Farming in the generation between 1930 and 1960 saw changes on a previously unknown scale. On most holdings, work continued to be carried out by all the family members. Men, women and children all had roles in the production of crops and livestock. At busier times neighbours were called on for help, and workers were also hired on some farms, either full-time or seasonally. All of these relationships could lead to tensions and conflict, but they also led to great intimacy and kindness, with individuals showing commitment to the well-being of their family, their neighbours, and even their employers and employees. This book uses oral history to explore life on Ulster farms between 1930 and 1960. This valuable record of the faming community describes in fascinating detail the many changes in practically every aspect of working life and their associated patterns of social life, all in the face of increasing government intervention, globalisation of markets, and the cataclysm of the Second World War. These massive changes have often been seen as damaging social networks in rural areas, but the collective memories of those involved bear witness to their marvellous capacity to adapt. The oral testimonies on which the book is based show that, for farming people, change could and did create new relationships and wider opportunities on both a professional and personal level.

The close ties between the people and the land in Ulster has only, within the last two generations, been replaced by a more urban 'modern'lifestyle. This study of the farms and farming families,on two thousand acres of hilly terrain in two adjacent townlands, Edymore and Cavanlee, south-east of Strabane overlooking the river Mourne, is a model in local studies. The story is based on research in one of the greatest collections of estate records in Britain or Ireland, the Abercorn Papers in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. Before 1600 the land belonged to the great O'Neill clan. After the Plantation, it was granted to the Abercorn family and the land devided into small farms, and over the ensueing centuries the farmers created well-run and profitable mixed farms.At the beginning of the twentieth century families at last had the chance to own the land their forebears had, as tenants,tilled for generations.Some farms expanded,some stayed the same size: what links them all is that the family unit remained as the cement that held them together and bound them to the land. The development of the farms and the lives of four of the longest-surviving families are retraced in absorbing detail, so to is the social fabric which linked town and country. Strabane, less than an hour's walk away, was a focal point for markets, education and social activities. The writer's own family connections with the townlands over the last fifty years provide the homely touch that gives this book such a distinctive charm.

Arguing that property and power are central to understanding the position of women in farming and using comparative examples, this book considers the transfer of land between men, the changed role of women in the dairy industry in the nineteenth century, women in farming organisations, women in agricultural education programmes, and the role of the state in shaping the lives of farm women. The common themes of power and property underpin all the chapters.

Where and what is Ireland?--What are the identities of the people of Ireland?--How has European Union membership shaped Irish people's lives and interests?--How global is local Ireland?This book argues that such questions can be answered only by understanding everyday aspects of Irish culture and identity. Such understanding is achieved by paying close attention to what people in Ireland themselves say about the radical changes in their lives in the context of wider global transformation. As notions of sex, religion, and politics are radically reworked in an Ireland being re-imagined in ways inconceivable just a generation ago, anthropologists have been at the forefront of recording the results. The first comprehensive book-length introduction to anthropological research on the island as a whole, The Anthropology of Ireland considers the changing place in a changing Ireland of religion, sex, sport, race, dance, young people, the Travellers, St Patrick's Day and much more.

This book discusses the history and contemporary practice of studying cultures 'at home', by examining Europe's regional or 'small' ethnologies of the past, present and future. With the rise of nationalism and independence in Europe, ethnologies have often played a major role in the nation-building process. The contributors to this book offer case studies of ethnologies as methodologies, showing how they can address key questions concerning everyday life in Europe. They also explore issues of European integration and the transnational dimension of culture in Europe today, and examine how regional ethnologies can play a crucial part in forming a wider 'European ethnology' as local participants have experience of combining identities within larger regions or nations.

Forgetful Remembrance examines the paradoxes of what actually happens when communities persistently endeavour to forget inconvenient events. The question of how a society attempts to obscure problematic historical episodes is addressed through a detailed case study grounded in the north-eastern counties of the Irish province of Ulster, where loyalist and unionist Protestants—and in particular Presbyterians—repeatedly tried to repress over two centuries discomfiting recollections of participation, alongside Catholics, in a republican rebellion in 1798. By exploring a rich variety of sources, Beiner makes it possible to closely follow the dynamics of social forgetting. His particular focus on vernacular historiography, rarely noted in official histories, reveals the tensions between professed oblivion in public and more subtle rituals of remembrance that facilitated muted traditions of forgetful remembrance, which were masked by a local culture of reticence and silencing. Throughout Forgetful Remembrance, comparative references demonstrate the wider relevance of the study of social forgetting in Northern Ireland to numerous other cases where troublesome memories have been concealed behind a veil of supposed oblivion.