Place and exile: resource conflicts and sustainability in Gaelic Ireland and Scotland

Abstract

This paper reflects on two controversial resource projects – the Bellanaboy gas refinery (Ireland) and the Barvas Moor wind farm (Scotland) – and critical arguments made by key local actors. Although risk, health, environment and development dominated the official decision-making processes, these actors articulated views which cut across or existed beyond such orthodox ideas and framings. Focusing on these, I show that the Gaelic concepts of dùthchas and deoraíocht, summarised as place and exile, help to explain why some residents decided to protest. This paper illustrates the role that history, culture and language can play in conflicts, emphasises the need for greater sensitivity to these and suggests that place and exile can inform alternative visions of sustainability.

Keywords:

• place
• exile
• Gaelic
• environment
• development
• sustainability

Acknowledgements

I thank the editor and reviewers of Local Environment for their positive and thoughtful feedback. I also acknowledge the support of the Gaelic language and culture organisation Colmcille and the valuable contribution made by Donal Maguinness, Eileen Maguinness and Sarah Parry.

Notes

Interest in issue framing has increased across the social sciences in recent years. I draw particularly on work in policy studies where post-positivist/post-empiricist approaches take as their starting point that “the problem” does not exist separately to the way it is framed by those involved. Key contributions include The politics of environmental discourse (Hajer 1995) and Reframing public policy (Fischer 2003), and the journal Critical Policy Studies has emerged as a forum for related debates.

The Gaelic language (Irish and Scottish) descends from the Celtic branch of the Indo-European family of languages and, although under threat, is still widely spoken along the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland and elsewhere. I use Gaelic throughout this paper and often italicise Gaelic words to make it easier for the reader.

In a personal communication, Mark Garavan (Nov 2007) said the following about history, culture and language as an aspect of the conflict in Mayo:I think that the Irish language may have had some role. It's hard to quite quantify it though. Within the area affected by the project a minority is Irish speaking. However, those speakers do have a sense of themselves as a distinct culture and have a confidence about that. I think as well being Irish-speaking in this part of Ireland leaves one more alienated from the state because nearly all state services are conducted through English.

A shieling is a small stone shelter occupied during the summer months when animals were taken onto the moor. The website of Comann Eachdraidh an Taobh Siar (The West Side Historical Society) includes accounts by local people of going to the shielings on Barvas moor – West Side Historical Society (2012b).

Language is particularly important. As Newton (2009, p. 294) points out, “The entire landscape is understood in anthropomorphic terms in Gaelic. Many words for topographical features are the same as those for human body parts … .” More generally, the structure of Gaelic language has people belonging to places rather than places belonging to people (Newton 2009, p. 306).

I give more examples of how the past is relevant today in Murphy (2009). One of the most interesting, which is similar to the monument outside Bangor, is the “bridge of tears” on the road between Muckish Mountain and Aghla Beg in Donegal. Beside the bridge, a pale grey boulder carries a modern Gaelic inscription which can be translated as follows: To this point came/The friends and relatives/Of those who were emigrating/They left from here/This was their point of departure/This is the bridge of tears. In Irish Gaelic, the final line is Seo Droichead na nDeor. The word deoir means “tear” and it appears again and again across Ireland in relation to emigration.

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 1.

Massey (2004, p. 6) defines essentialism as: “ … localist or nationalist claims to place based on eternal essential, and in consequences exclusive, characteristics of belonging … ”.

One thing which explains this is that “Gaelic” more often than not refers to a social, cultural and linguistic inheritance rather than to race (Newton 2009).

This forms part of the inscription on the monument which records the event.

The author referred to is Dressler (1998).

Elsewhere, the project describes in more detail what it believes the key characteristics of a “dùthchas community” are (Dùthchas Project 2000, p. 1): it has a clear and strong identity and a deep sense of belonging; it believes in itself because it has confidence; it values everybody within and offers everybody the chance of earning a living using their individual talents; it is the enthusiastic guardian of its surrounding natural inheritance today and tomorrow; it delivers local needs locally; it is positively engaged in creating its own destiny; it responsibly considers the effects of its actions on future generations.