Uncertain Ireland - A Sociological Chronicle, 2003-2004
The Irish Sociological Chronicles present sociological accounts of particular events and phenomena in the social world. The contributors to this volume engage with a variety of happenings and events that occurred during the years 2003 and 2004. A number of the contributions are attuned to the anxieties that have been recently generated about the provenance of the food we eat, about the quality of daily life and about changing value systems and their impact on the wider social fabric. Others raise questions concerning the wholesale encouragement of economic development that may threaten the integrity of an ancient landscape and way of life, the folly of a new consumerism that produces a waste mountain for which nobody accepts responsibility and the love affair with motorways that have singularly failed to regulate traffic flows. The demise of Bewley's cafés, the citizenship referendum, the Club Anabel case and the genesis of the Rossport Five campaign are just some of the topical events chronicled in Uncertain Ireland. What unites the accounts in this book is a curiosity about how to reconcile Ireland's newfound prosperity and economic self-confidence with its accompanying and pervasive sense of uncertainty and contingency. These qualities present challenges, in terms of learning to manage and deal with risks, and opportunities as Irish society adopts creative and innovative means of finding its way in an Uncertain Ireland.