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, inextricably linked to economics in that it operates in the public sphere exclusively as a business. Restaurants, hotels, bars and wine stores all exist with profit as their ultimate motivator. In fact, Peillon discusses the tensions that exist between culture and economic capital in Ireland and suggests that the inimical relationship between the two is not something new in this country (Peillon 2002, pp. 40–41). He cites Hutchinson and Kane, both of whom intimate that, in various spheres of 1970s Ireland, culture was seen to impede economic progress in some way. But it is
Opinion columns and pseudo-scientific articles exploring immigration and integration are now the primary channels for overt racism in the Irish media, and their proliferation prompts a necessary exploration of their established form and growing influence. A range of columnists regularly vilify Muslims, Roma and Travellers, particularly drawing on ideas of barbarism, cultural genocide and population control, and defiantly testing the legal limits of incitement to hatred. Constructions of Irish culture as monolithic in the face of an immigration regime which imports failed multiculturalism and racism necessarily position migrants as continuing outsiders and the creators of their own exclusion. Clear connections can be made between racist discourses in Irish media and violence against migrants and ethnic minorities. This chapter explores how Irish media outlets are facilitating and promoting the normalisation of racist discourses, and the implications of this for the construction of debates which take seriously the challenges of integration in practice and in the context of growing anti-immigrant racism.
boardrooms. It was about the body, not the body politic. Masturbation was a much more serious sin than tax evasion. In a mindset where homosexuality was a much worse sin than cooking the books, it was okay to be bent as long as you were straight. (O’Toole 2009, p. 183) As Irish culture became fixated on the pursuit of material wealth at all costs, there was a move away from the religious ‘habitus’ that had held sway for a number of centuries. In the words of the sociologist Tom Inglis, Ireland went from a culture of self-denial to one of self-indulgence (Inglis 2006, pp
Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Féin Party, 1916–1923 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 3 Timothy W. Guinnane, The Vanishing Irish: Households, Migration, and the Rural Economy in Ireland, 1850–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). 4 Tara Stubbs, American Literature and Irish Culture, 1910–55 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). 5 Giovanni Federico, Feeding the World: An Economic History of Agriculture, 1800–2000 (Princeton: Princeton
faulty foundations and tended to benefit the rich more than the poor. Kirby, Gibbons and Cronin produced a compelling critique of what they viewed as the dominant neo- liberal approach to economics that encouraged people to believe that Ireland had never had it so good, that the country had a rosy future and that full employment and increased wealth would continue. Reinventing Ireland: Culture, Society and the Global Economy (2002) remains one of the best interrogations of the comfortable consensus that developed between government, the media and business interests
, virtually a home movie, that won an Academy Award) echoed its own rags-to-riches narrative (Hardiman 2011). Such tensions – between participation in global filmmaking practices and global capital, and acknowledgement, even celebration, of the specificities of Irish culture – also inform the most popular genre to emerge during the Celtic Tiger era – the crime/caper movie. The gangster film has long provided a lens through which to examine issues of class and social mobility in the contemporary city – as Robert Warshow writes in his classic 1948 examination of the genre
recognition of Irish nationhood, whatever its form, was supported with a narrative that placed Ireland in an international sphere, i.e. outside the realm of the British empire and prior to the ‘Anglicisation’ of Ireland. One of the most common myths used to emphasise both Ireland’s historical role in Europe and the ‘civilised’ nature of Irish culture was that of Ireland’s role in dispelling the ‘Dark Ages’ in Europe: Erin was a veritable hive of learning, European scholars flocking to her shores to receive food, education, shelter – all gratis. Learning, which had been
retreated from this idea because ‘in the Irish culture it was such a foreign concept’. Instead, as Strang acknowledges, in Ireland ‘people generally want a garden or a yard’.44 In 1967 the Craigavon New City report acceded to this cultural preference, with the plan now promoting the establishment of a ‘Rural City’ – one that would be driven towards ‘the establishment of village communities’ and ‘the close inter-relationship of urban and rural elements’.45 As a defining feature of this bucolic urbanism was a rejection of the foreign and a loyalty to what Strang has termed
again. When the country was religious, they were religious: when the country ceased to be religious, they happily ceased to be religious – with a great sense of relief on the half of those erstwhile penitents. Now they felt they had nothing to be penitent about. My doubts lingered on. (Costello 2012, pp. 35–36) Costello describes well the conformity that characterizes Stage 3 faith. Significant changes in Irish culture led to adjustments in the behaviour and loyalties of people whose faith development had remained at Stage 3. Fowler suggests that there are a number
Quarterly, 95:1, pp. 23–44. Gibbons, Luke (2001) ‘“Subtilized into Savages”: Edmund Burke, Progress and Primitivism’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 100:1, pp. 83–109. Gibbons, Luke (2006) Edmund Burke and Ireland: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Colonial Sublime, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gibbons, Luke (2010) ‘Words upon the Windowpane: Image, Text and Irish Culture’, in Elkins, J. (ed.), Visual Cultures, Bristol: Intellect, pp. 43–56. Harvey, David (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Oxford: Blackwell. Haughey