Wow! eBook
The Right to Roam: Travellers and Human Rights in the Modern Nation-State
Author(s): Dualta Roughneen (Author)
- Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
- Publication Date: 26 Mar. 2010
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 145 pages
- ISBN-10: 1443818712
- ISBN-13: 9781443818711
Book Description
Nomadic groups and sedentary society have been in conflict throughout the ages and the conflict continues to this day. For the most part it is nomadic groups who have been the losers in these conflicts. The idea of human rights has traveled around the world in response to some of the great conflicts of our time. ‘The Right to Roam- Travellers in the Modern Nation State’ examines the right of nomadic groups to maintain a way of life that is contrary to the drive toward sedentarisation and modernisation. If human rights are to exist, one approach to the derivation of rights is that they are to exist as protectors of the autonomy of individuals. When the autonomy of individuals is threatened by restrictions on their liberty then the protection of human rights is required. For Travellers in Ireland, restrictions on the freedom to maintain a Travelling lifestyle have consequences for members of the Travelling community. “The Right to Roam- Travellers in the Nation State’ explores the impact of recent legislation such as the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act of 2002 on Travellers in modern Ireland and whether progress driven be sedentary society should be required to include the needs of nomadic groups.
Editorial Reviews
Review
A quick glance at Irish social and cultural history from the Gaelic period onwards points to nomadism as an accepted and valued mode of living within society, a fact which was true until well into the twentieth century. The advent of the modern nation-state changed all of this this, however, and as poet WB Yeats so eloquently put it ‘A terrible beauty was born’. There is no small irony in the fact that Ireland, a country where a wide range of Travellers and peripatetic groups were once an accepted part of the social fabric, now has some of the most restrictive legislation in the world with respect to nomadism. Dualta Roughneen has written an excellent book. With consummate skill, he has traced the process whereby human rights of nomadic minorities have been subordinated and deemed inferior to policies and provisions deemed appropriate for the development of a modern European nation-state. –Dr. Mícheál Ó hAodha, Department of History, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
About the Author
Dualta Roughneen is a graduate Civil Engineer of NUI, Galway and a recent recipient of the MSc Degree in Human Rights from UCD. Dualta has worked in Sudan, Afghanistan, Liberia, North Korea and Ethiopia for Non-Governmental Organisations GOAL, Concern Worldwide and Plan International primarily in the field of emergency water supply and sanitation.
