Landholding changes, kinship networks and class transformation in rural Ireland: A case-study from county Tipperary

Abstract

Much of the literature on the familistic system of landholding in Ireland has suffered both from a western small-farming bias and a lack of 3 historical perspective. This paper seeks to reconstruct the patterns and processes by which the landholding system of one Co. Tipperary parish — located within a more complex ecological zone and with a more diversified social structure — has been reproduced and transformed over the past two centuries. The study is situated in the context of the general processes of Irish agricultural development since the seventeenth century which has seen increasing levels of commercialisation and significant shifts in both the size of holdings and in patterns of commodity production. Given the complex ecological, economic, class, kinship and urban-rural relationships involved, an attempt is made to examine the dialectic between the more general processes of economic and social change and the particular adaptive strategies utilised by different social groups in the parish to survive in a varied and uncertain environment. Allowing for the highly uneven distribution of landed resources amongst different groups in the parish, it is argued that kinship-based behaviour was one of the critical adaptive strategies which eventually enabled the medium-size farm group in particular to capture a dominant position in this rural society.