(You may want to read Part 1 here. Or you may not. Your call.)

.

“As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.”

– Abraham Lincoln, 1855

.

In 1992, Thérèse Caherty and colleagues in Ireland published a series of short essays with the provocative title “Is Ireland a Third World Country?” In response to that question, one of the authors, Caitríona Ruane, wrote that “the answers were as various and diverse as those participating” (p. ix), highlighting the ambiguity of the concept. One chapter by Queens University sociologist Liam O’Dowd noted that at the time (early 1990s, remember) Ireland was among the 30 richest industrialized economies in the world. Therefore, he said directly, by that criterion most people would not categorize it as “Third World.” For comparison, Ireland today ranks in the top 10 for GNI per capita according to the World Bank and 11^th for the Human Development Index.

However, O’Dowd pointed out that Ireland still faced high levels of poverty. Other authors noted Ireland’s parallels with other countries typically thought of as “Third World”, including its former colonial status, its semi-peripheral position in the global economy, political patronage and clientelism, the largescale displacement of its population abroad, human rights abuses in Northern Ireland, a reliance on foreign corporations for employment, and inequality. The chapter by economist Andy Storey and sociologist Ronaldo Munck reminded the reader that colonialism can leave “a legacy of distorted economic structures” and that upon independence Ireland emerged as an agricultural economy with relatively little industrialization, and therefore “Ireland’s developmental reference points are in the Third World rather than the First” (p. 61-2).  Journalist Carol Coulter suggested Ireland was “somewhere between the First and the Third worlds,” and obviously not quite Second World either, for that matter (p. 13). Keep this in mind for later.