Joan Vincent provides a micro-historical study and narrative ethnography of the Irish famine in County Fermanagh. Viewing the famine as a man-made process, and exploring the voices of the residents of Fermanagh as they attempt to understand and address the suffering around them, Vincent emphasizes the creation of cultural knowledge about the 'faminization' process and explores the interactions of local and national politics which structured the County experience of the famine and later political unrest. Throughout the book, Vincent foregrounds the gendered effects of the famine and provides us with a sensitive analysis of the cultural reaction to disruption and trauma.

Preface
Introduction
PART I: BEGINNINGS
The Dialectics of Reform
Moving Figures in a Shifting World
Modernity and Distress
Poor Law Impositions: Legislating Modernity
The Crisis of November 1845
PART II: INTERVENTIONS
Feeding the Hungry and Paying the Price
Private Enterprise
PART III: BLACK '47
'The Earth is Softened for the Grave'
The Workhouse System under Siege
The Medico-Moral Dilemma
PART IV: SHALLOWS AND SILENCES
Dangerous Supplements
Poor Law Desolation
Disillusion/Dissolution
The Other Side of Silence
PART V: THE GREY YEARS
The Terror of the Possible (1848)
Dublin Castle: The Poor Law under Siege
Aftermath

JOAN VINCENT is a noted political anthropologist and a pioneer in the development of historical ethnography and the anthropology of gender. She is Professor Emerita at Barnard College, Columbia University, USA and Senior Fellow at the Research Institute for the Study of Man.