Marginality in a Connected World: Consumption and Consumerism in 19th-Century Rural Ireland

Summary

Although, the rural Irish are often characterized as a geographically and economically isolated people, their material culture reveals that in the nineteenth century, they were part of a growing global economy—one that circulated both goods and people around the British Empire and beyond. While the industrial revolution and the spread of capitalism allowed for greater access to a variety of goods for the rural Irish, they also maintained a class system that perpetually confined the rural poor to marginalized positions within society. These men and women negotiated this system through their consumption of material goods to create a sense of self and a cultural identity. This paper uses archaeological and historical data to explore the economic and anthropological processes of trade, exchange, availability, and access at the local, national, and international levels.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Living at the Margins: Archaeological and Ethnographic Research on Post-Eighteenth-Century Irish and Scottish Rural Life

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16843