The evolution of the Irish pub
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What role do Irish pubs play in tourism and culture?
Now, they are part of what we offer tourists. They're a cultural export. They offer a vital meeting space outside the home and the workplace. They make up a large part of Irish social infrastructure and they are also perceived as being under threat. I'm talking, of course, about the Irish pub, which is the subject of a new book offering the first full-length academic treatment of the subject with 420 pages of text. Over 100 illustrations and 20 contributors from a wide range of disciplines. One of the co-editors of the Irish pub Invention and Reinvention is sociologist Dr. Perry Sher, head of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Atlantic Technological University.
Why is there a need for a serious study of the Irish pub?
Perry, good morning. Thanks for coming in.
Good morning, David. Lovely to be here.
It's a very heavy book, not a heavy read, but as you say, but a heavy book. And you say in it that sociologists are not unfamiliar with the Irish pub, but they don't tend to write about them and take it as seriously as an academic subject. Why did you decide that it was time for a serious study of the Irish pub?
Yeah, I mean, I've been interested in it for probably 20 years, but I've been making that point for a long time that nobody was really seriously studying it. And maybe it's because it's so taken for granted that sociologists in Ireland have tended to focus on things like poverty and politics and, you know, big social questions like that. And the pub was sort of there, but we all went to the pub. We walked past the pub. We knew it was there, but we didn't really study it.
Right. Big claims to make for the pub as an institution in this. We'll get into them in a bit. What makes an Irish pub special?
That's a very tricky question. I think it's some sort of combination of atmosphere, ambience, design, history, even. And the whole cultural place of the pub, you know, in our literature, in our drama, our fiction. Famous, famous writers associated with the pub like Brendan Behan or Sean O'Casey. So it comes together and it has, of course, been packaged now, you know, both in Ireland and internationally as a commodity. But it's that it's a certain feeling which is almost indescribable. And maybe that's why people go there to find out what it is.
OK, in search of an answer to that very question. Now, you mentioned Brendan being at the pub has always had its critics. Excessive drinking generates all sorts of problems, as we all know.
It does. And that's the conversation that I think we need to have in Ireland. I mean, there's a lot of nostalgia for the pub. I mean, you know, we can't open a newspaper these days without the story of a pub, you know, a loved pub that has disappeared or maybe a good news story about a pub that's been taken over by its community. But we have an nostalgia for pubs and we take them for granted and like them. But we never really confront that question of, you know, how do we reconcile the alcohol thing and the pub thing?
Yeah. You mentioned the history and the history is really interesting. Elizabeth Malcolm points out in her chapter, the traditional pub, the traditional pub so-called, is a relatively recent invention.
Yeah. It is. And first, just to say, Elizabeth Malcolm sadly died last week.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Yeah, she's an Australian historian who had a great interest in Ireland. Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. Yeah, I mean, she makes the point that the pub is really a 19th century invention. I mean, there was things before like taverns and ale houses and shabines, of course, in Ireland. And they were first brought together under legislation in the 17th century. In 1635 was the first law, obviously by the English government at the time, that brought that in. But in the 19th century, these sort of came together into what we would recognise today as a pub.
Yeah. And they're different from the English pub or the British pub because most of them were owned by the breweries. They were tied houses, as they're known, whereas pubs in Ireland tend to be family owned. And that's why you see family names by and large above the door.
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