University of Illinois Press, American Folklore Society The Journal of American Folklore

Critical Nostalgia and Material Culture in Northern Ireland
Author(s): Ray Cashman

Source: The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 119, No. 472 (Spring, 2006), pp. 137-160
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of American Folklore Society
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RAY CASHMAN
Critical Nostalgia and Material Culture

in Northern Ireland
Although many scholars have characterized nostalgia as a counterproductive mod-

ern malaise, members of one Northern Irish community demonstrate that nostal-
gia can be essential for evaluating the present through contrast with the past and
for reasserting the ideal of community in the midst of sectarian division. By pre-
serving and displaying local material culture of the past, Catholics and Protestants
alike grant seemingly obsolete objects new life as symbols necessary for inspiring
critical thought that may lead to positive social change.
Especially during the 1980s and early 1990s, several scholars were at best ambivalent
about and more often dismissive of nostalgia. For example, David Lowenthal char-
acterized nostalgia as universal modern malaise, a contemporary epidemic of roman-
tic bad faith. Apparently almost all of us are infected with a sense of exile from the
past as a once familiar but now foreign country. In the second phase of our illness,
we become compulsive preservers and consumers of even the most trivial relics of
our past (1985:4-13; 1996:1, 5-6). Likewise, Pierre Nora observed that, in the face of
dislocation and anxiety caused by unprecedented change, we are driven to indis-
criminately preserve as many traces of the past as possible (1989). Building on Nora's
views, Robert Hewison criticized the triviality of the material culture in particular
that our fevered, uncritical nostalgia compels us to preserve. For Hewison, our nos-
talgic preoccupation with material traces of the past is unproductive. It forecloses on
the future by precluding progressive action in the present (1987).
Joining here in a more recent trend to reevaluate nostalgia (Battaglia 1995; Behlmer
2000; Blunt 2003; Smith 2000; Tannock 1995), I offer the case study of one mark-
edly nostalgic Northern Irish community. Many in this community collect, preserve,
and display material traces of the past to register and critically evaluate what is per-
ceived as a staggering amount of change over the past century. In doing so, many
appeal to an historically informed sense of local community and shared identity
despite contemporary political, religious, and ethnic divisions between Irish Catho-
lic nationalists and Ulster Protestant unionists. By focusing on the grass-roots col-
lection, preservation, and display of material culture in this community, we may
better appreciate how nostalgia can be critical in both the senses of the word. Nos-
talgia can be critical in an analytic sense for instantiating informed evaluation of the
RAY CASHMAN is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Journal ofAmerican Folklore 119(472):137-160

Copyright ? 2006 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
138 Journal ofAmerican Folklore 119 (2006)
present through contrast with the past. Nostalgia can also be critical, in the sens
being vitally important, for inspiring action of great moral weight, action that
effect a better future.
Nostalgia and Its Critique
Nostalgia is a cultural practice that enables people to generate meaning in the pr

through selective visions of the past. Following Henry Glassie (1994, 1998), I und
stand that all visions of the past-all forms and constructions of history-are unav
ably selective and function in large part as social charters (cf. Malinowski 1922 o
myth). Like Glassie's nonacademic historians from Ireland to Turkey to Banglade
those who engage in the cultural practice of nostalgia are most often concerned w
as Fred Davis puts it, "the search for continuity amid threats of discontinuity" (197
Momentarily leaving aside positive or negative estimations of nostalgic practices,
turn to Stuart Tannock for a fuller, contemporary definition of nostalgia:
Nostalgia, a "structure of feeling" (in Raymond Williams's sense of the term), invokes
a positively evaluated past world in response to a deficient present world. The nos-
talgic subject turns to the past to find/construct sources of identity, agency, or com-
munity that are felt to be lacking, blocked, subverted, or threatened in the present.
The "positively evaluated" past is approached as a source for something now per-
ceived to be missing; but it need not be thought of as a time of general happiness,
peacefulness, stability, or freedom. (1995:454)
The only caveat I would place on Tannock's definition is that nostalgia extends bey
the realm of imagination as a structure of feeling into the realm of action or prac
as later sections on the collection and display of material culture in Northern Ire
demonstrate. As both a structure of feeling and a form of enactment, nostalgia
plicates a critique of modernity in the manner of Durkheim, Tonnies, Weber and
no less so-many of the people folklorists have tended to study.'
Although rarely addressed by folklorists, the concept of nostalgia is relevant t
constellation of ideas central in our field of study-tradition, identity, authentic
and heritage, among others.2 And like the intellectual histories of these concepts,
intellectual history of nostalgia stretches back before the study of folklore and fol
was conceived as such. The contemporary definition of nostalgia used here is int
tionally value-neutral, a corrective to centuries of negative connotations associat
with the concept. Before folklorists accept a received understanding of nostalgia
reactionary disease (see, for example, Abrahams 2003:203, 214-15), we need to
preciate how this characterization emerged and diffused.
The concept of nostalgia has its roots in the seventeenth- through nineteen
century medical and psychological discourse of Western Europe, and nostalgia co
tinues to be an ideologically charged issue in contemporary political rhetoric
historical and cultural studies because it retains earlier connotations of patho
and aberration (Smith 2000). In 1688, the Swiss physician Johann Hofer first coi
the term-from the Greek nostos, "to return home," and algos, "a painful co
Cashman, Critical Nostalgia in Northern Ireland 139
tion"-to describe a potentially fatal form of homesickness he observed among Swiss

mercenaries serving abroad. In addition to psychological manifestations including
anxiety and melancholy, nostalgia was thought to cause physical ailments including
weakness, fever, and anorexia. Cases of nostalgia were diagnosed among the armies
of other European nations throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and
in fact, Napoleon forbade his soldiers to play the vernacular music of home while on
campaign, for fear that nostalgia would lower morale and foster desertion (Smith
2000:510).
During the nineteenth century, the disease came to be considered a debilitating
disorder, not only for soldiers, but also for immigrant laborers, factory workers, and
other former rural dwellers experiencing the dislocations caused by industrialization
and modernization. This shift in attention from military to civilian contexts also
coincided with a redefinition of nostalgia primarily as an emotional, rather than
physical, malady and one that could no longer be understood as simply a synonym
for extreme homesickness. The nostalgic's object of desire extended to past time. As
Kimberly Smith observes, "Once defined simply as a desire to return ... to a specific
place, nostalgia was gradually being conceptualized as a longing to return to a former
time-and usually a time the patient only imagined to be better" (2000:512; empha-
sis in the original). With nostalgia fixed in the realm of emotion and with the intro-
duction of the notion of imagining, nostalgia also joined in a larger conceptual reg-
ister of fabrication. Nostalgia, then, came to be seen as a disturbed frame of mind
that distorts the past in response to personal, irrational desire. In these conceptual
transitions from specifically military to broader demographic contexts, from the
discourse of medical disease to that of psychological neurosis, and from a longing for
home to a longing for a falsely imagined past, nostalgia acquired the associations that
cast it as a "topic of embarrassment and a term of abuse" (Lowenthal 1989:20). Car-
rying the baggage of earlier formulations in medical/psychological discourse, the
concept as received has also encouraged later commentators on nostalgia to adopt
an air of "ironic detachment" for fear of being seen as unfashionably sentimental or
credulous (Smith 2000:515).3
Especially in the 1980s, the critique of nostalgia moved beyond dismissing it as
merely naive to disparaging nostalgia for exacerbating, if not engendering, all manner
of suspect ideology and social ills. Lowenthal observes that, "Just as nostalgia shed
its seventeenth-century scientific skin to become a nineteenth-century symptom of
social rather than medical malaise, so within the last few years has it lost its innocence
and become a social pariah" (1989:18).4 Malcolm Chase and Christopher Shaw declare,
"Of all the ways of using history, nostalgia is the most general, looks the most in-
nocent, and is perhaps the most dangerous" (Chase and Shaw 1989:1). More spe-
cifically, critics from the 1980s through early 1990s attacked nostalgia for its falsifying
idealization of the past, its counterproductive withdrawal from modernization, and
its inbuilt slant toward conservative politics.
The first of these overlapping charges sees nostalgia as bad history, an obstacle in
the project of delineating the truth about the past. As Linda Hutcheon argues, nos-
talgia is untrustworthy as a form of romanticism that constructs edenic, utopian pasts
(1988:39). Chase and Shaw take an admittedly "combative" stance toward nostalgia
in part because of its purported deceitfulness. Drawing on literature, advertisi

a flourishing heritage industry, contributors to Chase and Shaw's edited volu
Imagined Past (1989), express concern with the widespread appetite for falsif
ages of the past, images that suppress both the variety and negative aspects
past. More pointedly, Marshall Berman attacks nostalgic "idealized fantasies"
ditional, organic, face-to-face communities because they fail to take into acco
cruelty and brutality of past forms of life vanquished by modernization (198
Here, Berman indicts nostalgia as "a failure of our collective cultural confide
the modernizing impulse" (Chase and Shaw 1989:8).
In condemning nostalgia as romantic yearning for a harmonious, integrated
that never existed, Berman and others implicitly endorse modernity as a pro
positive progress (Rosaldo 1989:11). This stance overlaps with the critics
charge-that nostalgia constitutes an evasion of the present and comes at the
of a society's future growth and development (cf. Hutcheon 1988:39). Th
position of Hewison, mentioned earlier, and Patrick Wright (1985), who t
declare that the preoccupation with preservation seen in the booming British h
industry of the 1980s "points to the imaginative death of this country" (
1987:9). For them, the nostalgic fixation with the past and cultural continuit
cludes creative change, dooming society to inertia and decline. Indeed, this po
found articulation in the rhetoric of "New Labour" when Tony Blair announc
1998, "I want Britain to be seen as a vibrant, modern place, for countries wr
nostalgia cannot build a strong future" (quoted in Behlmer 2000:1).
Not only does nostalgia misrepresent the past and forestall progress, the cr
complained, but it breeds reactionary politics. Feminists in particular led thi
against the inherently retrograde orientation of nostalgia, demonstrating th
talgia offers a "masculine retreat to the past in the face of modern feminist
ity" (Behlmer 2000:7).? Although aware that not all nostalgias are the same, R
Rosaldo identifies a pervasive and pernicious imperialist nostalgia that mourn
passing of traditional societies while concealing the guilt of those complicit i
destruction or alteration of these societies (1989). James Combs demonstrates
Ronald Reagan used nostalgia to bolster his cult of personality and rally supp
his archconservative foreign and domestic policies (1993). As Lowenthal
rizes the critique of several scholars, in Britain nostalgia was "linked to an el
escapist perspective designed by the wealthy and powerful to justify their co
the present, to palliate its inequities, and to persuade the public that traditiona
ileges deserve self-denying support" (1989:25ff.). Bad history, bad faith, b
tics.
Nevertheless, even a critic such as Lowenthal observes that "the left no less than
the right espouses nostalgia" (1989:27). Nostalgia is a cultural practice that may serve
as a response to a wide variety of personal and collective needs. We cannot conflate
nostalgia with its uses by groups whose politics we may consider objectionable. Nos-
talgia is a practice whose forms and effects are contingent and context-specific, and
evaluations of these forms and effects "have the quality of aesthetic judgments" (Bat-
taglia 1993:93, cf. Stewart 1988:227). As Tannock declares,
We need to separate out, in the critique of nostalgia, the critique of the content,
author, and audience of a nostalgic narrative-who is nostalgic for what, and in the
names of which community-from the critique of the structure of nostalgia it-
self-the positive evaluation of the past in response to a negatively evaluated present.
(1995:456)
A categorical dismissal of nostalgia as a retrograde and counterproductive pathology

is untenable. George Behlmer is correct to point out, "It would be foolish to deny
that, under some circumstances, nostalgia can serve to foreclose the future, to reject
the possibility of productive change. Yet at the same time nostalgia can also be a
strategy for coping with change, loss, or anomie" (2000:7).
In coming to appreciate the uses of nostalgia to a multiplicity of ends, we should
not ignore contexts in which nostalgia enlightens and liberates. Ian Fairweather, for
example, demonstrates how nostalgia enables urban and rural Namibians to forge
new social identities that reconcile the traditional and the modern in an era of cul-
tural, political, and socioeconomic transition (2003). In a similar vein, I will investi-
gate here various uses of nostalgia that members of one Northern Irish community
find beneficial, starting with nostalgia as a vehicle for coming to terms with change.
First, however, we need some background information about this community and
the expressions of nostalgia found there, especially a vernacular category of amateur
collecting.
Expressions of Nostalgia in the Derg Valley
The area of Northern Ireland under study is the upper Derg River Valley, in western
County Tyrone. This area appears on maps as a spit of County Tyrone jutting into
County Donegal and the Republic of Ireland. It is coterminous with the parish of
Termonamongan, also known as Aghyaran, and the central and only village is Kil-
leter. On the whole, it is a rural and largely agrarian area where Catholics of Irish
descent outnumber Protestants of British descent by about five to one.6
Elsewhere I have discussed how a large body of oral narrative and popular verse in
this community reflects a pervasive nostalgic mood among both Catholics and Prot-
estants (Cashman 2002b). At singing sessions in pubs and private homes, songs with
titles such as "The Sunny Long Ago" and "The Old Threshing Mill" express apprecia-
tion for the simple pleasures of yesteryear. Anecdotes about past local characters and
reminiscences about social, political, and economic changes dominate storytelling at
wakes and ceilis (nighttime visits among neighbors). The often nostalgic verse of Tyrone
poets such as W. E Marshall is frequently recited at informal social gatherings and at
more formal local talent shows. One of the more popular poems circulating in con-
temporary oral tradition, composed by Drumquin native Charlie Kearney, begins,
I was sitting at the table through the window gazing out,

And I thought of all the changes that has lately come about.
And I thought about the old folk and what they'd have to say
If they seen us sitting idle in the middle of the day.
142 Journal of American Folklore 119 (2006)
For the old man's life was slavery, a living was hard to get,
But I don't think they would change it if they had been living yet.
Do you mind the way they grumbled, and they said it was a curse
When they saw the tractors plowing. They'd far rather have the horse.
They said that it'd ruin the land, it made it far too tight.
Sure I sometimes think that those old fellows could be right.
For the corn has all stopped growing, we've filled the soil with lime.
Now you hear no one talking on the good old harvest time.
Such verbal folklore and popular literature from various genres-replete with
ences to material changes over time-resonate with middle-aged to elderly
Tyrone men and women, who now live in a world vastly different from the
which they were raised. These popular forms of expression, however, are on
of contemporary commemorative activity in West Tyrone that we may char
as nostalgic.
Before making contact with locals, the outsider's first indications of a pervasive
nostalgic mood are more visual than verbal. Even the most casual glance at a local
newspaper or the advertisements in shop windows alerts one to horse plowing com-
petitions, vintage tractor rallies, traditional crafts fairs, and historical society meetings.
An hour's drive through the countryside may take you past a half-dozen new historical
markers. A few antiquated but well-kept thatched houses stand next to modernized
ones. More often, the traditional cottage next door to the new bungalow is a replica on
a reduced scale. These miniature replicas serve as storage sheds or playhouses for the
"cubs and cuttys" (boys and girls), but they also serve as symbolic representations of
the idea of traditional domestic bliss (Figure 1). In addition, many front yards and back
x OWN ............
XI-O
"Ali
Figure 1. Barney McGrath's storage shed/replica traditional cottage, with vintage tractor
gardens are adorned with an assemblage (Santino 2001, 1986) of pastness in the form
of the old crane, hanging pots, and other metal furniture of the traditional open-hearth
fireplace. Typically, these objects are removed in the wake of home renovations but
then put on display as gaily painted metonyms for happy bygone days.
If you have more time to spend, you might stumble across a man such as John
Mongan. The day I met John, he was repairing an antique hand-cranked grain thresh-
er in his garage. After I introduced myself as a folklorist, he was delighted to show
me his personal open-air museum of farm implements that had been used in the area
during the last century (Figure 2). His collection included several types of horse-drawn
plows, grubbers, harrows, reapers, seed sowers, and potato diggers; hand barrows,
turf spades, and sally rod creels; a grain scale, a huge boiler for feed spuds, and a heavy
metal laundry press emblazoned with the ominous name of "The Ulster Mangler."
He had also built a small, free-standing structure with a thatched roof that housed
an open hearth complete with a crane, hanging pots, and bread oven. Everything was
lovingly and meticulously preserved.
A few days after I meet John, he invited me to a Sunday afternoon event at his
home. There, about twenty neighbors-mostly middle-aged to elderly men, Catho-
lics and Protestants-showed up for a demonstration of his newly refurbished thresh-
er (Figure 3). This demonstration was captured on video as others had been over the
previous ten years. Most of the men present were old enough to remember using
similar threshers and several other tools John made available. These men seemed
eager to get their hands on the tools for entertainment. We made hay ropes and
battles, used flails and corn riddles, and crushed oats for feed. Then there was tea and
time for further reminiscence.
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XMIr
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Figure 2. J
Figure 3. Neighbors trying out John's renovated thresher
Whether heard in story and verse or witnessed in plain view, the backwar
is at the heart of a great deal of cultural expression in the Derg Valley today.
upon collective resources of material culture in particular, Catholics and Pro
alike grant seemingly obsolete equipment, structures, and landmarks new life
bols. In its symbolic role, material culture is useful in part for coming to te
massive economic, social, and cultural changes associated with modernity (cf
2004).7
Material Culture, Past-Present Evaluation, and

Nostalgia's Critique of Progress
I have asked men such as John Mongan why he hosts and videotapes old farm ma-
chinery demonstrations, Barney McGrath why he refurbishes horse and donkey carts,
Danny Gallen why he fills his barn loft with old tools and household furnishings, and
Jim Falls why he preserves a traditional thatched house previously abandoned to the
elements (Figure 4). Some such as John emphasize the importance of teaching youn-
ger generations about how their ancestors lived, so these more fortunate youths will
take less for granted. Others such as Barney try to explain their motivations in aes-
thetic terms; they like to have certain stuff around for what it looks and feels like, for
the pleasure it brings. Others such as Danny and Jim explain that they appreciate
their tools and restoration projects, because they are reminders of a world in which
they were raised but one to which they can never fully return.8
The impulse to preserve material traces of the past and to relive past ways under-
Figure 4. Jim Falls tending the turf fire in the vernacular house he restored
stood to be threatened today is, of course, a personal choice greatly informed by one's
generational experience. Indeed, material traces of the past have different resonanc-
es for different people at different times. From the late 1950s through 1980s in the
Derg Valley, objects such as hand-held scythes and horse-drawn grubbers were dis-
carded by many as soon as modern labor-saving replacements could be purchased.
As Gerard Devine explained to me,
A lot of those things John [Mongan] and Danny [Gallen] gather up, well, we threw
them out, just. It was all poverty to us, you know, the signs of poverty, and we couldn't
get away from it fast enough. John was ahead of his time, getting all that started when
people were still trying to get out of the past, maybe even ashamed of the past.
Later, Gerard resumed this line of thought:
It's a sign of our wealth now, that we're taking an interest in the past. Now we have
the time to look back at it. Couldn't have done it in the '50s or '60s. But there's
something... now... something about loss, maybe. You see, we have the money now
to fly off to America on holiday instead, but there's some would rather think about
what they already had. A lot of it's best left behind, but not all of it.
Such as what, I asked. Gerard paused, then offered,
I just don't know really. Maybe we won't see that sort of cooperation between neighbors
again, when it all had to be done by hand. But there's more to it than that. Must be.
Many like Gerard find it difficult to articulate exactly what inspires nostalg
motivates preservation. Feeling that some things were better in the past than
in the present is part of the answer. This theme will reemerge.
Perhaps more immediately and personally enervating is a sense of loss
with a perceived acceleration of change over the past century that is conside
precedented and destabilizing (cf. Nora 1989:7-9 and Smith 2001:517).9
Byrne observed,
The changes, Ray, around here this last fifty years and more, I just couldn't exp
it to you. Oh, you could go all day, all night, through all them changes. It's hard
believe what we've seen in such a short time. If they change as much in the ne
fifty years, well, God help us.
Such a fast pace offers people very little sense of being in control. Such a fa
makes it difficult to make informed decisions about which changes should be
braced and which changes should be resisted. Unable to slow the pace of chan
unwilling to passively float with the tides of change, people nonetheless claim
right to at least evaluate change in retrospect, to discern true loss (such as a
in neighborly cooperation) from at least provisional improvements (such as m
conveniences of transportation and communication). Nostalgic practices
amateur preservation work can be seen, then, as a reclamation of individual
Nostalgic practices do not offer people the power to literally arrest change,
do offer them the temporal perspective necessary to become critics of chang
more or less willing participants.
Danny, for one, admits that electricity-which came to his first farm only
as 1977-has its advantages. Nevertheless, except for watching the occasio
program on Irish history or traditional music, he refuses to "rot" his brain wi
damned old television," which he blames for a decline in sociability. If Danny
5) cannot find a household for visiting where the TV is silent, he would rath
free time reading a book such as Estyn Evans's Irish Folk Ways (1957) or
developing his own material folklife collection. Keeping in mind Gerard's word
how many have discarded old tools and furnishings as signs of past hardship
Danny, gently, why he expends so much energy memorializing a past that was
poverty. He replied,
Aye. Well... money isn't everything. Thinking back, we were poor, surely, and
ones in the State"o had nothing at all. But we had a better way of going than the o
going today, you see. In some ways, understand. Never stuck for something to
There was more work, but there was more entertainment. Mind how the wee'u
[youngsters] were lost when the electric went out at Christmas? No TV. No com
puter games.... No, money isn't everything.
Much of this widespread collection of material traces of the past-a sort of v

museumification-seems to be motivated by a desire to interrupt moder
temporarily for the sake of meditation and appreciation, to take stock in th
Figure 5. Danny Gallen atop Tievenameenta Hill
rapid and irrevocable change. Efforts to collect and display these objects are eloquen
of a determination not only to remember, but also to reconsider-to leave a concep-
tual space between now and then, to resist, if nothing else, the finality and conclusiv
ness of the changes wrought over the past century. Such efforts can lead to informed
social criticism, and they can offer people a chance to play with very the notion of
irreversible linear time. As Danny and I reviewed his personal museum of old tools
and domestic furnishings, he mused,
You've heard tell of, eh, time machines? Aye, this is mine. The tilly lamp and the
harnen stand, that weigh bridge over there, the turf spades. It takes me back just,
takes me back as surely as sitting up at a wake [telling stories].
In her treatment of nostalgia in North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europ

and the former Soviet Union, Svetlana Boym characterizes nostalgia as a defen
mechanism that inevitably emerges "in a time of accelerated rhythms of life an
historical upheavals" (2001 :xiv). At its core, she argues, "nostalgia is a rebellion agains
the modern idea of time, the time of history and progress," and the nostalgic is on
who refuses "to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the [modern]
human condition" (xv). For those ambivalent about uncontrollable change and i
accelerated pace, one option is to adopt an essentially existential ideological stanc
a stance in opposition to a modern teleology of progress that blindly endorses change
Such a stance cannot be dismissed across the board as reactionary romanticism

provides a substantial number of people critical equipment for living in an unfam
iar present and, as we shall see, for shaping a more desirable future.
The amateur curators of the Derg Valley's past material culture are not infected
an unthinking or merely sentimental nostalgia. Provoked by contrast-losses
gains, now and then-they quite sanely challenge both the presumption that m
ernization equals positive progress and the impulse to romanticize the past. In co
versation most are unwilling to gloss over the relative poverty into which they
born, but also unwilling to dismiss the costs of their present comfort. Most wou
likely agree with Smith's assertion that "remembering positive aspects of the pas
does not necessarily indicate a desire to return there" (2000:523) and Tannock's re
minder that the "positively evaluated past" central to nostalgia "need not be thou
of as a time of general happiness, peacefulness, stability, or freedom" (1995:454).
Alec encapsulated for me the local conventional wisdom, "Oh, people were far frien
lier when they had nothing. But then there were days ones went to bed hungry. A
of things were for the better and a lot of things were for the worse."
Such statements contrasting past and present for the sake of evaluation are on
rarely more developed than Alec's. Evaluation of the contrast between past and pre
may not always be conclusive or easy to articulate to oneself and others in words.
the objects that preoccupy John, Barney, Danny, Jim, and many others stand in as sh
hand for the particular changes they wish to contemplate and for the defiant ideo
cal stances they have adopted in response to modernity and its teleology of progre
Material culture offers other advantages over words alone. For example, ob
are less ephemeral than words alone. Their materiality makes them well suited fo
display, and having survived from the past grants them authority to bear witne
When once familiar objects take on a second life as symbols through display, the
may index a wealth of experience and even contradictory evaluations, promp
speakers to formulate words anew. "The materiality of the trace," as Nora phrase
(1989:13), is essential for Derg Valley residents conceptually positioning themselv
in time and locality.
Material Culture, Future-Oriented Nostalgia, and

the Reassertion of Local Community
What of the fact that the people taking stock of themselves-who they have been
who they are, and who they may become-seem bitterly, unavoidably divide
political, ethnic, and religious affiliations? Journalism treating the recent Troub
certainly gives the impression that sectarian conflict between Northern Irel
Catholics and Protestants is virtually insurmountable. Again, however, grass-roo
conservation and display of material culture in the Derg Valley proves to be muc
more than a sentimental pastime and may be seen as having an optimistic ag
This future-oriented nostalgia will stand in contrast to the critics of nostalgia's
posed melancholy fixation on the irretrievable past.
Quite often in the Derg Valley the display of material culture to commemo
everyday life of the past combines with efforts to assert specifically local commu
and identity. Appealing to a sense of local community and identity, shared by Cath-
olics and Protestants, conveys an explicitly antisectarian message. Here geography
becomes an important factor. Claiming all those who live in an identifiable locality
as members of local community reorganizes collectivity and belonging in terms of
shared experience within shared place. This strategy encourages a sense of literal and
figurative common ground. Antisectarian appeals to that which is local and shared
are perhaps most clear in the historic preservation projects of the Killeter and District
Historical Society (hereafter, KDHS).
The middle-aged to elderly founders of this group include both Catholics and Prot-
estants. They are not interested in the all-too-familiar history of great men and sin-
gular events continually commemorated by the Orange Order and Ancient Order of
Hibernians, or by the supporters of the UVF and the IRA, throughout Northern Ire-
land." They are, however, genuinely nostalgic for a local, Derg Valley past in which
Catholics and Protestants went to the same schools, swapped labor and equipment,
and acted toward each other as neighbors through both necessity and moral convic-
tion. For the KDHS, exploring local history is not a bookish or antiquarian pursuit.
They self-consciously use local history as a means to an end-reviving the sense of
local community that was more common in their youths. As the KDHS constitution
states, the society's goal is "to promote and develop cross-community co-operation
through the exploration and development of the history and culture of the district."
Since forming in 1990, the KDHS has been particularly adept at securing grants
for historic preservation projects. The success of these projects has been due, in part,
to the value of material culture and sites on the landscape as physical reminders of a
more peaceful past for which their audience is also keenly nostalgic. The sites chosen
for restoration are telling.
The first site restored was a pre-Reformation graveyard in Magherakeel townland
that both Catholic and Protestant families continue to use (Figure 6). By restoring
the graveyard the historical society not only made it accessible, but they also marked
it for display, inviting contemplation of the memories and ideas the site may evoke.
Theirs was a self-conscious attempt to render the graveyard as a place emblematic of
coexistence, a place where both traditions share common ground-sacred ground,
no less.
This is one potential interpretation of the graveyard as a whole, and particular

grave markers offer reminders that bolster this interpretation. Dating back to the
early 1700s, legible headstones in this graveyard evoke, for locals, first- and second-
hand memories about past community members. Magherakeel graveyard as a whole
functions as a memory garden to individuals who through narrative may be used to
embody certain values and political stances no longer as common today. To one side,
for instance, is a marker dedicated to the memory of a local Protestant farmer who,
locals know, donated building stones to Catholics refurbishing St. Patrick's Holy Well
not far away. To the other side is the grave of a local republican who, believing the
British army to be the true aggressors and common enemy to both Catholics and
Protestants, ensured that his Protestant neighbors not be harassed or targeted by his
fellow Catholics.
One Magherakeel grave marker in particular serves as a reminder of an often-told
Figure 6. Magherakeel graveyard looking west
historical legend of immediate relevance in the troubled present. More tha

feet tall and built into the southern retaining wall of the graveyard, this st
ment features carvings in relief of skulls and bones and a toppled hour glass
a neoclassical winged angel at the center, and a crucifix and other symb
priest's vocation at the top. These encircle a lengthy vita in Latin detailing t
career of Father Cornelius O'Mongan, who died in 1725 (Figure 7). As lo
Father O'Mongan was the parish priest during the Penal Era, when the
Catholicism was by law severely restricted and bounties were paid for Catho
who did not abide by strict regulations. According to local legend, one
O'Mongan was hotly pursued by soldiers sent to capture him. The priest fled
out the parish looking for a place to hide, and eventually a miller by the nam
saved him from capture and possible execution. In some versions of the sto
miller hides the priest, and in others he openly challenges the soldiers and
musket to disperse them. Kyle, it turns out, was a Protestant. This story i
many as a sort of origin myth of and social charter for local friendly relatio
Catholics and Protestants. Restored and put on display, this marker and th
whole evoke a yearned for past in which the affiliations that mattered mo
cal rather than sectarian.
Another particularly telling site that the KDHS restored was a nearby lime kiln.
Lime kilns went out of widespread use after World War II, but they remain common,
often overgrown features of the rural landscape. They are large, stone structures
consisting of an inverted cone in which limestone was fired and rendered into pow-
der. (This powder was used in whitewash for houses or plowed into land reclaimed
from bog in order to neutralize the acidic soil.) What is significant about restoring
Figure 7. Grave marker to

Father Cornelius O'Mongan
the lime kiln is the KDHS's choice to highlight a relic of rural industry used b
Catholics and Protestants alike. What is important are the ideas the site can evoke.
There is a sense held by most people I came to know that cross-community rela-
tions in the Derg Valley may be strained at times but are much better than in nearby
Castlederg and larger towns and cities across the province. People attribute this to
the facts that most people living around Killeter are of roughly the same socioeco-
nomic class, have shared interests in farming, and are in fairly regular contact, regard
less of religious denomination. Informed by the news media and relatives who have
moved to urban areas, Derg Valley residents understand that, because urban Catho-
lics and Protestants are largely segregated, they have few experiences upon which t
build mutual trust, whereas, until recently, neighboring Catholic and Protestant farm
ers around Killeter regularly engaged each other in labor- and equipment-tradin
arrangements. In fact, many found that "swapping," as its called, with farmers the
were not related to ensured more equal relationships, and this often meant swappin
with someone from the "other side of the house"-that is, of the opposite religious
denomination (cf. Bell 1978). The late 1960s marked not only the reemergence of th
Troubles but also a time when nearly every Derg Valley farmer could afford labor-
saving technology, notably the tractor. Today both political tensions and techn
logical change have conspired to reduce the interdependence of Catholic and Pro
estant farmers, but the ideal of interdependence remains. It is commemorated
anecdotes told about past locals and can be witnessed in daily hospitality and in the
attendance at wakes of all near neighbors regardless of religious denomination (Cash
man 2002b).
So why restore the lime kiln? Its significance lies not just in its being a relic of th
past. Its appropriateness lies not just in its being a politically neutral site. It is em-
blematic of a time before farming and much of daily life became matters of
independent, solitary practice. It evokes the idea that, in a place where Catho
Protestants share the same way of life, they have more in common in their da
than they have differences. Here, the KDHS's members drew inspiration from
very same principles underlying the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum and, ar
folklife studies in Northern Ireland as a whole.12
The KDHS continues with other preservation projects because this strategy
advantage of the durability and visibility of material culture while tapping i
pervasive nostalgia for those things that were better about the past-a greater
of local community solidarity among them. The past is inscribed in material
across the landscape, and by highlighting certain sites and certain objects
messages of immediate relevance are communicated: "There is common g
Division is not preordained. To prove that the present need not be as it is, look
past." These messages offer a much-needed challenge to other more divisive r
sentations of the past already so familiar from annual commemorative parad
litical ballads, and sectarian murals adorning urban public housing.'3 Moreove
messages have the potential to effect modest but nonetheless positive social c
The concerns of the present will always determine our representations of th
and some, well-aware of this dynamic, wield these representations to effect
more consonant with a yearned for past. As Boym notes, "Nostalgia is no
about the past; it can be retrospective as well as prospective" (2001:xvi).14
At this point, it is conceivable one could object that, prospective as it may
nostalgic practices observed here obscure the legacy of unequal power relatio
tween Catholics and Protestants in postcolonial Ireland. In other words, a
nostalgia may foster peaceful cooperation, does it not constitute an accommo
to power? Such a question would misinterpret the nature of Protestant-C
relationships on the ground in contemporary Northern Ireland. Protestants ma
the balance of political power in the province as a whole, and nationalists are
frustrated with unionism's obstinacy in negotiations over power-sharing arr
ments. Nevertheless, both Catholics and Protestants are simultaneously mino
and majorities. Protestant unionists are keenly aware that they may have
demographic majority for now in Northern Ireland, but on the island as a who
are in a very small minority. Faced with more and more steps toward a unif
land-for example, the establishment of cross-border governing bodies and sig
cant reductions in the British military presence-unionists know how vu
their position is. Likewise, Catholic nationalists may be in the minority in N
Ireland, but they are in the majority in Ireland as a whole and, more to the
areas west of the River Bann within Northern Ireland. By almost any measur
mographics, representation in elected offices, public predominance of self-co
ly Irish expressive culture (music, dance, sport)-Catholics dominate in w
Ulster. Looking to the Derg Valley in particular, Catholic local dominanc
Protestant province-wide dominance effectively cancel each other out, actual
symbolically.
I would go so far as to argue that power-in the sense of the ability to exerci
political will-is no longer the preoccupation it was from the late 1960s throu
1990s, in large part because the state has gradually and quietly met all the de
of the original demonstrators for Catholic civil rights in the late 1960s. There is a
common argument in the north of Ireland, and particularly in the Derg Valley, that
these demands would not have been met without the threat of violence. And perhaps
here is where the contemporary preoccupation lies.
Justifications for political violence committed in the past have been renewed since
the Provisional IRA renounced armed struggle in favor of electoral politics on July
28, 2005. In the enduring wake of the Enniskillen and Omagh bombs of 1987 and
1998, however, there is among many Catholics an uneasiness in justifying the meth-
ods they nonetheless believe contributed to greater equality. Likewise, among Prot-
estants, few if any condone republican violence, while at the same time most are well
aware of Protestants' historical roles in British colonialism in Ireland. As Gordon
Wilson observed in a BBC interview after losing a daughter in the Enniskillen bomb,
the perpetrators should be punished and their methods condemned, but he also ap-
preciated that the people the IRA claim to represent have been undeniably oppressed
by the British government and the Protestant establishment in the north. If today the
symbolic and political power differentials have been minimized between Catholics
and Protestants on the province's western border, I would speculate that something
like collective guilt on both sides has contributed greatly to a rise in nostalgia for a
more peaceful past, before the Troubles, as a model for the future.
To generalize about nostalgia and its relation to power would be a misstep. As we
have seen, nostalgia can serve any number of political agendas-liberal or conserva-
tive, populist or elitist, nativist or imperialist. Nostalgia is a practice, not a given
content. Though perhaps always politicized, nostalgia has no inherent relationship
to power, and, at least in this part of contemporary Ireland, power (pace Foucault)
may not be the primary concern.
From Mere Nostalgia to Critical Nostalgia
Academics and nonacademics alike have been influenced by earlier formulations and
estimations of nostalgia that encourage an ironic detachment from the experience
and practice of nostalgia. Many of us tend to distrust our memories of a better past
as unreliable, overidealized, "mere nostalgia" (Smith 2000:515). Indeed, Danny Mc-
Sorley, a Catholic and a high-level civil servant, was initially ambivalent about his
role helping to establish the KDHS. He was concerned that an historical society would
be, in his terms, "merely nostalgic." Later he changed his mind. Asked to evaluate the
impact of the historical society's efforts, McSorley replied,
Well, our efforts may not have made much of a difference, but it held things from
slipping further. In any case, it gave Protestants signals that, after a long and vicious
IRA border campaign, that not all their Catholic neighbors, not even the majority
of them, wanted them gone, pushed out. We can't take full credit, but community
relations are in some ways stabilized now, and there was a very grim time when this
seemed impossible.
Received wisdom about the division of the world into that which is Catholic and that
which is Protestant is difficult to contest, but, in light of the costs of such received
wisdom, revision is urgent. To challenge a status quo bolstered by sectarian v

of the past and sectarian definitions of community requires an alternative v
the past upon which the idea of local community may be based. The past pro
by KDHS is selective, surely, but it is not imagined out of thin air or wishful t
The KDHS selectively use material culture to represent a past that accords wi
lived experience and with the witness born by elders to an earlier and, from t
ent perspective, preferable social reality of greater community cohesion. Wh
recting attention to that which is local and shared, the KDHS yield to a
impulse without shame, for, regardless of what nostalgia's critics have to say
KDHS are satisfied that nostalgia can be of service in the present when mars
an appeal for a better future.
For both the individual amateur collector/curators discussed earlier and the
formally organized KDHS, nostalgia is not a disease that wrests agency or
them with a compulsive, counterproductive sentiment of loss. Rather, they w
give themselves over to nostalgia because in practice-through the collection,
ervation, and display of material culture-nostalgia serves as a vehicle for kno
that offers sought-after perspectives. Nostalgic practices, in other words, ar
critical uses.
Some of these uses are existential. The individual nostalgic, such as the ama
collector/curator, gains purchase on the nature of time, conceptually interrup
ernization for the sake of evaluation, and exercises individual agency by imp
questioning the notion of progress and deciding for him or herself which as
change to embrace. Other uses of nostalgia are social. Nostalgic voluntary ass
such as the future-oriented KDHS answer divisive representations of the past
alternative narratives, reformulate identity in local rather than sectarian ter
use the contrast between past and present to inform action taken in defense
munity. Put to such uses, nostalgia becomes a register for critical (that is, ju
thought that may inspire critical (that is, vitally important) action.
Academic detractors of nostalgia may be acquitted to some extent. Their argu
are clever and revealing when applied to many examples from our largely no
era. For example, concerned with commodification in contemporary, globaliz
sumer society, Arjun Appadurai has spoken with both derision and genuine i
about nostalgia as a cheap and kitchy but very successful instrument of mar
and advertising well-suited to our era (1996:77-78, cf. Lowenthal 1989:22-24).
ever, I reiterate that not all nostalgias are the same. Shifting our focus to othe
ifestations and uses of nostalgia, we see that the pervasive, nostalgic effort to
and display a wide range of material traces of the past in the Derg Valley (as el
is not necessarily as fevered, indiscriminate, or compulsive as the likes of Lo
Nora, and Hewison contend. Material culture from the past, no less than oral
tions and vernacular practices, can provide the raw materials from whic
responsibly revise their memory of the past and their identities in the presen
these revisions people gain perspectives on their present situation and identify
of a perceived past that may be considered superior to their present way of li
become the goals and guideposts for a better future (cf. Glassie 1998:15).
Overall, many academic critics have overstated their case about the uni
uncritical nature of nostalgia. This overstatement may be due in part to the fact that
many of these critics are not the sort who engage in ethnographic fieldwork. Without
proper ethnographic research, the traces from the past that people retain are bound
to seem overwhelming in number and triviality. Through prolonged and honest
engagement with others, however, we come to appreciate the value of the backward
glance as an instrument of critical evaluation and of efforts to (re)build community.
Likewise, we may come to appreciate material culture anew as a primary resource in
this worthy and timely project of critical nostalgia.
Finally, with this case study in mind, we should turn our attention briefly to our
own discipline, which has attracted many of the same criticisms leveled at nostalgia,
particularly in its stance toward modernity. The mainstream of folklore studies has
offered, at least implicitly, a critique of modernity, locating alternative visions of
social life in the past or tradition broadly conceived (e.g., Glassie 1982b; Roberts 1988;
Pocius 1991). Of course, there have been noteworthy, productive cross-currents (e.g.,
Bauman 1983; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1983 and 1996; Briggs and Shuman 1993), but
even in these reflexive efforts that interrogate the assumptions of our discipline, tak-
ing an anti-anti-modernity stance hardly amounts to an embrace of the forces, effects,
and implications of modernity. As Richard Bauman proposes, where folk society as
traditionally conceived has declined, we should investigate people's expressive and
aesthetic responses to modernity, something I have attempted here (cf. Del Negro
2004 and Knauft 2002). Although Bauman is largely critical of the antimodern thrust
in folklore studies, he does note that "[t]here's more than a touch of the nostalgic
romantic in most of us, and we're still understandably attracted to the old stuff"
(1983:154).
Both folklorists and many of the people we study are still attracted to "the old stuff"
for good reasons-especially for the thought and action the old stuff may inspire. In
light of the long-standing anti-modern undercurrent in the history of our discipline,
it may be productive to view folkloristics as a form of critical nostalgia of one piece
with the local practices I have described. In the interest of reflexivity and full disclo-
sure, I openly admit a certain identification with the people discussed here. They are
reacting to many of the same aspects of modernity that provoke me. Their reaction
to anomie and to hasty estimations of modernization as positive progress is to collect
and display as an incitement to thought and action. This should seem familiar. Is this
not what folklorists do-collect and display as an incitement to thought and action?
Is this not the rationale for ethnography in its many forms? Here I can speak only for
myself, but I, like my Tyrone neighbors, remain unapologetic for engaging in critical
nostalgia.
Acknowledgments
My thanks go first and foremost to the men and women of the Derg Valley who
generously offered the insights informing this article. In addition, I would like to
thank Danille Lindquist, past editor of Folklore Forum, and Curtis Ashton, current
editor, for permission to reprint selections concerning the KDHS from Cashman
(2002a). Thanks also go to the Indiana University Department of Folklore and Eth-
nomusicology; to the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages at the University of Ulst
Magee; and to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, for financial support tha
made possible my continuing fieldwork in Ireland. Although I am responsible for a
deficiencies and failures to heed good advice, conversations and correspondence wit
Harry Berger, Lorraine Walsh Cashman, Giovanna Del Negro, Henry Glassie, an
Jason Baird Jackson were instrumental in helping to shape and refine my argument
Finally, I am grateful for the exceptionally helpful and thorough reports from JAF
anonymous reviewers.
Notes
1. Whereas Durkheim ([1883] 1984), T6nnies ([1887] 1988), and Weber ([1914] 1978) were undeni-
ably critical of the alienation and disenchantment associated with modernity, each also identified positive
aspects of modernity, including increased efficiency and productivity. As such, their attitudes toward
modernity-not unlike the attitudes of people in Northern Ireland discussed here-may be characterized
on the whole as ambivalence. Moreover, as Del Negro observes (2004:42), none of these social theorists
argued for a return to preindustrial ways of life. As we shall see, neither do the amateur collector/curators
in this study.
2. For detailed folkloristic considerations of tradition that are immediately relevant to nostalgia, see
Bauman (1992), Dan Ben-Amos (1984), Simon Bronner (1998), Glassie (2003), Richard Handler and
Jocelyn Linnekan (1984), Dell Hymes (1975), and Tad Tuleja (1997). For identity, see Roger Abrahams
(2003), Lauri Honko (1988), and Elliott Oring (1994). For authenticity, see Regina Bendix (1998), Dean
MacCannell (1989), and Shalom Staub (1988). For heritage, see Hewison (1987), Wright (1985), David
Brett (1996), and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1995 and 1998). See also note 7 for a comparison of
nostalgia and heritage as theorized by Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.
3. In addition to Smith (2000: esp. pp. 509-15), see Behlmer (2000:7), Davis (1979:1-5), Lowenthal
(1989:19-21), and Rosaldo (1989:108-9), for treatments of how medical and psychological conceptions
of nostalgia color our understanding and evaluation of the concept today. Willis McCann (1941) and
Jean Starobinski (1966) provide additional details on the origins of nostalgia in medical and psycho-
logical discourse.
4. To be fair, here Lowenthal is characterizing the 1980s critique of nostalgia rather than joining in the
attack. In this contribution to Chase and Shaw (1989), Lowenthal softens his earlier, more negative views
on nostalgia (1985) and argues that critics "largely misconceive nostalgia and exaggerate its evils"
(1989:27).
5. Janice Doane and Devon Hodges (1987) offer a compelling book-length argument along these lines.
Investigating the uses of memory in fiction, Gayle Greene (1991) contrasts nostalgia as reactionary to
feminist memory as progressive; however, see Tannock's contention that Greene engages in nostalgia
even as she criticizes it (1995:453-454).
6. Ethnographic fieldwork informing this article took place from August 1998 to August 1999 and in
the summers of 2000, 2002, and 2003 while based in the Upper Derg Valley of County Tyrone, an area
discussed and described further by Cashman (1999). In addition to the present topic, research focused
on several forms of commemoration including historical legends and place lore (dinnsenchas), popular
song and poetry, and storytelling in various genres at wakes and ceilis (see Cashman 2002b). Secondary
areas of research included nationalist and unionist parades, vernacular architecture, and Christmas
mumming (see Cashman 2000a, 2000b).
7. Readers familiar with Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's theorizing of heritage (1995, 1998) will note through-
out this article several similarities with my conception of nostalgia. For example, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
defines heritage as a "mode of cultural production in the present that has recourse to the past" (1998:149).
Furthermore, she observes that heritage is a "transvaluation of the obsolete," accomplished through
exhibition, that grants the obsolete a second symbolic life. These observations would also apply to the
nostalgic practices discussed here; clearly heritage and nostalgia go hand in hand. Unlike heritage as
discussed by Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, however, the nostalgic practices discussed are neither "productions
of the local for export" nor primarily directed at community outsiders such as tourists.
8. All four men interviewed happen to be Catholic. Note, however, that both Protestants and Catholics
have enthusiastically taken part in John's videotaped demonstrations of old farm equipment. Not just
Catholic, but also Protestant families, such as the Marshalls, Youngs, and Montgomerys, display front
yard assemblages or maintain personal collections of old agricultural and domestic material culture.
Protestant homes are no less decorated with nostalgic images and ornaments than Catholic homes.
Protestants are members of the KDHS, discussed below, in numbers proportional to the local demo-
graphic breakdown between Catholics and Protestants. Informal conversation, rather than recorded
interviews, with local Protestants indicate that their motivations for these activities are similar to those
of local Catholics.
9. In trying to understand people's motivations for nostalgia and preservation, the often-reported
perception of accelerated and unprecedented change, and the enervation attributed to it, is more relevant
than demonstrating that, in fact, change has been more rapid and monumental than ever before. Having
said that, the changes over the last century that older locals most often highlight are the very ones as-
sociated with the transition to modernity in other societies-the shift from a subsistence to a cash
economy, the imposition of ever greater surveillance and bureaucracy by centralized authority, the rap-
id and transforming reliance on electricity, automobiles, and other consumer goods. With integration
into European Union economies of scale, the small family farm of the Derg Valley is no longer considered
economically viable, and this part of rural Ireland is being whipped from the expectations of an agrar-
ian economy to those of service and tourism industry without any intervening period of urbanization
or heavy industry. Listening to the perceptions of locals about change, I see parallels with Len Falkenstein's
reading of nostalgia in contemporary Irish literature and film (1999): the nostalgia of Derg Valley farm-
ers and professional artists alike may be a reaction to the leap from a traditional society to an arguably
postmodern one, without the psychological benefit of gradual interim steps.
10. For middle-aged to elderly residents in County Tyrone, "the State" is the colloquial term for the
twenty-six counties of what is now the Republic of Ireland. The term derives from the Irish Free State,
established after independence from Britain in 1922. The Free State was the predecessor of the Republic,
which was established in 1949.
11. The Orange Order and Ancient Order of Hibernians are provincewide, officially nonviolent fra-
ternal organizations. The Orangemen hold annual parades commemorating important events in Ulster
or Northern Irish Protestant history, and the Hibernians hold similar parades on holidays important to
Irish Catholics. The IRA (Irish Republican Army) and UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) are, respectively,
Catholic and Protestant paramilitary organizations. Their members and supporters use urban street
murals, popular song, and other commemorative forms to construct opposing Catholic and Protestant
versions of history that reify sectarian division and, occasionally, justify the use of violence in achieving
political goals.
12. Referring to the establishment of the Ulster Folk Museum in Cultra, County Down, Evans writes,
"Here, at least, in the effort to record, preserve, and study traditional Ulster ways and values, a divided
community appears to find common ground" (1965:355). See Cashman (1996), for a treatment of the
politics informing the broader field of Ulster folklife studies as founded and influenced by Evans.
13. For more on the range of popular commemorative forms used to construct opposing Catholic and
Protestant collective memories and identities, see Jack Santino (2001) and Anthony Buckley and Mary
Catherine Kenney (1995). For commemorative parades in particular, see Dominic Bryan (2000a and
2000b), Neil Jarman (1997), and Brian Walker (1996). For urban murals and graffiti, see Jarman (1997
and 1998) and Bill Rolston (1991, 1992, 1995, 1999, and 2003). For oral traditions and narrative, see
Glassie (1982a and 1982b), William F. Kelleher (2003), and Georges-Denis Zimmermann (1967).
14. My observations in Ireland of a future-oriented nostalgia are not unique. As Tannock notes, nos-
talgia can serve in many contexts to "retrieve the past for support in building the future" (1995:459). For
example, nostalgia serves Anglo-Indians negotiating a crisis of identity and belonging in post-indepen-
dence India (Blunt 2003). In the Trobriand Islands, nostalgia serves urban yam gardeners as a vehicle for
knowledge and actions that reconnect them to their past, resist disempowering conditions of post-colo-
nial life, and offer a sense of being firmly in control of the future (Battaglia 1995). Debbora Battaglia's
and Alison Blunt's case studies deserve special attention, for they identify a "practical" or "producti
nostalgia that acts as a powerful force for social reconnection without fixating on loss or the imposs
ity of return to the past. Instead, practical or productive nostalgia is oriented toward the present
future as much toward the past.
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Critical Nostalgia and Material Culture in Northern Ireland

Author(s): Ray Cashman

Critical Nostalgia and Material Culture

Although many scholars have characterized nostalgia as a counterproductive mod-

RAY CASHMAN is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Journal ofAmerican Folklore 119(472):137-160

Nostalgia and Its Critique

Nostalgia is a cultural practice that enables people to generate meaning in the pr

tion"-to describe a potentially fatal form of homesickness he observed among Swiss

in part because of its purported deceitfulness. Drawing on literature, advertisi

A categorical dismissal of nostalgia as a retrograde and counterproductive pathology

Expressions of Nostalgia in the Derg Valley

I was sitting at the table through the window gazing out,

.. ...... ..... .... .. .. ..

Figure 3. Neighbors trying out John's renovated thresher

Material Culture, Past-Present Evaluation, and

Later, Gerard resumed this line of thought:

Such as what, I asked. Gerard paused, then offered,

Much of this widespread collection of material traces of the past-a sort of v

Figure 5. Danny Gallen atop Tievenameenta Hill

In her treatment of nostalgia in North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europ

Such a stance cannot be dismissed across the board as reactionary romanticism

Material Culture, Future-Oriented Nostalgia, and

This is one potential interpretation of the graveyard as a whole, and particular

One Magherakeel grave marker in particular serves as a reminder of an often-told

Figure 6. Magherakeel graveyard looking west

historical legend of immediate relevance in the troubled present. More tha

Figure 7. Grave marker to

From Mere Nostalgia to Critical Nostalgia

wisdom, revision is urgent. To challenge a status quo bolstered by sectarian v

Rosaldo, Renato. 1989. Imperialist Nostalgia. Representations 26:107-22.

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