Estereotipos en cuestión: imágenes de irracionalidad en la obra de John Waters, columnista del Irish Times1

In this essay, I discuss the role of stereotypes in the work of John Waters, a columnist for the Irish Times. Waters wears several professional hats –opinion columnist, cultural critic, radio commentator and author of three volumes that fall somewhere between popular sociology and cultural studies–. While Waters is an intelligent and informed writer, in these works he invokes certain “Irish” traits, such as drunkenness, irrationality, and a propensity to violence in a very uncritical fashion, ironically, in pursuit of a self-proclaimed objective of getting Ireland to “decolonise” its thinking. I unpack Waters’ use of these “stereotypes” in two related directions. First, I analyse what Waters is saying about the historical development, and the modern condition, of Irish society and how we might go about understanding his project in this regard. Second, I critically examine the easy dismissal of such presumed culturalnational depictions that Waters is attempting, that is found in a wide swathe of academic disciplines. I conclude by outlining a means of thinking about the related issues of identity and insult.Este ensayo evalúa el papel de los estereotipos en el trabajo de John Waters, un columnista del Irish Times. Waters desempeña varias labores profesionales –columnista de opinión, crítico cultural, comentarista radiofónico y autor de tres volúmenes que se sitúan entre la sociología popular y los estudios culturales–. Si bien Waters es un escritor inteligente e informado, en estos trabajos señala ciertos rasgos “irlandeses”, como la embriaguez, la irracionalidad y la propensión a la violencia de forma muy poco crítica, en busca, irónicamente, del auto proclamado objetivo de que Irlanda llegue a “descolonizar” su pensamiento. Estudio el uso que hace Waters de estos “estereotipos” en dos direcciones interrelacionadas. Primero, analizo lo que dice Waters sobre el desarrollo histórico y la situación moderna de la sociedad irlandesa, y cómo podríamos acercarnos a la comprensión de su proyecto en este sentido. Segundo, examino críticamente la fácil refutación de las descripciones, supuestamente culturales y nacionales, que ensaya Waters y que se encuentran en un amplio abanico de dis- ciplinas académicas. Concluyo bosquejando una manera de pensar sobre los temas relacionados de identidad e insulto

Introduction: Culture, Space, and Representation

These papers represent the proceedings of a conference held under the auspices of the Anthropological Association of Ireland at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, from the 12th to the 14th of December, 1997. While the Irish Journal of Anthropology has historically published individual contributions from AAI conferences, the editors (who also were the co-organisers of this event), felt that the quality and thematic connection of the papers at these meetings were such that a special edition of the Journal was justified. A combination of factors, however, from the academic duties of the editors to the sheer logistics of coordinating contributions from authors several thousand miles apart, delayed the publication of this work. The editors wish to thank those who made this conference a success (particularly the student members of the AAI), and to acknowledge the forbearance of the contributors to this volume in the face of seemingly interminable delays

Of Remedies and Poisons: Recreational Use of Antiretroviral Drugs in the Social Imagination of South African Carers

During an ethnographic study of barriers to, and compliance with, antiretroviral (ARV) treatment in the South Africa’s West Coast region, our team came across a general sense amongst heath care providers that there was a lively illicit trade in antiretroviral medications. In itself, this is seen to be a barrier to adherence for many of their patients whose medication is traded to, or stolen by, drug dealers. Independent anecdotal evidence is emerging about this trade, though there has been little hard data verifying the existence of a recreational market for ARVs. While there are rumours that Efavirenz (some of whose side effects are hallucinogenic) is being used in the manufacture of crystal methamphetamine (locally ‘tik’), such reports, in themselves, do not seem able to explain the ubiquity (and the confidence) of the belief in this trade amongst the health care providers with whom we have interacted. This paper explores aspects of the off-label trade of ARVs (as we have come to know it) and, as importantly, how rumor and knowledge of this trade has gained increasing currency in the social imagination of health and social care workers. This, we argue, could precipitate a real crisis in the Government’s public rollout programme

An Uncertain Dominion: Irish Psychiatry, Methadone, and the Treatment of Opiate Abuse

This paper investigates some productive ambiguities around the medical administration of methadone in the Republic of Ireland. The tensions surrounding methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) are outlined, as well as the sociohistorical context in which a serious heroin addiction problem in Ireland developed. Irish psychiatry intervened in this situation, during a time of institutional change, debates concerning the nature of addiction, moral panics concerning heroin addiction in Irish society and the recent boom in the Irish economy, known popularly as the Celtic Tiger. A particular history of this sort illuminates how technologies like MMT become cosmopolitan, settling into, while changing, local contexts

Enshrining Vietnamese-Irish lives

In his absurdist masterpiece An Béal Bocht, the author Flann O’Brien included an Irish map of the world drawn by the artist Seán O’Sullivan. Only the significant spaces were marked, including Sligo Jail, travel routes to Scotland and deposits of illegal alcohol. The United States (‘Overseas’) contained little of note except for New York, Boston, Springfield Massachusetts, some long-horned cattle and a few money order offices.1 England (‘the Other Side’) had even less of significance: it had fewer money order offices, but did reveal one outstanding feature – the Irishman George Bernard Shaw

Mad Kings, Proper Houses, and an Asylum in Rural Ireland

WHAT IF THEY built an asylum and nobody showed up? By asking this question, I mean to forefront the problem of what sort of a structure it is to which people are committed or present themselves. In the extensive literature on asylums that has developed over the course of the last three decades, most authors assume a needy or dominated population to exist around such buildings who eventually give over their unfortunates to fill them up. Few theorists, moreover, look seriously at those who staff these structures, who are, at least in the rank-and-filejobs, generally locals. Thus, while we can find an ample literature about asylums as tokens of a type, we find much less on the actual local existence of any particular institution. 1 This essay developed out of a project investigating the cultural and historical relationships between a (recently) large mental hospital, St. Columba's Hospital in Sligo town, serving the counties of Sligo and Leitrim in the northwest of Ireland, and a market town and its environs, containing about 1,600 people, that for the purposes of this study I am calling Kilronan. In this paper I am interested in the local presence of a bureaucratic structure, examining how this institution is locally constituted as well as looking at some of the historical changes that it has effected at this locality. By proceeding in this fashion, the argument both echoes and reinforces recent calls in the discipline to treat together local, colonial, and national histories, insisting that understanding historical change in culture and understanding how culture conditions historical change are equally necessary parts of a comprehensive anthropological analysi

The arts of memory Icon and structural violence in a Dublin 'underclass' housing estate

This paper deals with the complex relationships between, and some of the everyday practices that go into, remem- bering and forgetting within a conflicted political field. The object of this analysis is a set of murals in an eco- nomically and socially marginal housing estate on the out- skirts of Dublin, and some of the social activities that they either commemorate or pass over. This analysis requires an ‘archaeology’ of a sort, in the sense that both virtual and material layers have to be scraped away, not to reveal some deeper truth, but to outline the field of forces that create truth-effects within this context (Foucault 1973a, Rabinow 1996). If this process is conducted carefully with due regard for local knowledge, however, the rewards are high. An obscure wall in an unfashionable Dublin suburb that most people in the capital have never been to (and that many people would never want to visit), displays multiple and conflicting configurations of violence, resistance, community, ownership, even hope. To understand this wall, though, an entire local world needs to be outlined, and the connections between this local world and national and transnational forces need to be appreciated. Perhaps appropriately, the analysis begins and ends with a defaced tabula rasa

Culture and History in the Halfway House: Ethnography, Tradition, and the Rural Middle Class in the West of Ireland

In this essay, I examine aspects of the life of a mental hospital nurse in the context of two main discourses (1) cultural debates about Ireland over the course of the last century or so, and (2) how the west of the island has been portrayed in some ethnographic writings. I argue that this nurse is situated partially in and partially out of both these discourses, and, furthermore, he is implicated in reproducingsome ideas that render such judgment possible. I put forward a concept of ‘‘brokerage’’ to explain how objects and narratives that invoke a ‘‘tradition’’ stretching back into contested and intellectually murky histories can be experienced as felt orientations within a cultural environment

Of Remedies and Poisons: Recreational Use of Antiretroviral Drugs in the Social Imagination of South African Carers

During an ethnographic study of barriers to, and compliance with, antiretroviral (ARV) treatment in the South Africa’s West Coast region, our team came across a general sense amongst heath care providers that there was a lively illicit trade in antiretroviral medications. In itself, this is seen to be a barrier to adherence for many of their patients whose medication is traded to, or stolen by, drug dealers. Independent anecdotal evidence is emerging about this trade, though there has been little hard data verifying the existence of a recreational market for ARVs. While there are rumours that Efavirenz (some of whose side effects are hallucinogenic) is being used in the manufacture of crystal methamphetamine (locally ‘tik’), such reports, in themselves, do not seem able to explain the ubiquity (and the confidence) of the belief in this trade amongst the health care providers with whom we have interacted. This paper explores aspects of the off-label trade of ARVs (as we have come to know it) and, as importantly, how rumor and knowledge of this trade has gained increasing currency in the social imagination of health and social care workers. This, we argue, could precipitate a real crisis in the Government’s public rollout programme

Mad Kings, Proper Houses, and an Asylum in Rural Ireland

WHAT IF THEY built an asylum and nobody showed up? By asking this question, I mean to forefront the problem of what sort of a structure it is to which people are committed or present themselves. In the extensive literature on asylums that has developed over the course of the last three decades, most authors assume a needy or dominated population to exist around such buildings who eventually give over their unfortunates to fill them up. Few theorists, moreover, look seriously at those who staff these structures, who are, at least in the rank-and-filejobs, generally locals. Thus, while we can find an ample literature about asylums as tokens of a type, we find much less on the actual local existence of any particular institution. 1 This essay developed out of a project investigating the cultural and historical relationships between a (recently) large mental hospital, St. Columba's Hospital in Sligo town, serving the counties of Sligo and Leitrim in the northwest of Ireland, and a market town and its environs, containing about 1,600 people, that for the purposes of this study I am calling Kilronan. In this paper I am interested in the local presence of a bureaucratic structure, examining how this institution is locally constituted as well as looking at some of the historical changes that it has effected at this locality. By proceeding in this fashion, the argument both echoes and reinforces recent calls in the discipline to treat together local, colonial, and national histories, insisting that understanding historical change in culture and understanding how culture conditions historical change are equally necessary parts of a comprehensive anthropological analysi