Spartan Daily, April 14, 2015

Volume 144, Issue 29https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/2122/thumbnail.jp

A Changing Church: Radical perspectives of Catholicism from the margins of society in Dublin

In this study, I have explored Irish Catholicism in Dublin, and the relationship and tension between the margins and the center. In particular, I have examined the ways that people on the margins of the Church and on the margins of society in Dublin are responding to the changes in the Church. By incorporating their experiences and views into our understanding of Catholicism, we can gain a more accurate and multifaceted understanding of “what’s going on” with the Catholic Church in this city, and where its future lies

Strategic Spatial Planning and the Provision of Schools: A Case Study of Cross-Sectoral Policy Coordination in the Dublin City-Region (NIRSA) Working Paper Series. No. 62.

This paper addresses the actual and potential role of strategic spatial planning in the context of educational infrastructure provision. Specifically, the paper focuses on the planning and provision of primary schools in the Dublin city-region in the context of rapid demographic and social change. The recent economic boom period has been accompanied by a rapid pace of population growth and significant shifts in the demographic composition of society in Ireland and the Dublin city-region, in particular. The analytical focus on planning for the provision of schools constitutes a critical case study of strategic spatial planning in practice. In particular, planning for school provision represents a policy domain where coordination between spatial planning and sectoral policy (i.e. education) functions is required in order to ensure the planning and provision of infrastructure to service the needs of expanding urban and peri-urban residential communities. Although, in most cases, schools are not required for development to proceed1, the need for additional school places may be particularly acute where residential development is accompanied by in-migration of households with a younger than average age profile and high proportion of young children. This paper outlines the challenges and problems associated with the practice of planning primary school provision in the Dublin city-region as well as critically assessing specific policy measures that have been introduced with the objective of improving the capacity of the state to respond to the need for new schools in areas of urban and peri-urban expansion. The analysis in this paper draws on qualitative interviews conducted by the author in 2008 and 2009

‘We are heartbroken and furious!’ Engaging with violence in the (anti-)globalisation movement(s)

This piece is intended as an exploratory comment on the militancy emerging in (anti-)globalisation political practice and in the policing of such practice, rather than as a definitive analysis. As someone who attempts to pursue a tradition of the ‘organic intellectual’ – engaging in the practice of activism as well as the theorising of activist practice – the paper has emerged from my own process of sense-making regarding violence in the ‘(anti-)globalisation movement(s)’. It flows from xperience of irruptive situations, my perceptions of the contextual causes of violence in these situations, and my thinking around the subversive and transformative potential, or otherwise, of violence in engendering radical post-capitalist social relations. I take as a starting point the recent protests against the EU summit meeting in Thessaloniki, June 2003, which culminated in substantial violence against property and towards police by antiauthoritarian protesters, and was met by the police with violent attack and the brutalisation of those arrested. I do not assume a moral standpoint regarding the value or otherwise of violence to ‘the movements’. Instead I try to consider why violence is increasing as a bio-political tactic in these contexts, ‘upfronting’ both the normalisation of psychological and physical violence in the everyday circumstances of late-capitalism, and the depression and anger this engenders. In the interests of strategic debate regarding the usefulness of violence in potentiating post-capitalist social relations, however, I attempt to disentangle the relative (f)utility of acting out, acting upon and denying the experience of anger. My personal stance is to celebrate the transformative potential and energy of the correct attribution of the contextual sources of anger – particularly in shifting between the microcosm of individual circumstances and the macrocosm of structural societal violence within which these arise – whilst upholding a view that violence as a simple reaction to alienating circumstances is likely to maintain rather than shift their brutalising tendencies. My conclusion is both gloomy and hopeful. On the one hand, given that violence to life is both so systemic to late capitalist modernity and that ‘we’ tend to be in such denial regarding its dehumanising psychosocietal effects, I am clear that it is likely that the incidence of violence in protest politics as elsewhere will increase in reaction to this. On the other hand, I celebrate the creative energy present in global anti-capitalist actions and practice, the emergence of a global peace movement as a political force, and the current radicalisation of people otherwise deemed by some to be politically apathetic

Chanticleer | October 31, 2013

https://digitalcommons.jsu.edu/lib_ac_chanty/2626/thumbnail.jp

Reproductive Health and Human Rights: Lessons from Ireland

The years between 2008-2013 were a period of economic austerity and ideological turmoil in Ireland. Alongside the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar, a woman who died in 2012 due to complications resulting from her refused request for an abortion in an Irish hospital, economic, political and ideological forces converged to promote a tipping point in the demand for full sexual and reproductive rights for women in Ireland. Within this temporal moment, a “convergence of various economic, political and ideological forces that make possible the emergence of specific kinds of practices” (Barndt, 2008, p. 36), the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) responded with a call to action based on human rights discourse. Theirs was a unique and compelling approach for social change. While most governmental advisors at the time were calling for reductions in social services, the IFPA spoke out for the necessity of increased government support for women’s health. Specifically, they shed light on the restrictive and discriminatory treatment of women and their sexual and reproductive rights by pointing to the discrepancies in Irish law, service provision and international human rights covenants to which Ireland was a signatory. This paper examines the ways in which the Irish Family Planning Association responded to the tumultuous times and advanced women’s reproductive freedom based on the principles of the universality of human rights. Using the IFPA as a case study, my work employs a content analysis of over 400 pages of documents including IFPA generated annual reports, submissions and publications between 2008-2013 (inclusive) to investigate how, in this particular “moment,” advocacy based on notions of human rights can advance women’s sexual and reproductive health. In this paper, I will discuss two major findings that emerged from my examination of IFPA documents. They are: a) the ways in which the IFPA framed the current state of sexual and reproductive health for women in Ireland in relation to international human rights conventions and treatises to which Ireland is a signatory as a response to the ambiguous and discriminatory nature of Irish law and practice regarding sexual and reproductive health; and b) the ways in which the IFPA called on the Irish state to take responsibility for the provision of health care services and protection of women’s bodily integrity in light of the intense burden which economically disadvantaged women in Ireland suffered as a part of the implementation of post-2008 recession austerity measures

Suffolk Journal, Vol. 54, No. 6, 10/18/1995

https://dc.suffolk.edu/journal/1276/thumbnail.jp

Pathos, Fall 2009

Editors: Richard Hernandez Issue 10https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/pathos/1007/thumbnail.jp

Montana Kaimin, November 18, 1999

Student newspaper of the University of Montana, Missoula.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/studentnewspaper/10292/thumbnail.jp