Search results for ""Author Peadar Kirby""

Ireland underwent a dramatic economic and social transformation from the 1990s onwards, earning it the title the "Celtic Tiger". Rapid economic growth was accompanied by substantial in-migration. However in the later 2000s Ireland is also experiencing a severe economic recession.This book examines the nature and geographies of the Celtic Tiger, focusing on the evolution of industries such as information and communication technology and pharamaceuticals. It also examines the changing nature of social ties in cities, trends amongst knowledge workers and the experiences of return migrants. It concludes with reflections on the nature of the Celtic Tiger phenomenon and how this will shape Ireland’s geography and society into the future. This book was published as a special issue of Irish Geography.

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Over the last decade the Irish economy has experienced a period of unprecedented growth which has earned it the title Celtic Tiger. This success has been interpreted by academic commentators as marking a social and cultural transformation, what some have called the reinvention of Ireland. The essays in this book challenge the largely positive interpretation of Ireland's changing social order. The authors identify the ways in which culture and society have been made subservient to the needs of the market in this new neoliberal Ireland. They draw on subversive strands in Irish history and offer a broader and more robust understanding of culture as a site of resistance to the dominant social order and as a political means to fashion an alternative future.

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Timely and unique, this innovative volume provides a critical examination of the role of civil society and its relation to the state throughout left-led Latin America. Featuring a broad range of case studies from across the region, from the Bolivian Constitution to participative budgeting in Brazil to the communal councils in Venezuela, the book examines to what extent these new initiatives are redefining state-civil society relations. Does the return of an active state in Latin America imply the incorporation of civil society representatives in decision-making processes? Is the new left delivering on the promise of participatory democracy and a redefinition of citizenship, or are we witnessing a new democratic deficit? A wide-ranging analysis of a vital issue, both for Latin America and beyond.

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This is the first sustained and broad-ranging critique of the legacies of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger boom. Contributors identify the damaging impact that the free market has had on a wide range of areas in public life, including the media and the pharmaceutical industry, and also examine its influence on health, education, state surveillance, immigrants, the welfare state, consumerism and the Irish language. Challenging the notion that there is no alternative for Ireland but the present economic and political dispensation, experts map out an alternative politics that could create spaces for hope and renewal in contemporary Ireland.In a society whose public debates have been largely dominated by the instrumentalist logic of stockbroker economists and the regressive populism of talk-radio shock jocks, Transforming Ireland offers a more substantial and considered analysis, uncovering hidden aspects of everyday Irish life. It reveals that, virtually unnoticed by the media, there exist lively debates in today’s Ireland which draw on international insights about globalisation to probe how it is reshaping Irish society. Covering four principal topics – culture and society, media and social change, social control, and power and politics – this impressive volume opens new and hopeful perspectives for students and also the general reader. Though primarily a book about Ireland, it is also a book about today’s form of globalisation, offering a rare and accessible analysis of the damage done to society when market forces are given free rein.

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