Peadar Kirby & Luke Gibbons 
Reinventing Ireland 
Culture, Society and the Global Economy

Over the last decade the Irish economy has experienced a period of unprecedented growth which has earned it the title Celtic Tiger. This success has been interpreted by academic commentators as marking a social and cultural transformation, what some have called the reinvention of Ireland. The essays in this book challenge the largely positive interpretation of Ireland’s changing social order.



The authors identify the ways in which culture and society have been made subservient to the needs of the market in this new neoliberal Ireland. They draw on subversive strands in Irish history and offer a broader and more robust understanding of culture as a site of resistance to the dominant social order and as a political means to fashion an alternative future.

Table of Content

Contributors

1. The Reinvention of Ireland: A Critical Perspective by Peadar Kirby, Luke Gibbons and Michael Cronin

Section I: Economy and Society

2. Contested Pedigrees of the Celtic Tiger by Peadar Kirby

3. Culture and State in Ireland’s New Economy by Michel Peillon

4. Speed Limits: Ireland, Globalisation and the War against Time by Michael Cronin

Section II: Public Spaces

5. Citizenship and Education: A Crisis of the Republic? by Joseph Dunne

6. The Global Cure? History, Therapy and the Celtic Tiger by Luke Gibbons

Section III: Historical Legacies

7. Colonialism and the Celtic Tiger: Legacies of History and the Quest for Vision by Geraldine Moane

8: Religion and the Celtic Tiger: The Cultural Legacies of Anti-Catholicism in Ireland by Lionel Pilkington

Section IV: Media

9. The Celtic Tiger’s Media Pundits by Barra Ó Séaghdha

10. Broadcasting and the Celtic Tiger: From Promise to Practice by Roddy Flynn

11. Screening the Green: Cinema under the Celtic Tiger by Debbie Ging

12. Conclusions and Transformations by Peadar Kirby, Luke Gibbons and Michael Cronin

Bibliography

Index

About the author

Michael Cronin is Professor and Chair in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Dublin City University. He is the co-editor of The Irish Review journal and an elected member of the Royal Irish Academy. He is the co-editor of Reinventing Ireland: Culture, Society and the Global Economy (Pluto, 2002).