ABSTRACT
More than 20 years have passed since Wilson’s (1984) ethnographic review argued that Irish rural studies, in moving from ‘Clare’ to the ‘Common Market’, had shifted away from functionalist ethnographies of local communities towards a wider political economy perspective that linked communities to the historical development of Irish capitalism. For Wilson (1984), rural Ireland was ridden with social divisions and becoming ever more subject to the policy regimes of the European Community.
