essay
The home "place": center and periphery in Irish house and family systems
House life: space, place and family in Europe • Oxford • Published In 1999 • Pages: 105-129
By: Birdwell-Pheasant, Donna.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
In this study of rural Ireland house systems, the author claims that land was not the ruling symbol in the Irish mentality; rather it was family and place, as shown in an examination of ancient legal tracts. Documents from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from one region in County Kerry reveal a diversity of house and settlement types. Under English law the loss of security in customary land tenure shifted the nexus of identity away from land and towards the family, leading to land fragmentation and "ephemeral" housing, and undermining the balance between population and resources, with disastrous consequences during the Great Famine. Additionally, the author provides a comparison between the types and quality of housing in the post-famine and modern periods.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Tillage
- Dwellings
- Settlement patterns
- Real property
- Inheritance
- Status, role, and prestige
- Household
- Extended families
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Rural Irish
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2016
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Europe
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- British Isles
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- essay
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Ethnographer
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 4: Excellent Secondary Data
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- Ian Skoggard; 2014
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1986
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1700-1990
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Ballyduff area, County Kerry, Munster, Ireland
- NotesAdditional notes
- Donna Birdwell-Pheasant
- Includes bibliographical references(p. 126-129)
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 99220597
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Ireland--Rural conditions