Kieran Healy

An Irish Ritual

Henry Farrell and I just exchanged a few emails where we went through a standard Irish process which we can call Placing You. Very much like me, Henry’s an expat Irish social scientist teaching in North America. Yesterday on his blog, he mentioned in passing that his great-grandather was Eoin McNeill, a major figure in Irish political history.

This immediately led to an email from me, where I semi-politely tried to figure out which branch of the family he was from (it has other illustrious members). In doing so, reciprocity demanded I reveal my own connections to Irish political life. These are more modest than Henry’s, but it turns out that my father and uncle would know a couple of his uncles pretty well.

The upshot is that, even though we’ve never actually met, we have now Placed Each Other. This is standard operating procedure for Irish people everywhere, especially when abroad. Roughly the procedure is, (1) Meet in bar. (2) Buy a few pints. (3) Conduct extensive exploration of family tree and social network until some connection is found. (4) When connection is inevitably discovered sit back with satisfaction and think “Ah, now I know who you are.”

This process amuses non-Irish people no end, not least because there always does seem to be a connection. Irish people are appallingly good at navigating their small-world networks.

Believe me, I come from a nation of one billion (no, not China) and we do the same sniffing ritual. And we often find connections, successfully Placing each other.

Ditto here. We do Placing all the time, except that it would I guess be called Clan Placing. You know, where you fall in a large, extended Cuban clan. In some sectors I’m known as “Celia’s oldest daughter” while she is known as “China’s daughter who married into the Cuestas”. It can be labyrinthine.

Yeah, “Clan Placing” – happens to me whenever I go to Louisville, KY. And among my humanitarian aid colleagues we do “War Placing”. (“you were in monitoring in Bosnia? then you must know—-, who I did logistics with in Somalia…”)

But I wander into this comments section today to tell a story from a buddy of mine about Ireland. In his youth, he went on a bike tour of France. Deciding to send a post-card home to a friend, for the address he drew an outline of the island and placed an “X” where the town was. To complete the address, he wrote the last name of his friend.

It arrived at the correct destination in three days.

I’ve always wondered, though, just how did the French postal service know what to do with it?

a McNeill who is now a Farrell ? Never

Let’s say you’re trying to market yourself as a freelance journalist. You ring up the editor and chat and he asks you who you’ve worked for.

If you want to eat, you go through the list trying to tell him about the ones you’ll think he knows. Finally you come to some publication or person that he’s met or really respects. He places you. Then he offers you work. (I say he but it could be a she.)

Let’s say he can’t place you. He doesn’t offer you work. That’s often been my experience, both ways.

That’s relationship-based marketing, of a sort.

I’ve watched apostate Mormons do to one another in New York City bars. It is a wonder to behold.

Well, I’m 39 and I’ve just found out I’m part Irish. So hey!

Placing You

Kieran Healy has a post about how Irish people meeting each other (especially abroad) check out each other’s political/historic pedigree and social networks as soon as is decently possible. After Henry posted yesterday (post titled ‘hagiogr…

Small world sociology

Kieran Healy has blogged a few times about the sociology of small world networks, most recently doing a post on how Irish people sniff out each other’s family and social connections within 2 pints (at most) of their first meeting….