Welsh Journals

BOOKREVIEWS (by C.J. Thomas) "THE WELSH AND THEIR CDUNTRY". Edited by I.Hume and W.T.R.Pryce, Ganer Press, Llandysul, 1986, Price f9-75, 365 pp. ISBN 0 86383 245 8. This bcok is a collection of fifteen essays designed as an advanced text to support the Open University course entitled "Wales a study of cultural and national identity". The authors are either academics drawn from the range of social science disciplines or eminent coninentators on the cultural life of Wales. The chapters are a collection of papers largely written originally for other journals but updated and adapted to enhance the contemporary relevance of the text. The central questions addressed are "What is the nature of Welsh society ?" and "How does Welshness manifest itself ?" The geographical dimension is covered in the first section and includes authoritative work on the spatial aspects of language change (Carter and Aitchison), the evolution of the linguistic culture region (Pryce) and Emrys Bowen's classic lecture on the historical geographic background to Wales. Much of this work will be familiar to those with an interest in this field, but the quality of the analyses warrants their reiteration as the introductory theme in this collection. Carter and Aitchison's analysis is a succinct sunmary of their atlas of the Welsh language and is especially informative of contemporary cultural variations in Wales. The quality of this work serves to highlight the niggardly presentation of the original by the University of Wales Press. The second section has a sociological focus and offers a review of the corrmunity studies which characterised sociology in Wales in the period 1950-71 (Owen) In the process a graphic picture is drawn of the principal characteristics and the rich variety of traditional rural life-styles. This is supplemented by Prys Morgan's historical essay on the "Gwerin". Graham Day and Glyn Williams then separately suggest the need to develop a more balanced view of Welsh life, incorporating changes affecting both urban and rural Wales. This is seen as acting as a necessary ccunterbalance to the focus of attention of the rural sociologists who were essentially "students of Wales". Both Day and Williams stress the need to use and develop models and approaches designed to elucidate the situation of Wales in Western society rather than unduly emphasising its unique characteristics. The collection is least coherent in a third section headed "Ideologies". Nairn's ccmparative analysis of the differences between Welsh and Scottish nationalism is graphically illustrative of the range of historical and cultural conditions asssociated with the development, iraintenance and resurgence of national identities in Western Societies. This, however, bears the hallmark of realism rather than ideology. The ideological label is obviously more appropriate to the following chapter by Hechter. The much debated theory of internal colonialism developed in the broader context of models of uneven development is presenteà as an explanation of the adverse economic, social and political situation of Wales in relation to the United Kingdom. The chapter offers the essence of the argument in Hechter's book (1975) and provided a controversial start to the kind of sociological reorientation later envisaged by Day and Williams. This is followed by Tudor Jones' highly critical review of Emyr Llywelyn's call for the establishment of an exclusive hcmeland for the preservation of the Welsh language and culture under the banner of "Adfer". Curiously, this precedes