflict that had raged in the preceding years. It was the culmination of this conflict, showing that the accused was also, in a political sense, the accuser. O'Connell’s acquittal was a moral refutation of British policies that supported the Protestant government oligarchy practice of discrimination against Catholic Ireland. Furthermore, it and the subsequent repercussions in Britain, aggravated the growing dissension within the ruling British Conservative party. From this point, the policy of the British government towards the Irish Repeal Party took a more devious turn, and never again directly challenged O'Connell. Rather, it attempted to divide the Irish nation, and especially its Catholic leaders, by coercion and bribery. Also in 1844, the British government failed to persuade the Papacy to compel the Irish Church leaders to abandon Repeal. Instead, it only succeeded in strengthening the bonds between Catholicism and the national movement of O'Connell, which had become a "cause celebre" in the Catholic context of Europe. By 1845 the British policy towards the Irish Catholic Church had shifted to belated recognition and half-hearted conciliation. The increased Maynooth Grant of 1845 was a prime example of an isolated and limited gesture. The goodwill engendered by this was counteracted by the strength of the anti-Catholic opposition to the Bill. In addition, the immediate subsequent introduction of the Academical Institutions (Ireland) Bill, without consulting the Irish Church leaders, and with its implied threat to Irish culture and Catholic influence, further reduced the favourable impression that the British government had created among the Irish Catholic leaders by the Maynooth Grant. These British policies revealed the weakening of the government's efforts at ideological assimilation, and the strength of the Catholic base of Irish nationalism under the leadership of Daniel O'Connell. The ensuing controversy within the Repeal Party from 1845 between the more secular physical force Young Ireland nationalists and O'Connell's Catholic supporters served to intensify the latter's link with his moral, force and constitutional objectives. It was not his failure of leadership in his last two years, as his critics have supposed, that temporarily interrupted his constitutional movement at his death. It was, rather, the major tragedy of the Great Famine, compounded by British administrative failure and the consequent abortive Young Ireland rebellion in 1848, that left the constitutional movement without a strong leader. O'Connell's heritage and most permanent contribution was to give the Irish Catholic Church a more unified and active political role within the national movement, and thus provide a base during those years from which the Irish constitutional national movement in the late nineteenth century could be launched. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

The sub-state nationalist conflicts in both Northern Ireland and the Basque Country have undergone significant de-escalation. However, while the transformation of the conflict in Northern Ireland involved a negotiated agreement with the host state, that of the conflict in the Basque Country did not. Thus, if the shape of the outcome represents the dependent variable, exploring these transformations requires an examination of three interrelated independent variable groupings. The first explores the operational capacities of each movement through an examination of their resources, and how access to these resources may have changed over time and impacted the overall strategies. Secondly, an examination of state responses to both the conflict itself as well as to changing movement strategies is undertaken. Finally, the third grouping seeks to explore the dynamics the above variables have on the way in which the sub-state nationalist organizations are led and directed. This project found that while both the Republican Movement and the MLNV experienced motivating pulls toward de-escalation and pursuit of movement goals increasingly dominated by institutional politics (Grouping 1), the differences in the responses of the host States (Grouping 2), and the organizational structures through which movement assessments and decisions are funnelled (Grouping 3), allowed for the MLNV to make the more radical commitment to de-escalation in the absence of a negotiated settlement, while the Republican Movement was able to move the bulk of, but not all, its membership into a negotiated agreement with the British state. The Republican Movement experienced greater optimism for and motivation in negotiations than did the MLNV, while the MLNV experienced greater motivation toward de-escalation more generally.

Thesis advisor: Peter Krause / To what extent do power-sharing arrangements increase or decrease ethnic tensions? This thesis sets to explore this question using Lebanon and Northern Ireland as comparative case studies. I use Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire scheme of historical memory to craft a theory of sites of social interaction (SSI). In addition, I outline three main strategies of social cohesion in power-sharing institutions. SSIs and cohesion strategies that increase tensions will cause power-sharing failure in the long run, and vice versa. I conclude that there is a causal link between power-sharing arrangements and ethnic tensions in divided societies, through the mechanisms of SSIs and cohesion strategies. Lebanon and Northern Ireland encode power-sharing with different sites of social interaction, as a reflection of a society’s composition, and different cohesion strategies, as a reflection of power-sharing design. Power-sharing implementation provides us with the missing link in our knowledge of power-sharing and ethnic tensions. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Political Science.

Attitudes towards immigration in Ireland are the focus of this study and, more specifically, what aspects of life the native-born population perceive to be impacted by immigration into Ireland in 2018. This thesis uses two primary socioeconomic attributes of the native-born respondents as explanatory variables, focusing on education and income levels of the native-born population. The aim of this study is to examine the association between attitudes towards immigration, across different attitudinal dimensions, and socioeconomic status of native-born individuals in the Republic of Ireland in 2018. This thesis uses data taken from round 9 of the European Social Survey and purports that individuals (i) without tertiary education and (ii) on low-incomes will be more likely to oppose immigration across all dimensions of attitudes to immigration, all else equal. In addition, it propagates the idea that individuals will be more likely to oppose immigration due to the perceived effect of immigration on the economy, all else being equal.  This research draws on Group threat theory and Contact theory as the foundation for the hypotheses and research questions and enables investigation into the primary socioeconomic determinants influencing attitudes towards immigration in Ireland. Furthermore, whether an association exists between socioeconomic status and attitudes across all attitudinal dimensions is explored.  The results indicate that, all else equal, those who studied to at least a tertiary level are more likely to display positive attitudes towards immigration than those without a tertiary education, regardless of attitudinal dimension. Similarly, those on the highest incomes are more likely to exhibit positive attitudes to immigration across all dimensions compared to their low-income counterparts, all else being equal. Interestingly however, this thesis did not find statistically significant evidence that individuals will be more likely to oppose immigration due to the perceived impact of immigration on the economy, as was originally hypothesised.

While Ireland remained neutral throughout the Second World War, it was not spared from the economic and social consequences of the conflict. This time in Ireland is known as ‘the Emergency’ and shortages of essential goods exacerbated poverty, often with fatal consequences for the worst off. In 1941, Hilda Tweedy organized a petition signed by Irish women that was sent to Government in pursuit of a variety of policies intended to alleviate some of the harshest suffering caused by economic turmoil and minimal government intervention. This petition ultimately laid the groundwork for the subsequent formation of the Irish Housewives Association in 1942. This Association was involved in a wide array of activities, but consumer protection and the cost of living were of preeminent concern throughout their existence. The Irish Housewives Association has received some historical attention for its feminist activities, but I propose that many of their initiatives can be usefully analyzed through theories of nationalism. I argue that the theoretical innovations of everyday nationalism and consumer nationalism possess previously unrecognized utility for illuminating women’s experience throughout this period of Irish history. / Graduate / 2021-08-25