Two recently published books look at aspects of rural life in Clare and Limerick.
Family and Community in Ireland, a re-issue of the classic 1940s text by Conrad Arensberg and Solon Kimball, has been brought out by the Clare Local Studies Project (CLASP) with a new introduction by Dr Anne Byrne, Dr Ricca Edmondson and Dr Tony Varley of the Department of Political Science and Sociology, NUI Galway.
CLASP's mission statement is to increase access to sources for local studies and to republish books of local interest.
Family and Community in Ireland, a stalwart tome for sociology and anthropology students, is a study of social life among rural communities in Clare between 1932 and 1934, carried out as part of the Harvard Irish Survey.
The centre of rural life was the small family farm and the strong ties between kin and neighbours. According to the new introduction, the researchers argued that their study "could explain Ireland's peculiar and puzzling demographic patterns: persistent emigration, population decline, delayed marriage and high rates of singleness".
A study on Ennis life was also carried out, focusing on shopkeepers and their relations with people from the countryside.
"Arensberg and Kimball's work can be remembered for the vividness and attention to detail with which it records the Irish society they observed," Dr Byrne, Edmondson and Varley conclude.
Working Lives - Memoirs of Rural Ireland has been produced by the As D·chas D≤chas group, a Newcastle West-based local training initiative project. It comprises a series of interviews with people on their early lives in west Limerick. "They used to say that there was five of everything in Rathkeale. Five of everything; five blacksmiths, five tailors and five bakeries and so on.
"We had good times, although they were poor times, and we enjoyed ourselves. It was a lot easier when there was no violence or there was no drugs. We never thought of drugs; all we wanted was half a crown to go to the dance," Mr James Casey recalls.