The United Irishmen and social reform

1998 ◽  
Vol 31 (122) ◽  
pp. 188-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Quinn

When questioned by a parliamentary committee after the rebellion of 1798, the United Irish leader Thomas Addis Emmet predicted that ‘if a revolution ever takes place, a very different system of political economy will be established from what has hitherto prevailed here’. Was there any real substance to this claim? Did Emmet’s words indicate that the republican leadership genuinely sought a radical reshaping of society, or was he simply indulging in empty rhetoric that a broken United Irish movement could never make good? It has always been difficult to pin down the United Irishmen’s socio-economic views: their pronouncements in this area were few and were generally couched in vague terms. This is hardly surprising. Given that the society’s membership was far from socially homogeneous, the leadership no doubt recognised the difficulties involved in trying to produce an agreed programme of social reform. In an organisation one of whose earliest rules had been ‘to attend to those things in which we agree, to exclude from our thoughts those in which we differ’, it was generally judged prudent to steer clear of such a potentially divisive subject. Moreover, the readiness with which the government instigated prosecutions of outspoken radicals, particularly after the outbreak of war in 1793, made advisable a degree of caution in any statements which could be construed as threatening the established social order. Nevertheless, the society did address the issue of social reform from time to time, and individual United Irishmen also espoused a variety of proposals. This article will attempt to examine some of the strands of United Irish social thinking and to determine if the movement had such a thing as a coherent programme of social reform.

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 401-420
Author(s):  
Heather Anne Swanson

Anthropologists have often focused on what one can read about the worlds of hunters and prey from the forms of traps. This article demonstrates, however, that a trap’s design is not always tightly coupled to the worlds within which it is deployed. Using the case of Columbia River salmon traps, it shows how the social, economic and ecological roles of traps can dramatically change – even as their physical shape remains the same. In the late 19th century, these traps were lucrative for their owners, but unpopular with the region’s gillnet fishermen. The fishermen feared that traps entrapped the community in a problematic form of political economy – that they created the wrong kind of subjects and social order, concentrating wealth in the hands of a small, lazy owner class. The fishermen argued that such problems inhered in the materiality of the traps and that their physical design produced inequality that jeapordized the community. The gillnetters ultimately won over the government with their arguments, and fish traps were banned. But the banning of traps has subsequently proved entrapping. Today, some of the river’s salmon are listed as endangered species. Gillnets, which often kill fish before they are hauled in, do not allow fishermen to sort out endangered and unendangered fish; they are thus being phased out. Traps that keep fish alive in their holds would allow for sorting out and releasing endangered fish, and they are now heralded as an environmentally sustainable technology by conservationists. But after decades of arguments that traps embody and create unjust economic forms, it is logistically and socially difficult to bring back traps. Based on this example, this article proposes an approach to traps that gives special attention to how the material force of traps shifts as they are linked to different ecological contexts and practices of political economy.


Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 848-852
Author(s):  
Dr.B.R. VEERAMANI ◽  
A. KUMARAVALLI

Dr. Indira Goswami (Mamoni Raisom Goswami) is one of the leading writers of the India today. She has won the Jnanpith Award for the year 2000, which is the highest literary award of India today. She belongs to the family of Sattra adhikars (Head of Vaisnava monastery) of South Kamrup in Assam. Her father, Late Uma Kanta Goswami, was an economist, who worked as the Director of Public Instruction of the Government of Assam. Indira did her schooling in Guwahati and Shillong. She has written eighteen novels, and several hundreds of short stories. Her novels and short stories have been translated into many Indian and Foreign languages. She tries to write from her direct experiences of her life. She only moulds her experiences with her imagination. Her language is like a velvet dress by which she endeavors to cover the restless soul in its journey through existence. But however hard, she might try, the fabric of this dress seldom takes on the texture of velvet or fine Muslim, and it comes out rather tattered. Sometimes they feel that it is a futile effort to arrest the soul with language and capture it in cold print. It is better, perhaps to feel it only in numb science. But, then, those very experiences impel a person to unload them from the psyche by creative effort which gives a sort of relief. And, the tattered fabric has a beauty which puts to shame the finest of velvets.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
M. Zainuddin

This research to analyze the impact of closure policy Teleju brothel by Pekanbaru govermentin 2010. Guidelines for works are Pekanbaru Local Regulations No. 12 of 2008 on Social Order-liness. Closure this brothel inflicts positive and negative impact for society.The research wasconducted to obtain early stage formula for the government to take action against the prostitu-tion activities. This research uses policy research approach with a qualitative method, becausein prostitution activities and prohibition by goverment is an assessment that needs to be done byanalyzing documents and unstructured interview.The results showed that after the closing of the Teleju brothel have an impact on the deploy-ment of a prostitution and affect the economy of the surrounding residents. Government seeksto tackle prostitution in Pekanbaru by moving the brothel, conduct regular raids and providetraining. The effort is considered to be less than the maximum because the handling is not basedon the root of the problem and not programmed properly. There are several causes of failure ofgovernment to overcome the prostitution problem in Pekanbaru, including: policy content isless focus on the prostitution problem, the government did not proceeds with data, lack of finan-cial support, contra productive programs between local government with the police and TNI,and the policy object is difficult to be given understanding.


Author(s):  
Andrea Lorenzo Capussela

This book offers an interpretation of Italy’s decline, which began two decades before the Great Recession. It argues that its deeper roots lie in the political economy of growth. This interpretation is illustrated through a discussion of Italy’s political and economic history since its unification, in 1861. The emphasis is placed on the country’s convergence to the productivity frontier and TFP performance, and on the evolution of its social order and institutions. The lens through which its history is reviewed, to illuminate the origins and evolution of the current constraints to growth, is drawn from institutional economics and Schumpeterian growth theory. It is exemplified by analysing two alternative reactions to the insufficient provision of public goods: an opportunistic one—employing tax evasion, corruption, or clientelism as means to appropriate private goods—and one based on enforcing political accountability. From the perspective of ordinary citizens and firms such social dilemmas can typically be modelled as coordination games, which have multiple equilibria. Self-interested rationality can thus lead to a spiral, in which several mutually reinforcing vicious circles lead society onto an inefficient equilibrium characterized by low political accountability and weak rule of law. The book follows the gradual setting in of this spiral, despite an ambitious attempt at institutional reform, in 1962–4, and its resumption after a severe endogenous shock, in 1992–4. It concludes that innovative ideas can overcome the constraints posed by that spiral, and ease the country’s shift onto a fairer and more efficient equilibrium.


Public Choice ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Hamlin

AbstractRules are central to the constitutional political economy (CPE) approach. On this approach, rules, of a variety of types and forms, are necessary for the emergence of a political and social order, so that all genuine political order is rule-based. The central role of rules within the CPE approach is examined starting from an explicit definitional discussion of the concept of a rule and including discussion of the nature of rule-following behavior, the supply of rules, and rule enforcement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 424-437
Author(s):  
Alain Symphorien Ndongo

Housing as a place where household members spend about half (12 hours) of their daily time, including six to eight hours in sleep, is one of the essential conditions in the fight against poverty and precariousness.  The current Congolese urban environment is facing serious problems: small plots of land, lack of suitable housing in relation to the size and composition of households, overcrowding, and water and electricity supplies. This situation is becoming critical with the appearance of deviant behavior among children aged between 10 and 30. The government and its development partners have demonstrated their powerlessness face to this situation, leaving thousands of children on the streets without education or family warmth to form real criminal gangs. These street children have created the phenomena of "kuluna" and "black babies". It has been shown that these one act in this way for their survival, claiming their rights. In this study, we find innovative proposals to provide households sheltering adulterine and adoptive children with low-cost social housing, in order to restore the image of the head of the household and provide the children with a pleasant space for their physical, economic, cultural and spiritual development. This will undoubtedly help to find solutions to the problems facing children and indeed Congolese society as a whole today. The study revealed that if the government does not take practical measures in response to the phenomena created by wayward children, especially "black babies" and "kuluna", there will be a massive adherence of other children, especially the adulterine and adoptive ones. There will be a risk of the phenomena will to be exported to rural areas. The study recommends a "State - Household" partnership in the manufacture of new types of urban housing for households housing children likely to integrate or create gangs, jeopardizing social order and public security.


Author(s):  
Mark Koyama

How did religious freedom emerge? I address this question by building on the framework of Johnson and Koyama’s Persecution & Toleration: The Long Road to Religious Freedom (2019). First, I establish that premodern societies, reliant on identity rules, were incapable of liberalism and religious freedom. Identity rules and restrictions on religious freedom were part of a political-economy equilibrium that ensured social order. Second, I examine developments like the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution, as shocks to this premodern identity rules and conditional toleration equilibrium. Finally, I consider several examples that support the claim that the move from identity rules to general rules allowed religious freedom to flourish.


Author(s):  
W. W. Rostow

I have tried in this book to summarize where the world economy has come from in the past three centuries and to set out the core of the agenda that lies before us as we face the century ahead. This century, for the first time since the mid-18th century, will come to be dominated by stagnant or falling populations. The conclusions at which I have arrived can usefully be divided in two parts: one relates to what can be called the political economy of the 21st century; the other relates to the links between the problem of the United States playing steadily the role of critical margin on the world scene and moving at home toward a solution to the multiple facets of the urban problem. As for the political economy of the 21st century, the following points relate both to U.S. domestic policy and U.S. policy within the OECD, APEC, OAS, and other relevant international organizations. There is a good chance that the economic rise of China and Asia as well as Latin America, plus the convergence of economic stagnation and population increase in Africa, will raise for a time the relative prices of food and industrial materials, as well as lead to an increase in expen ditures in support of the environment. This should occur in the early part of the next century, If corrective action is taken in the private markets and the political process, these strains on the supply side should diminish with the passage of time, the advance of science and innovation, and the progressively reduced rate of population increase. The government, the universities, the private sector, and the professions might soon place on their common agenda the delicate balance of maintaining full employment with stagnant or falling populations. The existing literature, which largely stems from the 1930s, is quite illuminating but inadequate. And the experience with stagnant or falling population in the the world economy during post-Industrial Revolution times is extremely limited. This is a subject best approached in the United States on a bipartisan basis, abroad as an international problem. It is much too serious to be dealt with, as it is at present, as a domestic political football.


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