Seas of Connection: The Irish-Italian Comparison In Understanding The Marginal State

Summary

This paper focuses on the similarities of marginal development and population movement between 19th and early 20th century communities in Western Ireland and Southern Italy. Focusing specifically on the local development of historically marginalized communities in South-West Co. Mayo, Ireland against that of the San Pasquale Valley in Calabria, Italy, this paper investigates narratives of state-sponsored marginalization in these two disparate locations, and traces the entanglements between increasingly trans-oceanic communities within Italy, Ireland, and the U.S. Specifically, this paper investigates community formation overtime, local strategies of economic and social resilience employed in response to a changing social and political-scape, and means of local resistance to regional and national change. Using a mixed methods approach of field survey data, historical records, and personal interviews, I investigate the ways in which marginality is constructed, resisted, and influential in shaping the narratives, practices, and experiences of community at different scales across the globe. 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018   •
• Localized Rural Histories and Connected Worlds: Interdisciplinary Narratives of Transformation, Emigration and Interaction

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 999