Inishkillane
Hardcover, 226 pages
Published: February 12th 1973 by Allen Lane
Original Title: Inishkillane: Change and Decline in the West of Ireland
ISBN: 071390318X
ISBN13: 9780713903188
Edition Language: English
Inishkillane: Change & Decline in the West of Ireland
FLYLEAF: Inishkillane is an isolated parish on the west coast of Ireland. it is one of the many thousands of small rural Irish communities which in the past thirty years have become socially atrophied and demoralized. The intricate web of tradition life - mutual aid, wedding feasts, night walking, has been undermined by economic and social involvement with urban capitalism.
This change is quite unlike those earlier disruptions in Irish life which at first created and then accompanied the large emigrations of the past century. Today the Irish countryman's basic determination to keep his farm has ended. The girls will not marry local farmers; farmers are not happy to farm. The young people see the cities of England and America as their principal economic and cultural resource and those who remain at home do so in a spirit of resignation. Inishkillane is threatened with complete depopulation. There are no children in the parish below school age. Only shopkeepers seem to thrive. This book describes the changes in community and family life created by this social and personal demoralization, and shows that a more capitalistic social form is being brought about. An underlying theme is the capitalist's social position in rural Ireland and his ability to profit from declines which cause despondency and loneliness in a community.
Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars "Last one out, please turn off the lights."
Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2010
I first read Hugh Brody's book twenty five years ago and thought it was excellent. Having forgotten why I thought so, I recently decided to re-read it. Yes, it is an excellent book. A few years back I also read his "Maps and Dreams" about an Indian people of northeastern British Columbia who "stood in the way" of a pipeline. Like INISHKILLANE, that was a most sensitively-written, imaginatively-constructed book. The present volume concerns the way of life and demoralization of country people in the west of Ireland up to the early 1970s. Brody criticizes some anthropologists of the past, for instance Arensberg, for being ahistorical, saying that what the earlier writers described as traditional was only post-famine Irish society, not ancient. The overall theme, which is presented more through what people feel than what they do, is that Irish rural society was dysfunctional by the time he studied it, racked by emigration, loneliness, and discontent, with many contradictions. He refers to the "despondency of the 1960s" and tries to explain why it existed through historical, social, and economic description. After the Great Famine, survivors fled and younger members of better-off families were forced to emigrate because land-owning fathers refused to break up their holdings. By the late 1930s, general dissatisfaction had begun. Urban values and urban life had gained more prestige so that those who did not emigrate felt "stuck" on the land with little chance to enjoy life. The summer return of successful emigrants created a fleeting holiday atmosphere in the village pubs, perhaps, but melancholy had struck deep roots. Mutual aid, a factor in Arensberg's description of Irish country life, had disappeared. Self-reliance was now expected, but with fewer and fewer people, with little chance for men to marry, it had become harder and harder to achieve. Emigration greatly reduced community life, producing insularity; marriage prospects fell steeply, and the traditional authority, status, and role structure at home and in the community changed dramatically. Brody looks at the church, at the shop owners and their relationships to the new society too. I was reminded of Lerner's "Grocer of Balgat" in his study of Turkey in the 1950s [The Passing of Traditional Society], an individual, very like the Irish store owner in Inishkillane, who stood on a cusp between the village and the wider world outside, who could be seen as a portent of the end of traditional society.
Ireland rose up at last to become a "Tiger" with a booming economy to which less fortunate peoples flowed. Now, beset by a collapse, emigration may start once again. It is highly appropriate to read a book which details the conditions which set up that emigration in the first place. Brody's work, sprinkled with poetry and relevant quotes from many sources, is ideal for anyone who wants to take a stab at understanding Ireland. And, if you are not an Irish specialist, but just wish to know what good anthropological writing can be, by all means read INISHKILLANE.
