2444Ch10 3/12/02 10 2:04 pm Page 248 Brigid Laffan Ireland: modernisation via Europeanisation Introduction: EU membership as part of the National Project Membership of the European Union since 1973 represented for Ireland the achievement of a roof or a shelter for its national project of modernisation. Following a re-assessment of Ireland’s economic policy in 1958, when a decision was taken to pursue external-led economic growth financed by multinational investment, membership of the large European market with its CAP became highly desirable. Economic
11 Northern Ireland: a reminder from the present PETE SHIRLOW Social and cultural shifts on the island of Ireland are held to have diluted the authority of nationalisms that were tied to unidimensional and archaic notions of Irishness and Britishness.1 It is contended that there is an ongoing and positive transition towards new modes and definitions of cultural belonging that in themselves reject the logic and validity of ethnocentrism. The Europeanisation of political and financial power, the influx of foreign capital, political morphology in Northern Ireland
Northern Issues concerning Ireland women Northern Ireland 129 10 ➤ The background to the Northern Ireland problem ➤ The build up to and the importance of the Good Friday Agreement ➤ The effect of the devolution process on Northern Ireland ➤ The workings of the Northern Ireland Assembly ➤ The effects of decommissioning of arms and demilitarisation ➤ The future of Northern Ireland BACKGROUND TO THE PROBLEM How Northern Ireland came about Until 1921 Ireland was a single political entity under British rule. It elected MPs to parliament in London, but was
Civilising Rural Ireland examines how modern Ireland emerged out of the social and economic transformation prompted by the rural co-operative movement. The movement emerged in response to systemic economic problems that arose throughout the nineteenth century and coincided with a wide-ranging project of cultural nationalism. Within a short space of time the co-operative movement established a swathe of creameries, agricultural societies and credit societies, leading to a radical reorganisation of rural Ireland and helping to create a distinctive Irish political economy. The work of overlooked co-operative experts is critically examined for the first time and reinserted into the process of state development. The interventions of these organisers, intellectuals and farmers built up key institutions that shaped everyday life across rural communities. The movement weathered war and revolution, to become an indispensable part of an Irish state infrastructure after independence in 1922. The strained relationship and economic rivalry that developed between Irish and British co-operators is also explored in order to illuminate the changing relationship between Ireland and the United Kingdom from an economic perspective. Civilising Rural Ireland will appeal to a wide audience interested in modern Irish history and readers are introduced to an eclectic range of personalities who shared an interest in co-operation and whose actions possessed important consequences for the way Ireland developed. The creative use of local and national sources, many of which are examined for the first time, mean the book offers a new perspective on an important period in the making of modern Ireland.
1 ‘Ireland, verses, Scotland: crossing the (English) language barrier’ 1 WILLY MALEY The very problem of the national and the individual in language is basically the problem of the utterance (after all, only here, in the utterance, is the national language embodied in individual form). (Mikhail Bakhtin, cited Wesling 1997: 81) The Irish mix better with the English than the Scotch do because their language is nearer. (Samuel Johnson, cited in Boswell 1906 [1791]: 473) Why Scotland and Ireland? What is marginal, one might ask, about cultures that have produced
1 The end of Irish history? An introduction to the book COLIN COULTER During the Easter vacation of 2001, I happened to be travelling through the United States and picked up a copy of a renowned popular music magazine to pass the time on a short internal flight. While leafing through the publication, I stumbled across a feature that struck me as having no little cultural significance. It was a single-frame, full-page advertisement for some commodity or other set in a stylish contemporary bathroom that could have been located in more or less any major city in
At the IAOS's 1909 annual conference, Æ delivered an extraordinary speech in which he accused the movement of lacking ‘the vital heat’ displayed by nationalist and unionist political organisations at work in Ireland. Fifteen years after the first gathering of delegates Æ used this opportunity to challenge those assembled to consider and question what values initially drew them into the co-operative movement: We want to find our ideal – the synthesis of all these co-operative efforts. Butter
5 Irish women and the Celtic Tiger economy SINÉAD KENNEDY The term ‘Celtic Tiger’ has connotations that extend well beyond the realm of the purely economic. It has, for instance, become a metaphor for a new national consensus that constantly reminds us how ‘we have never had it so good’. This chapter takes issue with this consensus and argues instead that, while the recent boom in the Irish Republic has produced enormous wealth for a small minority, the majority of Irish people have benefited little from this apparent economic miracle. In fact, there has been a
7 Millenarianism and utopianism in the new Ireland: the tragedy (and comedy) of accelerated modernisation KIERAN KEOHANE and CARMEN KUHLING There is a mode of vital experience – experience of space and time, of the self and others, of life’s possibilities and perils – that is shared by men and women all over the world today. I will call this body of experience ‘modernity’. To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world – and, at the same time, that threatens to
9780719075636_4_015.qxd 16/2/09 9:29 AM Page 258 15 ‘What’s it like being Irish?’ The return of the repressed in Roddy Doyle’s Paula Spencer Jennifer M. Jeffers ‘The Irish are the niggers of Europe, lads.’ (Roddy Doyle, The Commitments)1 In a notorious incident in January 2002, a young Chinese man, Zhao Liulao, was beaten to death in a late-night fight in a Dublin suburb, after being taunted by racist youths. This death occurred against a background of reports of increased attacks on immigrants in the north inner-city area of Dublin, in an area designated