Author : Kevin Bean
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
ISBN 13 : 1846311446
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (463 download)
Book Synopsis The New Politics of Sinn Féin by : Kevin Bean
Download or read book The New Politics of Sinn Féin written by Kevin Bean and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sinn Féin (“ourselves” or “we ourselves”) began innocuously enough, at least in etymology, when founder Arthur Griffith asked the publishers of an Oldcastle paper if he might use their name for a new political party that he was setting up. Since that 1905 founding, however, and through its journey from revolutionary movement to potential political partner in the state it was pledged to destroy, the modern political meaning of Sinn Féin reflects a contradictory and tension-heavy history of Irish republicanism. The New Politics of Sinn Féin is a powerful and revealing assessment of the ideological and organizational development of provisional republicanism since 1985. The first half of the volume chronicles the processes of change that transformed the republican movement from its revolutionary origins to its current role as a civic and legislative power, while the second half explores the ideological implications of this transition. Arguing that the political movement remains a site of contestation between elements of the universal and the particular, Kevin Bean looks especially to the tensions between civic and ethnic conceptions of identity and the nation as a way to define Sinn Féin in its current incarnation—making this an essential volume for anyone concerned with the contemporary state of Irish politics.