Rural Industry and Uneven Development: The Significance of Gender in the Irish Linen Industry.

From the middle of the eighteenth century, the Irish linen industry grew on the basis of unequal relations of exchange between spinning and weaving households. This regional division of labour in turn depended on unequal relations of production between women and men within rural industrial households. The 'proto-industrialization' thesis has tended to obscure this process by focussing on the household as a bounded entity, and by failing to recognize the significance of inequalities within the household production unit. Once gender relations are made central to the thesis, it can be expanded to explain regional differences in rural industrialization and deindustrialization

Gender and Uneven Working Class Formation in the Irish Linen Industry

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Poverty and the Life Cycle in 20th Century Ireland: Changing Experiences of Childhood, Education and the Transition to Adulthood

This study adds to the evidence base on poverty and the life cycle from a childhood centred perspective through a qualitative analysis of a major new database of life history interviews linked to a panel survey. The analysis focused on three birth cohorts of respondents whose households experienced difficulty making ends meet when they were growing up during the 1930s, 1950s and 1970s. Experiences of class discrimination in education were most pronounced in the middle cohort who ‘started out’ during a period of transformation in the Irish social structure. For all three cohorts, vulnerability to poverty across the life course was linked to different patterns of ‘poor fit’ between the timing of key transitions in early adulthood and changing socio-economic and policy environments. The analysis demonstrates that a life cycle approach to social policy must be sufficiently flexible to respond to rapidly changing socio-economic conditions. Within the context of a long-term pattern of change in the timing and sequencing of early adult life transitions, fluctuations in the wider social and economic environment have varying consequences for people at different life stages. A life-cycle approach should also continue to recognise the substantial ways in which social class differences, especially those experienced in childhood and ‘starting out,’ frame opportunities and constraints at ‘turning points’ throughout the life course

Gender and Uneven Working Class Formation in the Irish Linen Industry

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The Drama of Childbirth

In 1999, the organization Cuidiu-Irish Childbirth Trust published the third edition of its âConsumer Guideâ to maternity services, with the assistance of the Department of Health and Children. One of the principal trends Cuidiu identified was an increase in the percentage of births by caesarean section. In this respect, Ireland appears to be âcatching upâ with many other European states. Some commentators suggested that patient preference has contributed to the increasing number of caesarean sections in Ireland. In the personal view of Cuidiuâs President, Sue Jameson, womenâs expectations for a âperfect, pain-free birthâ had increased the likelihood of intervention

The Drama of Childbirth

In 1999, the organization Cuidiu-Irish Childbirth Trust published the third edition of its âConsumer Guideâ to maternity services, with the assistance of the Department of Health and Children. One of the principal trends Cuidiu identified was an increase in the percentage of births by caesarean section. In this respect, Ireland appears to be âcatching upâ with many other European states. Some commentators suggested that patient preference has contributed to the increasing number of caesarean sections in Ireland. In the personal view of Cuidiuâs President, Sue Jameson, womenâs expectations for a âperfect, pain-free birthâ had increased the likelihood of intervention

The Irish, Scottish and Flemish Linen Industries During the Long Eighteenth Century

Jean Quataert has described how, in central Europe during the pre-industrial era, linen manufacturing was popularly thought to be a dishonourable profession. The industry has had a similarly poor reputation amongst some historians of the transition to industrial capitalism. Francois Crouzet described linen as ‘an archaic industry, doomed anyway.’ Denis O'Hearn has recently argued that the Irish linen industry was intrinsically ‘semiperipheral,’ insofar as it was characterized by low wages, slow rates of change in technology and productive organization, and few linkages to other economic sectors. During the nineteenth century, ‘the existing level of linen output was simply concentrated from an Ulster-wide industry to the Lagan valley.’ Elsewhere, linen has enjoyed a better reputation. In the Scottish historiography, according to Devine, the linen industry has been regarded as ‘the source of enterprise, capital and labour for cotton, the 'leading sector,' which ushered in the age of industrialisation and future prosperity.’. Mixed claims have been made for the Flemish linen industry. Whereas Mokyr and Mendels argued (in different ways), that linen paved the way for Belgium's relatively early industrial transition, Vandenbroeke and Van Der Wee depicted linen as a source of delay and irregularity in the process. This chapter explores the problem of regional differentiation in linen-manufacturing regions during the era of proto-industrialization and the transition to modern capitalist industry, focussing on the Irish, Scottish and Flemish cases. It critically reviews a number of existing explanations for regional differentiation and suggest an alternative. In the Germanic lands, linen's ‘fateful association with the household’ - and with women's work - led to its poor reputation. I suggest that it was differences in how men's and women's labour was mobilized in the production of linen (from the cultivation of flax to the manufacture of woven cloth) which contributed to regional differentiation in the development of linen producing regions, and thereby led to differences in the transition to capitalism

Is the Influence of Psycholinguistic Research Evident in Preservice Teachers\u27 Views of the Reading Process?

The overall aim of this investigation was to attempt to determine whether the psycholinguistic view of the reading process was being reflected in the views of preservice teachers

Appreciation of Reading Through the Five Senses

While the definition of reading remains an elusive one for reasons pointed out by Edmund Huey (1908) more than seventy years ago, there is one component of the reading process which surely deserves attention. That component is the appreciation gained in reading through the five senses. How is this accomplished? An examination of reading and its relation to the five senses should help to make this clear