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This paper examines the construction of ethnic ties between immigrants from different counties in Ireland in New York City. Specifically, it explores an attempt to foster Irish unity and pride through the playing of Gaelic sports in New York City (1904–1916). Rather than treating Gaelic sport as a cultural resource that ethnic entrepreneurs harnessed, the paper treats both Gaelic sports and Irish ethnicity as delicate organizational accomplishment. This paper traces a delicate process of experimentation, spanning more than a decade, at the end of which the organizers of the sport managed to produce gripping, but friendly, rivalries between the different teams. This accomplishment created ethnic institutional scaffolding within which immigrants were more likely to see themselves as Irish Americans rather than merely immigrants from particular counties on the island.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the emergence and endurance of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland (ICAI) as an all‐Ireland body formed in the context of political and religious upheaval. It seeks to explore the motives for the north‐south accounting alliance and the strategies adopted by the institute to negotiate the destructive and divisive forces of the wider socio‐political environment.

A multitude of archival material is used to reconstruct the post‐formation activities of the ICAI. Sources were drawn from: the ICAI archive in Dublin: Minute Books 1 and 2 covering the period from 1888 to 1921, Annual Reports, 1888‐1922; minute books of other contemporary English accountancy bodies; contemporary professional press and census records stored at the National Library of Ireland in Dublin and the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast.

The early ICAI was an overwhelmingly Protestant/Unionist dominated body seeking to maintain Protestant hegemony at a time when the power of this class was being gradually eroded. Cognizant of the likely vulnerability of such a body existing in the catholic‐nationalist south, and the need to strengthen such a position through a northern alliance, the ICAI from its inception was envisaged by its southern architects as an all Ireland institution. The fact that there were only a relatively small number of members acted as an inducement, particularly for Protestant members, to maintain unity.

The professionalization of accountancy in Ireland has been relatively under‐researched and the debates about the diffusion of the English professional model have virtually bypassed it.

Political dissent threads through the history of the Olympic Games. Although the International Olympic Committee (IOC) openly prohibits athletes from injecting politics into the Games, Olympians have nevertheless staged protests, using the Olympics to challenge the predominant power structures and institutions. This chapter analyzes outbursts of athlete activism in the context of wider social movements that make these political paroxysms more viable. Social movements scythe political space for athletes, spark athletes' political imaginary, and provide support and cover. From the early days of the Games, Olympic athletes have expressed dissent, as when Irish track-and-field athlete Peter O'Connor rebelled against British colonialism at the 1906 Olympics in Athens. At the Mexico City 1968 Games, Czech gymnast Vera Čáslavská carried out a politically symbolic acts as did US sprinters John Carlos, Tommie Smith, and Wyomia Tyus. At the 1972 Munich Games, US track medalists Vincent Matthews and Wayne Collett protested in nonchalant fashion on the medal stand. At the 1980 Olympics, Polish Olympian Władysław Kozakiewicz issued politically provocative symbology on the pole vault mat that challenged Soviet hegemony. In the twenty-first century, numerous Olympians have made political statements, despite a rule in the Olympic Charter that forbids such activity. In each case, athlete activists were bolstered by vibrant political movements in their home country. In this chapter, I trace the relationship between political Olympians and social movements as well as the wider dialectic of resistance and restriction that encompasses the interplay between dissident Olympians and the IOC.

There exists a rich sociological literature dealing with secularisation. Such nineteenth‐century sociologists as Weber and Durkheim and twentieth‐century sociologists as Greeley, Bellah, Berger and Wilson have contributed. Berger refers to secularisation as “the process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols”, while Wilson defines it as “the process whereby religious thinking, practices and institutions lose social significance”. These definitions represent the thrust of academic thinking about secularisation. Generally, social scientists interpret secularisation as the decline of religiosity — a movement from faith to reason. They cite numerous indicators of the change: decline in such areas as church attendance, praying, use of religious rites and rituals, recruitment to the church bureaucracy, church construction. Often they suggest a kind of inevitability relating to urbanisation and industrialisation. The focus of the process involves man becoming less concerned with the spiritual and more concerned with the mundane. Eventually, the spiritual becomes irrelevant; the Age of Enlightenment triumphs over the Age of Faith.

How do transnational social movements organize? Specifically, this paper asks how an organized community can lead a nationalist movement from outside the nation. Applying the analytic perspective of Strategic Action Fields, this study identifies multiple attributes of transnational organizing through which expatriate communities may go beyond extra-national supporting roles to actually create and direct a national campaign. Reexamining the rise and fall of the Fenian Brotherhood in the mid-nineteenth century, which attempted to organize a transnational revolutionary movement for Ireland’s independence from Great Britain, reveals the strengths and limitations of nationalist organizing through the construction of a Transnational Strategic Action Field (TSAF). Deterritorialized organizing allows challenger organizations to propagate an activist agenda and to dominate the nationalist discourse among co-nationals while raising new challenges concerning coordination, control, and relative position among multiple centers of action across national borders. Within the challenger field, “incumbent challengers” vie for dominance in agenda setting with other “challenger” challengers.

This article explores the hypothesis of Clifford Geertz concerning the importance of essentialism (culture) and epochalism (economics) in the creation of new states. It focuses on the Irish state‐building process, examining the thought of the two leaders of the 1916 rising. It finds that Patrick Pearse throughout stressed cultural revitalization and James Connolly stressed economic/social transformation. The article lends support to Geertz’s hypothesis but notes that each leader also came to appreciate the primary concern of the other.

The period from the death of Charles Stewart Parnell (1891) to the establishment of the Irish Free State (1922) was a momentous one for Ireland. There was a cultural revitalization (1891– 1916), a Rising (1916), the Anglo‐Irish War (1919–21), the Treaty (1922), and the Civil War (1922–23) before the new Irish state settled into a routine pattern. This was a period characterized by assertive nationalism, dogmatism, and intolerance that led to violence and bloodshed. The result would be an independent Ireland, but a divided Ireland with potential for explosion in the North. Still there were people who surmounted the polemic of the moment and sought rational compromise and mutual tolerance. These were individuals who sought limited practical objectives, empathized with their adversaries, demonstrated civility, and often predicted the problems of the future. These were the “apostles of peace”. Among Ireland's many notables, three of such caliber stand out — Arthur Griffith, Horace Plunkett, and Eoin MacNeill. These men were intimately associated with the affairs of their day and were recognized for their integrity and professional accomplishment. They were also associated with the major peaceful attempts to solve Ireland's problems and avoid the warfare that ensued. Griffith, the journalist, founded the early Sinn Fein and came temporarily to lead the Irish Free State. Plunkett, the Anglo‐Irish aristocrat, founded the cooperative movement. MacNeill, the civil servant and historian, was involved in starting the Gaelic League and the Irish Volunteers. These were the “apostles of peace” and Ireland's subsequent trauma stemmed from their limited number. The objective of this study is to examine the careers of these three exceptional notables and ascertain if there exist some pattern. Are there generalizations that might be made about them collectively?