Associational culture in Ireland and abroad – Edited by Jennifer Kelly and Vincent Comerford
2012; Wiley; Volume: 65; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1468-0289.2011.00622_10.x
ISSN1468-0289
Autores Tópico(s)Irish and British Studies
ResumoJennifer Kelly and Vincent Comerford , eds. , Associational culture in Ireland and abroad ( Dublin : Irish Academic Press , 2010 . Pp . xiii + 222 . 3 figs. 6 illus. 13 tabs. ISBN 9780716530787 Hbk. £45/€49.95 ) While Jurgen Habermas's Structural transformation of the public sphere (1989) has shaped considerably the historiography of associational culture in Britain, Europe, and the US over the past 30 years, it has had limited impact on Irish historians. Based on the proceedings of a conference held in 2008 as part of a wider project designed to create a database of Irish associations, the most successful contributors to this volume seek to overcome this theoretical reticence in a range of essays examining how associational culture emerged in the public sphere of modern Ireland. Jennifer Kelly and Vincent Comerford use their editors' introduction to identify five key themes that connect the essays in this volume: competition within and between associations for prominence in public life; the role of associations in the hardening of social structures; the importance of material culture; the relationship between associations and the state; and the influence of British associations on Irish public life and civil society. A number of chapters locate their studies of Irish associationalism within a broader historiographical and theoretical context. Toby Barnard begins the book with a finely judged analysis of coffee house and pub culture in the eighteenth century. This is a head-on engagement with Habermas, directly attempting to judge whether these recreational spaces fit the Habermasian model. Barnard concludes that coffee houses had limited impact on Dublin's associational scene but raises important questions about how private hospitality leads to public associationalism. Martyn Powell's chapter considers the ‘clubbability’ (p. 29) of the Irish Volunteers during the 1780s, importantly demonstrating how Habermas can be applied to civil society as well as the public sphere, and using newspaper evidence to illustrate how sociability was not incompatible with politics. This volume's theoretical engagement is maintained in Tanja Bueltmann and Gerard Horn's essay on Irish and Scots associations in nineteenth-century Wellington, one of only two chapters to address Irish associational culture abroad. Instead of Habermas, Bueltmann and Horn make pertinent use of Nancy Green's model of comparative migration history, contrasting the experience of the Orange Order and the Caledonian Society in maintaining migrants' ethnic identity. These ethnic organizations, they argue, helped migrants both to adapt to their new life abroad and, through public events, to create a respectable public image, enhancing ‘the cultural capital of Irish Protestants and Scots in Wellington’ (p. 96). Mel Cousins draws on Theda Skocpol's work on the role of the state and Robert Putnam's on social capital in a persuasive analysis of how the state stimulated growth in Irish friendly societies following the National Insurance Act, 1911, blurring the distinctions between ‘ “public” state and “private” association’ (p. 161). Other chapters are less successful in their engagement with theoretical perspectives. Examining the mobilization of voluntary associations during the First World War, Clare O'Neill describes Habermas's ideas at length without establishing clearly how they may be used to understand the humanitarian response of individuals and existing Irish associations to the war. Many of the organizations examined by O'Neill, such as the Red Cross committees, involved considerable numbers of women, yet the gendered nature of this associational culture is ignored. O'Neill's omission points to this volume's biggest failing. While Barnard acknowledges the need for more research on gender, this book is curiously silent on the considerable literature on Habermas, the public sphere, and gender. Brian Griffin does mention briefly the masculine nature of Irish cycling clubs during the 1880s and Ann Matthews examines how the women of Cumann na mBan used the protection of Red Cross insignia to move freely around Dublin during the Easter rebellion, but neither essay analyses these organizations as examples of gendered associational activity. The remaining essays all suffer from a lack of engagement with the broader literature on associationalism. Katherine Mullin offers an important corrective to notions of Irish exceptionalism during the interwar period in her examination of how Catholic organizations adopted the rhetoric and tactics of British social purity campaigns, yet her analysis would have benefited from closer examination of Maria Luddy's work on Irish prostitution. Thomas Brophy devotes welcome attention to mid-nineteenth-century west coast Irish-American politics, but his account of disputed control of the Fenian Terence Bellew McManus's funeral is far too descriptive. John McGrath's chapter on the development of clubs and societies in Limerick city demonstrates how associations built on existing social divisions but places this analysis within a limited frame of reference. In the book's final chapter, Pádraig Deignan provides a largely narrative account of Protestant associations in early twentieth-century Sligo, yet he does make the important point that such groups could both bolster identity and help integration with the broader community. Despite the variable quality of a number of essays this book is a welcome addition to the literature on Irish associational culture and indicates the need for greater research that draws on comparative and theoretical frameworks.
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