“There are two things that people don’t like to hear about themselves”: the anthropology of Ireland and the Irish view of anthropology

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Taylor, Lawrence J. (1996) “There are two things that people don’t like to hear about themselves”: the anthropology of Ireland and the Irish view of anthropology. South Atlantic Quarterly, 95 (1). pp. 213-226. ISSN 0038-2876

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Abstract

My title is derived from a quip by the late John Maloney, a wise publican of southwest Donegal. The year was 1973, and we had been discussing the public relations problems of anthropologists in Ireland. No doubt exaggerating, he told me that, according to his sources, neither of two ethnographers of small islands off the west coast could safely return to his research site. I asked him about a rather technical kinship article by another anthropologist who had conducted fieldwork close by in west Donegal; surely that had not upset anyone? His answer: “There are two things that people don’t like to hear about themselves; one of them is lies and the other’s the truth.”

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	anthropology; Ireland;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Anthropology
Item ID:	2043
Depositing User:	Professor Lawrence J. Taylor
Date Deposited:	07 Jul 2010 16:05
Journal or Publication Title:	South Atlantic Quarterly
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	https://mu.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/2043
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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“There are two things that people don’t like to hear about themselves”: the anthropology of Ireland and the Irish view of anthropology

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