An Irish Working Class: Explorations in Political Economy and Hegemony, 1800-1950

582 Pages·2001·28.63 MB·English

by  Marilyn Silverman

AN IRISH WORKING CLASS
Explorations in Political Economy and Hegemony,
1800-1950
ANTHROPOLOGICAL HORIZONS
Editor: Michael Lambek, University of Toronto
This series, begun in 1991, focuses on theoretically informed ethno-
graphic works addressing issues of mind and body, knowledge and
power, equality and inequality, the individual and the collective. Inter-
disciplinary in its perspective, the series makes a unique contribution in
several other academic disciplines: women's studies, history, philosophy,
psychology, political science, and sociology. See page 567 for a list of
books in the series.
An Irish Working Class
Explorations in Political
Economy and Hegemony,
1800-1950
Marilyn Silverman
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2001
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-3531-0
Printed on acid-free paper
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Silverman, Marilyn, 1945-
An Irish working class : explorations in political economy and
hegemony, 1800-1950
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8020-3531-0
1. Working class - Ireland - Thomastown (Kilkenny) - History -
19th century. 2. Working class - Ireland - Thomastown (Kilkenny) -
History - 20th century. I. Title.
HD8400.3.Z8T42 2001 305.5'62'094189 COO-933248-0
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities
and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
The University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its pub-
lishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing
Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
For Philip
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Contents
List of Maps, Tables, and Figures ix
Preface xi
Part I: Encountering Labour in Field, Archives, and Theory
1 Political Economy, Class, and Locality 3
2 Relations of Class and Thomastown's 'Lower Orders' in 1800 19
Part II: Labouring Experience in the Nineteenth Century 39
3 Realizing the Working Class: Political Economy and Culture 43
4 Political Domains and Working Combinations after 1815 80
5 The Political Domain: Labour as Device, Resource, and
Project 100
6 Custom and Respectability: The Petty Sessions 119
7 Privatizing the River; Politicizing Labouring Fishers 142
Part IH: At the Turn of the Twentieth Century, 1885-1901 167
8 Political Sentiment and the Inland Fisheries 173
9 Social Organization and the Politics of Labour 193
Part IV: Metissage and Hegemony, 1901-50 217
10 The Organizational Impetus: Class and Nationalism before
the War, 1906-14 223
viii Contents
11 From Class to Nation: National Chronology and Local
Experience, 1914-23 243
12 From Nation to Class in the New State: Replicating Capital
and Labour, 1920-6 262
13 Labouring Viewpoints and Lives: The Metissage of Experience
and Identities, 1914-30 281
14 The Uneven Economy and the Moral Economy, 1926-50 301
15 The Quality of Charity, Values, and Entitlements, 1908-50 321
16 Redundancy and Status-Class: Purveying Values through
Recreation and Education, 1929-50 339
17 'And the Church Preached Its View' 359
18 'We Had a Live Union Then' 380
19 'Much Wants More': Framing the Politics of Labour 401
20 Inside the Frame: The Politics of Mediation 421
21 Organizing Labour in the 1940s: The Politics of Combination 442
22 Reproducing the Political Regime and Regimen, 1940-50 461
Part V: Conclusions: Political Economy and Culture, 1800-1950 481
23 Theory, Concept, and Text: A Holistic Approach to the
Politics of Class 482
Notes 505
Bibliography 539
Index 553
Maps, Tables, and Figures
Maps
1 Kilkenny baronies and the regional context of Thomastown 5
2 The town of Thomastown, c. 1850 52
3 The locality of Thomastown 59
Tables
2.1 Artisans as witnesses to legal conveyances, 1771-1831 29
2.2 Artisans as conveyors/receivers of property, 1753-1831 31
2.3 Number of baptisms after 1798 in town and country 32
3.1 Location and rentable value of town housing 54
3.2 Property valuations and the nature of town housing 55
3.3 Square footage of selected town houses, 1845 56
3.4 Lessors of town tenements/houses in Thomastown 58
3.5 Property-holding in peri-urban and rural townlands:
Thomastown parish, 1845 60
3.6 Valuations of buildings, 1845 61
3.7 Potato, flour, and pig prices, 1842-82 64
3.8 Status-class and marital endogamy, 1855-69 69
3.9 Marriage, status-class, and locality, 1865-74 70
3.10 Ages at marriage among farmers, labourers, and artisans,
1860-89 71
3.11 Landholders in the Thomastown area, 1845 and 1857 74
6.1 Petty sessions complaints involving labourers, 1854—84 125
7.1 Thomastown cot crews, 1845-65 154