The Making of the Dublin Conurbation

With the publication of the National Spatial Strategy for Ireland 2002-2020, urban development has come to the fore as a policy issue. It is proposed that the existing urban space will be used more systematically and a higher density encouraged: this will happen through the consolidation of existing settlements, the redevelopment of central urban areas and the re-allocation of under-utilised land and buildings

Strangers in our Midst

In the late summer of 1998, a Tullamore doctor announced that he was offering a reward of £10,000 to trace the origin of rumours circulating about him in this small town in the Midlands. The rumours related to the unexplained disappearance of a young mother from the town. Not only was the doctor alleged to be involved in this disappearance, but all kinds of sinister crimes and practices were mentioned. The doctor's announcement hit the headlines and he was interviewed on the main television news programmes. When the image of this mild-mannered individual with his wife and children appeared on screen, the real issue in this episode became obvious. As an Eastern, Muslim family in the middle of a culturally homogeneous small town, they had been targeted by a campaign of nasty rumours. Whatever the motives or interests of those who started these rumours, a sufficient number of people were willing to believe or half believe this story, to carry it around and spread it, to uphold its plausibility within the collectivity. For a brief time, one glimpsed the uglier side of Irish provincial life

Community of Distrust

In 1995 and 1996, the glue which had kept Irish society together apparently dissolved: trust broke down. We have been confronted with what could have hardly been imagined a few years ago. The revelation of the many occurances of incest and severe abuse which takes place behind the closed doors of the home has brought to public consciousness an horrific side of family life. The daily disclosures of clerical sexual abuse struck hard at the heart of traditional Ireland. And then, it was not longer safe to put our life in the hands of medical institutions, as some patients were dying of the neglect or incompetence of "caring" agencies

Community of Distrust

In 1995 and 1996, the glue which had kept Irish society together apparently dissolved: trust broke down. We have been confronted with what could have hardly been imagined a few years ago. The revelation of the many occurances of incest and severe abuse which takes place behind the closed doors of the home has brought to public consciousness an horrific side of family life. The daily disclosures of clerical sexual abuse struck hard at the heart of traditional Ireland. And then, it was not longer safe to put our life in the hands of medical institutions, as some patients were dying of the neglect or incompetence of "caring" agencies

Peace Protest as Simulacrum

On 9 February 1996, the Irish Republican Army bombed its way out of the ceasefire which had given peace to Ireland for seventeen months. All over the country, this dramatic event triggered a sequence of actions which departed in many ways from conventional protests

Local Family Circles and Suburban Social Life in Ireland (NIRSA) Working Paper Series. No.43.

This paper presents some findings from a research project that sought to generate an empirical account of the texture of social life in new Irish suburbs, through a comparative analysis of four suburban areas. The paper focuses on differences in the structure of family and kinship relations in different kinds of suburbs, and suggests some ways in which those differences are linked to levels of attachment to place amongst couples with young children. We found that, in new Irish suburbs, many families continue to have access to family circles in the locality or nearby. They rely more on kin for everyday social support when their children are very young, but the extent to which they increase their reliance on neighbours as children reach primary school age varies according to the socio-demographic composition of the suburb where they live

The Suburban Front Garden: A spatial entity determined by social and natural processes (NIRSA) Working Paper Series. No. 41

In this article, we argue that the physical structure of the front garden and its ecosystem is determined by an ensemble of diverse social and natural processes. The essential social form is that of visuality,- an abstract compositional force which provides conventions for assessing objects but also for reshaping their surface countenance and establishing their location within the garden. Accordingly, the social processes of visuality are materially realised in the labour processes of gardening, while their consumption is mediated through the concrete process of gazing. The identified social processes include the prospect, aesthetic and panoptic dimensions of visuality. Labour conceives and creates them, while the physical structures and the natural processes reproduce and maintain them beyond the production time attributed to gardening. But they are increasingly undermined by the natural tendency of the plant ecosystem to grow. Consequently, the essential contradiction of the front garden is how the laws and tendencies of the plant ecosystem act as a countertendency to the social forms of visuality. This paper shows that beneath the surface appearance, there exists complex relationships between nature and society in this space we call the suburban front garden

Civic Engagement and The Governance of Irish Suburbs

In 2002, and as part of a larger New Urban Living Study, a survey of Ratoath, Co. Meath was conducted. A small, predominantly rural, townland until the late 1980s, Ratoath had, during the 1990s quickly turned into a new suburb of Dublin. The survey, in its most general objective, endeavoured to comprehend the social fabric produced in such localities