Doctoral Dissertation:
The Shawlies: a study of early neoliberal ‘gender-fication’. The Street Trading Act, 1926, modern gender-fication, and the implications for Cork’s women street traders.
For centuries Cork’s Shawlies, working-class women, survived by trading on public streets. My study explores how the first Irish Free State government, and Cork’s local authority, limited the rights of poor women to earn by subsistence trading with The Street Trading Act, 1926. The government insisted this would regulate street trading. In practice it further marginalised the women economically and socially, containing them outside the privileged, commercial city centre. In Cork the legislation facilitated the gradual disappearance of the Shawlies amid entrenched social processes and relations, contingencies that allowed for the abuse of their rights in the service of amalgamated business interests. This study address the role of discourses in deepening this marginalisation. An examination of studies of contemporary women street traders in poor nations follows, along with a brief history of the decline of street trading in New York city under gentrification. Points of convergence between that process and the one in Cork are identified, along with convergences between contemporary traders and the Shawlies.
The Shawlies: a study of early neoliberal ‘gender-fication’. The Street Trading Act, 1926, modern gender-fication, and the implications for Cork’s women street traders.
For centuries Cork’s Shawlies, working-class women, survived by trading on public streets. My study explores how the first Irish Free State government, and Cork’s local authority, limited the rights of poor women to earn by subsistence trading with The Street Trading Act, 1926. The government insisted this would regulate street trading. In practice it further marginalised the women economically and socially, containing them outside the privileged, commercial city centre. In Cork the legislation facilitated the gradual disappearance of the Shawlies amid entrenched social processes and relations, contingencies that allowed for the abuse of their rights in the service of amalgamated business interests. This study address the role of discourses in deepening this marginalisation. An examination of studies of contemporary women street traders in poor nations follows, along with a brief history of the decline of street trading in New York city under gentrification. Points of convergence between that process and the one in Cork are identified, along with convergences between contemporary traders and the Shawlies.
Master of Arts - Integrated Studies Project:
Smithy of the Soul: Colonialism, Education, and Irish Resistance
Refusing to be silenced across these centuries in Irish history, from the thirteenth century through the late twentieth century, Irish nationalists offered resistance, rebellion and, finally, revolution against England’s presence. Much like the early centuries of conquest, resistance came intermittently, and was suppressed first by England’s and then the British Empire’s social and political efforts to deny and destroy Irish culture-- efforts that are intrinsic to colonisation and synonymous with the sweep of “Empire”. Accordingly, resistance was not confined to the political arena and the barricades: a line of political figures linked to cultural movements strove to revive the culture-- ethnic and social--and the Irish language. Ultimately, many of these figures took up the fight for freedom, independence, and democracy. A closer look at Irish life reveals that education was consistently used as a means of resistance, revolt, and cultural survival; the ways and means of this resistance began with the hedge schools of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and was re-ignited by the work of Padraig Pearse in the early twentieth century. This resistance-via-education culminated in his efforts as an educator at St. Enda’s school for boys, and as an education activist-writer until his execution in 1916. A survey of these two historical movements suggests that they are, despite being separated by time, space, and ideologies, viable avenues of political resistance and cultural survival consistent with the work of key critical pedagogists from the last half of the twentieth century including Paolo Freire and Henry Giroux.
Smithy of the Soul: Colonialism, Education, and Irish Resistance
Refusing to be silenced across these centuries in Irish history, from the thirteenth century through the late twentieth century, Irish nationalists offered resistance, rebellion and, finally, revolution against England’s presence. Much like the early centuries of conquest, resistance came intermittently, and was suppressed first by England’s and then the British Empire’s social and political efforts to deny and destroy Irish culture-- efforts that are intrinsic to colonisation and synonymous with the sweep of “Empire”. Accordingly, resistance was not confined to the political arena and the barricades: a line of political figures linked to cultural movements strove to revive the culture-- ethnic and social--and the Irish language. Ultimately, many of these figures took up the fight for freedom, independence, and democracy. A closer look at Irish life reveals that education was consistently used as a means of resistance, revolt, and cultural survival; the ways and means of this resistance began with the hedge schools of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and was re-ignited by the work of Padraig Pearse in the early twentieth century. This resistance-via-education culminated in his efforts as an educator at St. Enda’s school for boys, and as an education activist-writer until his execution in 1916. A survey of these two historical movements suggests that they are, despite being separated by time, space, and ideologies, viable avenues of political resistance and cultural survival consistent with the work of key critical pedagogists from the last half of the twentieth century including Paolo Freire and Henry Giroux.