Professor Gavin Foster: The Irish Civil War and Society

I am pleased to announce the publication of Dr. Gavin Foster's new book The Irish Civil War and Society - more details below. 

Dr. Foster is associate Professor -- and currently Principal -- at the Canadian School of Irish Studies; he also has a cross appointment with our Department. 

Dr. Nora E. Jaffary

Associate Professor and Chair

History Department

Gavin Foster re-conceptualizes class debates around the Irish Civil War (1922-3), exploring the social dimensions of the bitter conflict from fresh angles that highlight the rival social outlooks, interests, and conflicts that ruptured nationalist solidarity at the end of the Irish Revolution. Putting aside traditional class conflict models and quantitative socio-economic methods, Foster uniquely emphasizes social status as a key area of friction and contestation between supporters and opponents of the Irish Free State that informed partisan discourses, animosities and outlooks. His analysis of these 'politics of respectability' includes an innovative chapter on the partisan meanings of clothing and lifestyle practices, while he also complicates traditional narratives of the civil war by showing the pervasive and intimate blurring of republican insurgency with social conflicts over land, labour, and state authority. Chapters on the understudied aftermath of the civil war illuminate the political and social pressures that forced many IRA veterans to emigrate, an important revolutionary outcome that helped cement the conservative post-revolutionary settlement.

For further information on Dr. Foster's book, please visit the Palgrave Macmillan website by clicking here.