Cultural Policy and the Creative City: Legitimation Discourses, Culture and the State

This thesis addresses cultural policy. It proposes that the creative city urban development paradigm is a useful perspective from which cultural policy can be analysed in order to reveal the imperatives, pressures, contingencies and deficits within it and the state, vis-à-vis the market. The thesis, therefore, rests on three analytical pillars: the general field of cultural policy, the specific construct of the creative city paradigm, and an investigation of relations between these domains through a study of policy texts in Scotland, Finland and Ireland. Using Michel Foucault’s discourse formation theory and Jurgen Habermas’s concepts of lifeworld, system, legitimation and colonisation, the dissertation demonstrates that instrumental discourses like the creative city are used to legitimate cultural policies by providing tangible rationales for investment in culture and by addressing local state issues, though this process ultimately works to delegitimate cultural policy. The thesis also shows that cultural policies typically deploy conflicting and dual discourses that appeal to the interests of the state and the public, as well as obfuscating prevailing state ideologies. It is argued that this characteristic has developed because of difficulties with defining culture, the weakness of the policy sector and the state’s interest in sustaining itself. From the case material, therefore, it is firstly demonstrated that cultural policy does not have a tangible policy mandate, is not a sui generis area of public policy, and is primarily used to address central government agendas and other policy sectors. It is further shown that this understanding of cultural policy is held at the highest political levels and therefore constitutes the a priori purpose of contemporary cultural policy. Secondly, using Peter Sloterdijk’s concept of cynical reason, this thesis demonstrates that the dependency and perpetual case-making of the cultural sector evident in rational instrumental discourses like the creative city, leads to a cynicism amongst the stakeholders of cultural policy ii which impacts on the functioning of their relationships. Thirdly, though instrumentalism is endemic to all policy, cultural policy’s dependency, weak status and relationship to the market are reflexively linked and lead to a structural or cyclical instrumentalism in cultural policy. This cycle of instrumentalism exacerbates difficulties amongst stakeholder relationships, and can result in a colonisation or imbalance between political-economic and socio-cultural imperatives in a policy sector that is already in deficit, with implications for the state. This analysis, therefore, results in a new consideration of the role and implications of the creative city paradigm in relation to cultural policy, public policy and the stat

What should be the contribution of further and higher education in Ireland to the current global economic crisis?

This paper will be in two parts; the first section will examine the current tertiary education situation in Ireland amid the global economic crisis and will review what should education’s contribution be to help alleviate the crisis. Through doing this both the state and the market, who have interests in the academy and their graduates produced, will become part of the review, as building stronger links with the academy and the economy to help raise skills, efficiency and productivity is becoming more important in ensuring global competitiveness and retaining equality and accessibility in the academy (see Gaffikin and Morrissey, 2003: 98). The second and final section will look at the merge of entrepreneurship and education. As the lifelong learning society is conceptualised largely in terms of maintaining a flexible and competitive economy in the knowledge society, the concept of an entrepreneurial society will be proposed to fill the gap which has emerged since the exit of many international companies for cheaper labour elsewhere. Within all levels of education entrepreneurship should be encouraged and embedded in the curricula from the earliest stages as a prevention rather than cure to the current economic crisis in Ireland

Crossing Over : Fiddle and Dance Studies from around the North Atlantic 3

Publisher PD

Colonialism, Continuity and Change: A Multidisciplinary Study of the Relationship between Colonialism and Iron Age and Medieval Settlement in the North Channel

This dissertation investigates the relationship between colonialism and settlement. It examines three episodes of colonialism in two case-study regions facing each other across the North Channel, corresponding to eastern Northern Ireland (‘Ulidia’), and mid-western Scotland (‘Ergadia’). By comparing different forms of colonial activity across several time periods and between two regions, the dissertation improves our understanding of colonialism and migration across time and space. The first episode involved the purported elite migration of the Dál Riata from northeast Ireland to western Scotland c.AD500. The second involved the arrival in both regions and beyond of raiders and settlers from Scandinavia c.AD790–850. The third involved a group of settlers mainly from England and Wales, who established the earldom of Ulster as part of a wider expansion into Ireland c.AD1167–1200. The analysis of the continuities and discontinuities in both case studies was based on a series of chronological syntheses drawing together the archaeological, architectural and documentary evidence for settlement in each region c.800BC–AD1400. It was further augmented by employing burial and toponymic evidence as proxies for settlement. Combined with the textual narrative, the archaeological syntheses enabled an examination of, firstly, whether colonial activity actually occurred, and, secondly, the form of colonialism that took place and the processes that lay behind it. To structure the interpretation, each colonial episode was broken down into contact, expansion, consolidation and domination phases, with further phases based on their socio-political and transcultural outcomes. The Dál Riata episode was probably not an example of colonialism. The documentary evidence was found to be unreliable and related to a late reshaping of a usable past. Moreover, there was no visible shift in settlement practices identifiable with incoming colonists. The Scandinavian episode differed on either side of the North Channel. There is no evidence that settlers got beyond a consolidation phase in Ulidia, with very little impact on traditional burial practices, settlement, and language use. Conversely, in Ergadia a major shift was apparent in secular settlement and burial practices. The appearance of a large number of Old Norse placenames also indicates settlement involving several social orders. This heavily influenced the socio-political makeup of the region to at least the fourteenth century. In the third episode, a domination phase was also reached in Ulidia. It involved the establishment of a new extractive elite, with shifts in settlement and toponymic, but not burial, practice.St John's College Benefactors' Scholarshi

DRIVER Technology Watch Report

This report is part of the Discovery Workpackage (WP4) and is the third report out of four deliverables. The objective of this report is to give an overview of the latest technical developments in the world of digital repositories, digital libraries and beyond, in order to serve as theoretical and practical input for the technical DRIVER developments, especially those focused on enhanced publications. This report consists of two main parts, one part focuses on interoperability standards for enhanced publications, the other part consists of three subchapters, which give a landscape picture of current and surfacing technologies and communities crucial to DRIVER. These three subchapters contain the GRID, CRIS and LTP communities and technologies. Every chapter contains a theoretical explanation, followed by case studies and the outcomes and opportunities for DRIVER in this field

A case study of the televised international newsflow of Raidió Teilifís Éireann and The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: A comparative content analysis

The objective of this comparative newsflow study was to analyse the televised international news broadcast in the national public service of Canada and the Republic of Ireland over a thirty-day term. In doing so, a quantitative content analysis comparing the output of two national public service providers (PSB), Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is offered. In identifying the national origin of the international news, those reports utilizing the foreign correspondents of the PSBs were quantified. Finally, the ratio of international to domestic reportage and the volume of international news reports by quantity and duration are also compared. This study reviews the literature of cultural, corporate and state sovereignty as it looks to the regulatory structures of the broadcasters. Gatekeeping dynamics and the critical media ecology of a re-feudalizing public sphere are addressed as are the roles of framing and domestication. An exploration of cultural imperialism and the newsflow studies of globalization and deregulation are also undertaken. The commercialization of international news values, compassion fatigue and declining demand are similarly explored. Satellite broadcasting and the influence of the news agencies is considered as is the literature pertaining to crisis-news driven parachute journalism and the role of the foreign correspondent. The study revealed that the real sovereignty of both the CBC and RTÉ is demonstrably limited in terms of their ability to control the production chain from the source of the news through to the audiences. It’s argued that larger outputs of international news increase the value accrued to civic knowledge and therein the value of the service offered. In terms of the offered ‘value for public money’ it’s concluded that audiences of the CBC routinely receive greater value than do those of RTÉ

HISTORY URBANISM RESILIENCE VOLUME 05:

The 17th conference (2016, Delft) of the International Planning History Society (IPHS) and its proceedings place presentations from different continents and on varied topics side by side, providing insight into state-of-the art research in the field of planning history and offering a glimpse of new approaches, themes, papers and books to come. VOLUME 05: Historical Perspective

How to design for persistence and retention in MOOCs?

Design of educational interventions is typically carried out following a design cycle involving phases of investigation, conceptualization, prototyping, implementation, execution and evaluation. This cycle can be applied at different levels of granularity e.g. learning activity, module, course or programme. In this paper we consider an aspect of learner behavior that can be critical to the success of many MOOCs i.e. their persistence to study, and the related theme of learner retention. We reflect on the impact that consideration of these can have on design decisions at different stages in the design cycle with the aim of en-hancing MOOC design in relation to learner persistence and retention, with particular attention to the European context