Family and Community in Ireland: Second Edition

this text constitutes a classic in anthropological literature and in the sociology of the family. Based on fieldwork carried out as part of the Harvard Irish Study in Ireland, 1931-1936, it is an account of life in rural county Clare and in the county town, Ennis. There were three strands to the Irish Study: a survey of the physical anthropology of Ireland by Earnest Hooton, published in 1955; an archaeological survey; and a social-anthropological and economic strand directed by Lloyd Warner of Yankee City fame. Family and Community in Ireland is an account of this third strand.The book was first published in 1940 and written largely by Conrad Maynadier Arensberg (1910-1997); he was one of the two main field researchers on the social-anthropological aspect of the overall study dealing mainly with life on the small family farms of a number of town lands in County Clare. As a prelude to the main book, Arensberg had published The Irish Countryman (1937) after completing his Ph.D. dissertation.The 1968 volume is a detailed account of many aspects of rural and small town Irish life of 20 years earlier. It deals with the life and work of these communities in terms of the economy, family labour, occupations, markets, inheritance patterns, mobility, and emigration. Even more central, however, are the themes of family and kinship. There is also considerable quantitative economic and demographic data in figures and tables.Familism is central to the work in that the family is seen to constitute the main organizing and structuring principle in the community. Its centrality as not only a social but also an economic system is evident to the authors: this is clear in their accounts of many of the issues they examine. The very choice of marriage partner is strongly economic; as manifest in the account of the practice of matchmaking, this is a highly instrumental process.