Flaherty, Eoin
(2013)
The macro-context of communality in
nineteenth century Ireland: toward a
typology of social-ecological complexity (NIRSA) Working Paper Series. No. 72.
Working Paper.
NIRSA - National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
The rundale system has held a certain fascination for Irish historians due to its
troublesome prevalence in the cartographic record and comparative absence from
historical record. As a system of communal cultivation characterised by equality
of land allocation through collective governance, popular conflicting accounts
have interpreted it both as a functional adaptation to the ‘ecological niche’ of the
Irish Western Seaboard or, controversially, as a modern survival of an archaic,
embryonic mode of production of great antiquity. Beyond such empirical concerns
with its origins and spatial distribution, the rundale system raises theoretical
concerns of some antiquity (such as those concerning the place of communal
modes of production as precursors to the development of capitalism within
Marxist historical-materialism), and other issues permeating foundational debates
of sociology, concerning the relationship between the natural and the social, and
systems-based conceptualisations of societies and social order. These latter
theoretical concerns have recently enjoyed a resurgence of interest under the
interdisciplinary rubrics of resilience ecology and complexity theory, offering a
means with which to discard old dualisms of nature-society, and the restrictions of
normative stability assumptions and structuralism imposed by earlier variants of
post-war sociological systems theory. The rundale system is here explored in the
context of these informants both as an exercise in theoretical compatibility, and
with a view toward establishing a more rounded perspective on rundale as a
distinct social-ecological system. A macro-context for this subsequent
investigation is thus established by subjecting a set of aggregate data on prefamine
Ireland to an optimisation clustering procedure, in order to discern the
potential presence of distinctive social-ecological regimes. This resultant typology
provides a contextual framework for subsequent quantitative and qualitative work
at lower levels of aggregation.
| Item Type: |
Monograph
(Working Paper)
|
| Keywords: |
macro-context of communality; nineteenth century Ireland;
typology of social-ecological complexity; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > National Institute for Regional and Spatial analysis, NIRSA |
| Item ID: |
5424 |
| Depositing User: |
NIRSA Editor
|
| Date Deposited: |
24 Sep 2014 15:27 |
| Publisher: |
NIRSA - National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis |
| Funders: |
Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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