This chapter discusses the extension of ‘early adulthood’ in contemporary Ireland. It traces changes in the transition to independent household formation amongst young adults, from tightly ordered and sequenced around the middle of the twentieth century, towards a pattern of ‘unbundling’ from the latter half of the twentieth century onwards. Unbundling is explained in the context of changing meanings and values around sexual intercourse, cohabitation, birth outside marriage and lone parenthood throughout this period. Narratives from the Life Histories and Social Change collection reveal how such experiences were often disguised in the past and how, just as today, middle and upper-class people were frequently better able to cope with the consequences of disorderly transitions. They also show how young adults worked to maintain family relationships in the context of migration and return in different historical times. The authors show how the transformation of early adulthood took place in the context of changing inter-generational power relations, as Ireland moved from a social structure centred on small property holding to one with increasing opportunities for economic survival through waged employment. The chapter includes a discussion of public debates around the ‘de-institutionalization of marriage’ and marriage equality for same-sex couples.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents the details of the Beatrice Annie Pace case while also considering what one woman's story reveals about the history of the police, the development of celebrity culture and the interests of the public in inter-war Britain. It then focuses on the police investigation and the lengthy coroner's inquest, the most extensive of the legal tribunals Beatrice would face. The book also focuses on the evidence given by Harry Pace's kinfolk, and considers the vivid testimony given by the Pace children, the police, family friends and forensic experts. A general conclusion and a postscript evaluate the case's significance and examine what happened to some of its key figures after the name 'Mrs Pace' had, once and for all, faded from the headlines.

This chapter discusses changes in the ‘middle years’ when people expend most energy caring for those who are younger or older, while also working and contributing taxes that enable the state to subsidize, to a greater or lesser extent, the work of caring, placing the Irish experience in comparative context. Narratives from the Life Histories and Social Change collection are combined with contemporary parent interviews from the Growing Up in Ireland study to trace the changing character of adult partner relationships from undemonstrative affection, to an emphasis on companionship, followed by a shared commitment to active parenting as women increasingly remain in paid employment following the birth of children. Decisions about marriage, work and childcare across the generations are explored with reference to complex gendered moral rationalities. There is a discussion of the changing ways in which couples and parents are embedded in wider kinship networks and community life. The chapter also examines how the continuing tension between the private spaces of families and the public spaces of community and social life creates gaps in which some of the darker aspects of family life are concealed, with a particular focus on intimate partner violence.

The introduction lays out the Korean context, the ethnographic moment as well as context, and the broader theoretical and methodological context. It situates Levine’s personal arrival in the field in Seoul and mobilises that into an entry point for broader theoretical and methodological conversations around hope, crisis, pragmatism, and democratic transition.

Harry Pace's violent, controlling behaviour motivated by sexual jealousy fits a common pattern across cultures and eras. However, assumptions about gender, marriage and violence were changing in the inter-war period, and press stories of wives' suffering at the hands of deceitful, unreliable or violent husbands were commonplace. Harry's brutality and Beatrice Annie Pace's suffering shaped their respective press personae. Advertisements for Beatrice's Sunday Express series were headed '18 years of hell' and featured a photograph of Beatrice writing her memoirs. Beatrice's public persona was, ultimately, more than a little ambiguous. Not only had she exchanged 'the deep black which she wore all through her long ordeal' for 'a pretty flowered frock of some light summery material', but the children 'are better dressed then ever they have been in their young lives'. In 'A talk to wives' and 'A talk to those about to marry', she gave advice to young women.

This chapter features First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) service with two new projects as well as their plans for new expansion. The first project was the establishment of an ambulance convoy in Calais for the Belgians, known as the Corps de Transport Militaire Belge, FANY Unit 5. The second project was a new hospital for the French at Port à Binson that became known as L'Hôpital Auxiliaire 76 and took over the old Lamark name FANY Unit 1. The chaos among the French troops in early summer caused a lull in casualties and no big convoys of troops arrived at Binson until a very large contingent arrived from Verdun in August. The chapter explores the concept of authority in terms of both power within the organization and the relationship of women to masculine authority in the context of war.

In this chapter, Levine specifies entanglements as double binds of ideology. The setting or ground of pragmatism appears through the movements of ideology as solidarity, struggle, colonial and divisional cage, and base for transcending conventional generational differences.

This chapter explores the accomplishments of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) driving for the French and those working in the new British convoy at St Omer. The main problem the FANY encountered was insubordination from French mechanics who refused to work in the open air, neglected the cars and most likely resented working for women. 'Strenuous' described work for all French units during the Spring of 1918, as drivers evacuated hospitals, dealt with civilian casualties and endured nightly air raids. The chapter focuses on the competence and indispensability of the FANY as fully militarized women operating independently with authority in masculine space. Refusing to subordinate their experiences to the masculine stories of war, the FANY created narratives from the feminine fabric of their lives and became petticoat warriors: fully militarized women whose experiences were represented through the prism of traditional femininity.

In this chapter, the author confronts the challenges of referencing a coherent civil society in South Korea and instead returns to foundational moments or events in democratic history from the Gwangju Uprising in 1980 to the Citizens’ Alliance for the 2000 General Elections (CAGE). This chapter provides an ethnographic account of the historical and contemporary entanglements that defined Roh Moo Hyun’s administration (2003-2008), civil movement organisations, and the author herself as an American anthropologist in South Korea.

In this chapter, Levine approaches sacrifice as a practical and praxiological demonstration of commitment, which is what many civil pioneers treated as the basis for a ‘green life.’ Sacrifice has been mobilised across the political spectrum in South Korean history, which this chapter explores, but ‘one working as one hundred (ildangbaek)’ is a particular idiom of sacrifice that captures the superhuman aspiration to act despite the physical, financial, organisational, and expertise limits civil movement organisations regularly confronted.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the wartime renegotiations of gender. It explores the everyday lives of a group of British women volunteers named the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) who found themselves 'straight out of Edwardian drawing rooms into the manifold horrors of the First World War'. The book historicizes the FANY Corps' beginnings in social and cultural changes at the turn of the century that encouraged women's patriotic call to service amidst a growing nationalist and militarist discourse. It analyses the service and adventures of Grace Ashley-Smith, who worked as a FANY in Belgium in the autumn of 1914. The book examines the first collective FANY war service in Calais and their work with the Belgians at the Lamarck Hospital during late 1914 through 1915.