Shop Keepers in Towns

¶ … Irish Social Order The chapter "Shops, Pubs and Fairs" is about the basic social order that takes place in Ireland. According to the author, this social order is based on a critical interaction between two realms of this country -- both its towns and its typical country lands. The former, of course, are populated by townspeople who most often and most eminently take the form of shopkeepers. The latter is populated by rustics and farmers.

The author provides a fair amount of history of the type of interaction between these two sorts of people -- and mentions the many different invaders that Ireland had to fend off during the development of the town within this nation. He briefly mentions the arrival of the metropolis, which still do not hold as much tradition and importance in Irish culture as the synthesis he describes at length between the town and the country, the shopkeeper and the farmer.

Whereas the simple farmer does not warrant too much description, the author takes pains to describe both the shopkeeper and his existence, which is of course intrinsically linked to the farmer for both economic livelihood and more. Shops were typically family owned and utilized all members of the family in some variety of the role of the shopkeeper.

The most vital point of interaction between the townspeople and the country people of Ireland focused on the shop, and on the needs of the latter to purchase the goods and services provided at the former. Equally important, it seems, was the patronage of the rustics for the shopkeepers, who greatly depended on that patronage for economic survival. In such a way the shop became the focal point of interaction between the country and the town for residents of both of these place.

In addition to explicating this arrangement in economic terms, the author also explains its impact upon social, political, religious, and even mythical factors, as well. There were actually several different facets of this chapter that resonated with me. One of the most eminent of these was the local nature of the shopkeeper, and the local nature of the sort of commerce that was facilitated in Ireland at the time the author describes.

The impersonal corporations and conglomerates that dominate the business landscape of contemporary times in other countries -- the so-called global economy and the exploitation of labor characterized by globalization -- was non-existent during the epoch described by the author. It seems as though there was much greater equity between the consumer and the producer in the relationship described in this chapter.

Such equity was perhaps attributed to the reality that in many ways, the farmer was just as much the producer for the shopkeeper (in terms of his or her dietary substance) as the shopkeeper was the producer for the goods and services which the farmer patronized. There is an inherent balance in this sort of relationship which must have extended to.