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Anarchism may be the most misunderstood political ideology of the modern era—it’s surely one of the least studied social movements by English-speaking scholars. Black Flags and Social Movements addresses this deficit with an in-depth analysis of contemporary anarchist movements, as interpreted by social movement theories and the analytical tools of political sociologists. Using unique datasets—gathered by anarchists themselves—the book presents longitudinal and international analyses that focus upon who anarchists are (similar, yet, different from classic anarchists) and where they may be found (most countries in the world, but especially in European and North American cities). Even though scholars have studiously avoided the contradictions and complications that anti-state movements present for their theories, numerous social movement ideas, including political opportunity, new social movements, and social capital theory, are relevant and adaptable to understanding anarchist movements. Due to their sometimes limited numbers and due to their identities as radical anti-authoritarians, anarchists often find themselves collaborating with numerous other social movements, bringing along their values, ideas, and tactics.

Edward Shils was an important figure in twentieth century social theory, and a true transatlantic thinker who divided his time between the University of Chicago and the U.K. He was friends with many important thinkers in other fields, such as Michael Polanyi and Saul Bellow. He became known to sociologists through his brief collaboration with Talcott Parsons, but his own thinking diverged both from Parsons and conventional sociology. He developed but never finalized a comprehensive image of human society made up of personal, civic, and sacred bonds. But much of his thought was focused on conflicts: between intellectuals and their societies, between tradition and modernity, ideological conflict, and conflicts within the traditions of the modern liberal democratic state. This book explores the thought of Shils, his relations to key figures, his key themes and ideas, and his abiding interests in such topics as the academic tradition and universities. Together, the chapters provide the most comprehensive picture of Shils as a thinker, and explain his continuing relevance.

The last several decades have witnessed major changes in gender roles and family patterns, as well as a falling birth rate in Ireland and the rest of Europe. This book presents the results of the first major study to examine people’s attitudes to family formation and childbearing in Ireland; it also explores the effect of new family forms on well-being. The research was based on an in-depth qualitative study of 48 men and women in the childbearing age group, followed by a survey of a representative sample of 1,404 men and women. The study explored whether changes in gender roles impacted on family formation. The results showed that while women’s progress in the workplace has been welcomed, there is also a perceived threat of women’s advancement, as well as some ambiguity in the male role. Attitudes towards marriage and cohabitation are positive and cohabitation is seen as a step in the progression towards marriage. Attitudes towards being single are also positive, though in some cases ambivalent, but single women, particularly older and better educated ones are finding it more difficult to find a partner and this is impeding family formation on their part. Differences in women’s and men’s biological clocks were found to be important in relation to this, as were the lack of affordable childcare and flexible working arrangements. The findings were discussed in light of the demographic trends of later marriage, decreasing fertility and the increasing proportion of single people in the population.

Prisoner enfranchisement remains one of the few contested electoral issues in twenty first century democracies. It is at the intersection of punishment and representative government. This book is the first comprehensive study of prisoners and the franchise in any jurisdiction. In a democratic polity, the deliberate denial of the right to vote to any section of the population has very serious implications, both symbolic, in terms of devaluing citizenship, and practical, in terms of affecting electoral outcomes. Conversely, the extension of the franchise is similarly emblematic of a political system’s priorities and emphases. The debate about prisoner enfranchisement is significant because it gives us some insights into the objectives of imprisonment, society’s conflicted attitude towards prisoners, the nature of democracy and the concept of citizenship. This book begins by considering the case for and against prisoner enfranchisement and then goes on to examine the jurisprudence in various jurisdictions where it has been a matter of legal and political controversy. Using the Republic of Ireland as a case study, this book analyses the experience of prisoner enfranchisement and locates it in an international context. It argues that the legal position concerning the voting rights of the imprisoned reveals wider historical, political and social influences in the treatment of those confined in penal institutions.

This exploration of one of the most concentrated immigrant communities in Britain combines a new narrative history, a theoretical analysis of the evolving relationship between progressive left politics and ethnic minorities, and a critique of political multiculturalism. Its central concern is the perennial question of how to propagate an effective radical politics in a multicultural society: how to promote greater equality that benefits both ethnic minorities and the wider population, and why so little has been achieved. It charts how the Bengali Muslims in London’s East End have responded to the pulls of class, ethnicity and religion; and how these have been differently reinforced by wider political movements. Drawing on extensive recorded interviews, ethnographic observation, and long sorties into the local archives, it recounts and analyses the experiences of many of those who took part in over six decades of political history that range over secular nationalism, trade unionism, black radicalism, mainstream local politics, Islamism, and the rise and fall of the Respect Coalition. Through this Bengali case study and examples from wider immigrant politics, it traces the development and adoption of the concepts of popular frontism and revolutionary stages theory and of the identity politics that these ideas made possible. It demonstrates how these theories and tactics have cut across class-based organisation and acted as an impediment to tackling cross-cultural inequality; and it argues instead for a left alternative that addresses fundamental socio-economic divisions.

What are the human consequences of war, conflict and terrorism, and what are the appropriate policy and service responses? This book seeks to provide some answers to these important questions, drawing upon over 25 years’ work by the author in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. Focusing on the work undertaken following the Omagh bombing in 1998, the book describes how needs were assessed and understood, how evidence-based therapy services were put in place and the training and education programmes that were developed to assist first those communities affected by the Omagh bombing - and later the wider population affected by the years of conflict. The author places the mental health needs of conflict-affected victims and communities at the heart of the political and peace processes that follow when conflicts end. This is a practical book and will be of particular interest to those planning for and responding to conflict-related disasters and terrorism, policy makers, service commissioners and providers, politicians, diplomats, civil servants, leaders of religion, peace builders and peace makers. It also includes an extensive overview of the efforts to understand the mental health impact of the years of violence in Northern Ireland, reviewing for example, the impacts of loss and PTSD, why it seemed to take so long to recognise the impact, and the challenges of undertaking research in a community that is in violent conflict.

This is the first definitive examination of the practice of corporate regulation and enforcement from the foundation of the Irish State to the present day. It analyses the transition in Ireland from a sanctioning, ‘command and control’ model of corporate enforcement to the compliance-orientated, responsive regulatory model. It is also unique in locating this shift in its broader sociological and jurisprudential context. It provides a definitive account of a State at a critical stage of its economic development, having moved from an agrarian and protected society to a free-market globalised economy which is trying to cope with the negative aspects of increased corporate activity, having experienced an economic boom and depression in a remarkably condensed period of time. Traditionally, corporate wrongdoing was often criminalised using conventional criminal justice methods and the ordinary police were often charged with the responsibility of enforcing the law. Since the 1990s, however, the conventional crime monopoly on corporate deviancy has become fragmented because a variety of specialist, interdisciplinary agencies with enhanced powers now address corporate wrongdoing. The exclusive dominance of conventional crime methods has also faded because corporate wrongdoing is now specifically addressed by a responsive enforcement architecture, taking compliance orientated and sanctioning approaches, using both civil and criminal enforcement mechanisms, where criminal law is now the sanction of last resort.

This book brings together studies of cultural institutions in Manchester from 1850 to the present day, giving an unprecedented account of the city’s cultural evolution. These bring to light the remarkable range of Manchester’s contribution to modern cultural life, including the role of art education, popular theatre, religion, pleasure gardens, clubs and societies. The chapters show the resilience and creativity of Manchester’s cultural institutions since 1850, challenging any simple narrative of urban decline following the erosion of Lancashire’s industrial base, at the same time illustrating the range of activities across the social classes. The essays are organized chronologically. They consider the role of calico printers in the rise of art education in Britain; the origins and early years of the Belle Vue Zoological Gardens; the formation of the Manchester Dante Society in 1906; the importance of theatre architecture in the social life of the city; the place of religion in early twentieth-century Manchester, in the case of its Methodist Mission; the cosmopolitan nature of the Manchester International Club, founded in 1937; cultural participation in contemporary Manchester; and questions of culture and class in the case of a contemporary theatre group.

Domestic Fortress offers a critical analysis of the contemporary home and its close relationship to fear and security. It considers the important connection between the private home, political life and the economy that we term tessellated neoliberalism. The book considers the nucleus of the domestic home as part of a much larger archipelago frontline of homes and gated communities that appear as a new home front set against diverse sources of social anxiety. These range from questions of invasion (such as burglary or identity theft) to those of security (the home as a financial resource in retirement and as a place of refuge in an unpredictable world). A culture of fear has been responded to through increasingly emphatic retreats by homeowners into fortified dwellings, palatial houses, concealed bunker pads and gated developments. Many feature elaborate security measures; alarms, CCTV systems, motion-sensing lights and impregnable panic rooms. Domestic Fortresslocates the anxieties driving these responses to the corporate and political manufacturing of fear, the triumph of neoliberal models of homeownership and related modes of social individualisation and risk that permeate society today. Domestic Fortress draws on perspectives and research from criminology, urban studies and sociology to offer a sense of the private home as a site of wavering anxiety and security, exclusion and warmth, alongside dreams of retreat and autonomy that mesh closely with the defining principles of neoliberal governance. Even as the home is acknowledged to play a vital role in sheltering us from the elements so it has now come to be a locus around which many anxieties are shut-out. The home allows us to lock out the daily hardships of life, but is also a site from which we witness a wide range of troubling phenomena: the insecurities of the workplace, plans for our future welfare, internationalized terror, geo-political warfare, ecological catastrophes, feelings of loss and uncertainty around identity, to say nothing of the daily risks of flood, fire and other disasters. The home now plays a complex dual role that slips between offering us protection from these worries while also offering the nightmare of its own possible invasion, erosion or destruction. On top of these concerns entire industries have been built that sell a war against strangers, dirt and disaster. This of course includes the insurance industry itself, but also the use of technologies that both protect the home and make it effectively more impregnable to casual social contact as well as the proliferation of products devoted to domestic cleanliness. Domestic Fortress considers the fantasies and realities of dangers to the contemporary home and its inhabitants and details the wide range of actions taken in the pursuit of total safety.

This book considers the 1966 World Cup as a key ‘moment of modernity’ in England’s post-war history. The World Cup is examined within the complexity of the cultural, social and political change of the mid-1960s. Although addressing the importance of non-sport related connections, the book maintains a focus on football (soccer), discussing it as a ‘cultural form’ and presenting an original perspective on the aesthetic accomplishment in football tactics by the England team manager, Alf Ramsey. Chapters on the cup tradition and the World Cup and England as a World Cup host nation (with a case study focus on Liverpool as a host city) are followed by chapters on the relations in masculinity between Ramsey and his England team and Ramsey’s strategy for football play considered within the context of English modernism. England’s victory is a key theme in the book and, in this regard, later chapters consider the ways in which the victory has been remembered and commemorated. A chapter is also dedicated to critically discussing existing academic accounts that refer to the ideological construction of a ‘myth of 1966’. Via this critical discussion a fresh view of how English identity might be considered in relation to England’s victory is offered.

The Irish health system is confronted by a range of challenges, both emerging and recurring. In order to address these, it is essential that spaces are created for conversations around complex ethical and legal issues. This collection aims to provide a basis for ongoing engagement with selected issues in contemporary Irish health contexts. It includes contributions from scholars and practitioners across a range of disciplines, most particularly, ethics, law and medicine. The focus of the collection is interdisciplinary and the essays are situated at the intersection between ethics, law and medicine. Important issues addressed include admission to care homes; assisted suicide; adolescent decision-making; allocation of finite resources; conscientious objection; data protection; decision-making at the end of life; mental health; the rights of older people; patient responsibilities; stem cell research; the role of carers; and reproductive rights. From these discussion, the collection draws out the following interlinking themes, addressing difference; context and care; oversight and decision-making; and, regulating research. The essays are theoretically informed and are grounded in the realities of the Irish health system, by drawing on contributors’ contextual knowledge. This book makes an informed and balanced contribution to academic and broader public discourse.

Family Rhythms is a comprehensive, user-friendly text that opens a new window on family change in Ireland. The authors draw on major new qualitative longitudinal datasets to develop a rich account of continuity and change in the textures, meanings and rhythms of family life in Ireland since the early years of the state. Consistent with the recent turn to more inductive approaches in family studies, the book focuses on changing everyday practices in different family life stages: childhood, early adulthood, the middle years and grandparenthood. Readers acquire insights on the diverse experiences of family life from different historical and generational points of view and on the associated challenges for social policy. Throughout, qualitative findings are placed in the context of societal shifts in demography, value systems, household economies, and patterns of kinship, community and public life. For each life stage, the Irish experience is also placed in a comparative European context. The book includes a state-of-the-art introduction to contemporary sociological perspectives on family life and introduces readers to the wealth of historical and contemporary research on family life in Ireland. Highlighted panels invite readers to look in more detail at selected landmark Irish studies and to explore extracts from the qualitative data for themselves.

Gas and oil are pivotal to the functioning of modern societies, yet the ownership, control, production and consumption of hydrocarbons often provokes intense disputes with serious social, economic, and political ramifications. In Gas, Oil and the Irish State, Amanda Slevin examines the dynamics and conflicts of state hydrocarbon management and provides the first comprehensive study of the Irish model. Interpreting the Corrib gas conflict as a microcosm of the Irish state's approach to hydrocarbon management, Slevin articulates environmental, health and safety concerns which underpin community resistance to the project. She emphasises how the dispute exposed broader issues, such as the privatisation of Irish hydrocarbons in exchange for one of the lowest rates of government take in the world, and served to problematise how the state functions, its close relationship with capital, and its deployment of coercive force to repress dissent. Analysis of these issues occurs within an original account of decision-making and policy formation around Irish hydrocarbons from 1957 to 2014. Slevin traces the development of the state's approach in tandem with occurrences in Irish political economy and examines the impact of global trends on different approaches to hydrocarbon management. A detailed case study of Norway reveals ideological, political, social and economic forces which influence how states manage their hydrocarbons and the author uses those factors as the basis for a rigorous critique of the Irish model. Examining subjects that are simultaneously empirical and ideological, historical and current, the focus of this book extends beyond decision-making processes within the state system to their impacts on people's lives in communities. Slevin uncovers the social, environmental, economic, and political consequences of current policies and offers a blueprint for an alternative framework for hydrocarbon management.

Great Satan's rage looks at how rap and metal have been highly engaged with America’s role in the world, supercapitalism and their own role within it. This has especially been the case when genres – hitherto clearly identified as indelibly ‘black’ or ‘white’ forms of music – have crossed over as an effect of cross-racial forms of identification and desire, marketing strategy, political engagement, opportunism and experimentation. It is how examples of these forms have negotiated, contested, raged against, survived, exploited, simulated and performed ‘Satan’s rage’ that is the subject of this book. The book offers a highly original approach in relating rap/metal to critical theories of economy and culture, introducing a new method of cultural analysis based on theories of negativity and expenditure that will be of great interest to students in media and cultural studies, American studies, critical and cultural theory, advertising and marketing, and sociology and politics.

This is the first book-length study of the humanities from Newman to Bologna in the Irish context. It focuses on unique characteristics of university policy in the National University that constrained humanities education. Ireland was a deeply religious country throughout the twentieth century but the colleges of its National University never established a theology or religion department. The official first language of Ireland is Irish but virtually all teaching in the Arts and Humanities is in English. The book examines the influence of such anomalies on humanities education and on Irish society in general. Has the humanities ethos of the Irish University departed radically from the educational ideals of John Henry Newman, its most illustrious ‘founder’? The book re-examines Newman’s vision for the university as well as responses to the 1908 Universities Act. It investigates how leading Irish educationalists and cultural theorists such as Padraig, Pearse, Denis Donoghue, J. J. Lee, Declan Kiberd and Richard Kearney nurtured an Irish humanities perspective in response to more established humanities traditions associated with F. R. Leavis, Edward Said, and Martha Nussbaum. The book employs a comparative approach in examining recent humanities movements such as Irish Studies and postcolonial studies. Humanities debates from other national contexts such as France, the US, and Asia are examined in light of influential work on the university by Samuel Weber, Immanuel Kant, Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Derrida. This book will appeal to the general public and to students and scholars of Irish education, history and cultural theory.

Freedom of information (FOI) is important because it aims to makes government open, transparent and accountable. FOI legislation is based on the premise that people have the right of access to public documents, save for certain exemptions. The philosophy behind such legislation is that citizens have a ‘right to know’ how and why decisions are made by government in their name. In that context it could be argued that FOI legislation also has the potential to lead to more accountable government, less corruption and better democratic outcomes for states. This book traces Ireland’s experience of FOI legislation, from the first FOI Act in 1997, to the amendments that significantly constrained its provisions in 2003, to the proposed new revisions that will come into operation in 2013. Following from that, it looks at the operation and use of FOI from a series of perspectives: from a governmental perspective, taking views from public officials and politicians, in government and in opposition; from a state perspective, looking at the legal balancing act between keeping secrets and keeping government accountable; from a journalist perspective on the use and misuse of FOI; and from a citizen’s perspective, using FOI to develop active citizenship and engagement. Finally, taking all of these views into account, the book assesses the extent to which FOI has contributed to, and may continue to contribute to, political reform.

In the first book detailing the social and economic history of Ireland during the Second World War, Dr Bryce Evans reveals the hidden story of the Irish Emergency. If the diplomatic history of Irish neutrality is familiar, the realities of everyday life are much less so. This work provides a clear summary of Ireland’s economic survival at the time as well as an indispensable overview of every published work on Ireland during the Second World War. While useful as a textbook introducing writing about the period, the book contributes a new and enlightening take on popular material and spiritual existence as global conflict impacted the country. It compares economic and social conditions in Ireland to those of the other European neutral states: Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal. It explores how the government coped with the crisis and how ordinary Irish people reacted to emergency state control of the marketplace. With their government wounded by British economic warfare, the Irish people engaged in the black market, cross-border smuggling, and popular resistance. Exploring how notions of morality intersected with state-regulated production, consumption and distribution, this study reveals a colourful history detailing exploitation, deprivation, deviance and intolerance amidst the state’s shaky survival. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, this book provides a slice of real life during a pivotal episode in Irish and world history. It will be essential reading to the informed general reader, students, and academics alike.

For the uninitiated, the Irish District Court is a place of incomprehensible, organised chaos. This detailed account of the court’s criminal proceedings, based on an original study that involved observing hundreds of cases, aims to demystify the mayhem and provide the reader with descriptions of language, participant discourse and procedure in criminal cases. The book also captures an important change in the District Court: the advent of the immigrant or the Limited-English-proficient (LEP) defendant. It traces the rise of these defendants and explores the issues involved in ensuring access to justice across languages. It also provides an original description of LEP defendants and interpreters in District Court proceedings, ultimately considering how they have altered the District Court as an institution and how the characteristics of the District Court affect the ability of limited English proficient defendants to access justice at this level of the Irish courts system.

Labour and working-class lives is a collection of essays in honour of the work and publications of the eminent and influential historian Professor Chris Wrigley. They are written by a number of leading historians – Joan Allen, Ken Brown, Malcolm Chase, Dick Geary, Kevin Jefferys, Keith Laybourn, Nicole Robertson, Andrew Thorpe, Jan Shepherd, John Shepherd, Noel Whiteside and Matthew Worley. They also draw upon a wide range of topics and offer the latest research on British labour, social and economic history. These include the study of trade unionism in relation to the Labour Party, state insurance, and the organisation of women. There are studies of both political and pressure groups, such as the Independent Labour Party, Progressive League and the Co-operative Movement. Some of the essays examine the political contribution made by figures within, or on the fringes, of the history of labour in Britain, including the Lansburys and the Herbert Gladstone. There is also a comparative study of the cultural milieu of the British and German working classes. The final essay examines the topical and almost constant question ‘Must Labour Lose?’ This collection is therefore an essential and vital contribution to the study of modern British and labour history and a fitting tribute to the inspirational work in the field made by Chris Wrigley.