Of Irish Descent: Origin Stories, Genealogy, and the Politics of Belonging

by Catherine Nash

Overview

What does it mean to be of Irish descent? What does Irish descent stand for in Ireland? In Northern Ireland? In the United States? How are the categories of "native" and "settler" and accounts of ethnic origin being refigured through popular genealogy and population genetics? Of Irish Descent addresses these questions by exploring the contemporary significance of ideas about ancestral roots, origins, and connections. Moving from the intimacy of family stories and reunions to disputed state policies on noble titles and new applications of genetic research, Nash traces the place of ancestry in interconnected geographies of identity-familial, ethnic, national, and diasporic. Underlying these different practices and narratives are potent and profoundly political questions about who counts as Irish and to whom Ireland belongs. Examining tensions between ideas of plurality and commonality, difference and connection that run through the culture and science of ancestral origins, Of Irish Descent is an original and timely exploration of new configurations of nation and diaspora as communities of shared descent.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815631590
Publisher:	Syracuse University Press
Publication date:	05/26/2008
Series:	Irish Studies
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Catherine Nash is professor of geography at Queen Mary, University of London. She has written numerous articles in the fields of feminist cultural geography, geographies of relatedness, and Irish studies.

Table of Contents

Illustrations     vii
Preface     ix
Introduction   Origin Stories     1
Special Affinities   Ethnic Origins   Diasporic Irishness     26
Irish Roots and Relatives   Return   Reciprocity   Relatedness     67
Postcolonial Nobility, Diasporic Distinction, and the Politics of Recognition     104
Of Ulster Stock   Native   Settler   Entangled Roots     139
Irish Origins, Celtic Origins   Population Genetics   Cultural Politics     181
Irish DNA   Genetic Distance   Connection     219
Conclusion     264
Notes     277
Bibliography     311
Index     333

Editorial Reviews

Of Irish Descent is a fresh, insightful and lucidly written view of genealogy and genetics among the Irish in the homeland and in the United States. This is a book well worth pondering. . . . A must buy.

Queen’s University Donald Akenson

Nash skillfully draws the attention of the reader to how collective belonging is reproduced both by the making of connections, attachments and affiliations and through practices of distinction and difference. . . . This book should be read by those interested in how primordial and plural claims to identity . . . interact and collide as they move across boundaries and are mobilized in different ways.

author of Women and the Irish Diaspora Breda Grey

Of Irish Descent is a fresh, insightful and lucidly written view of genealogy and genetics among the Irish in the homeland and in the United States. This is a book well worth pondering. . . . A must buy.

Queen’s University Donald Akenson