This book provides an analysis of neo-liberal political economics implemented in Ireland and the deleterious consequences of that model in terms of polarised social inequalities, impoverished public services and fiscal vulnerability as they appear in central social policy domains – health, housing and education in particular. Tracing the argument into the domains where the institutions are sustained and reproduced, this book examines the movement of modern economics away from its original concern with the household and anthropologically universal deep human needs to care for the vulnerable – the sick, children and the elderly – and to maintain inter-generational solidarity. The authors argue that the financialisation of social relations undermines the foundations of civilisation and opens up a marketised barbarism. Civic catastrophes of violent conflict and authoritarian liberalism are here illustrated as aspects of the 'rough beast' that slouches in when things are falling apart and people become prey to new forms of domination.

The domestic, moral and political economies of post-Celtic Tiger Ireland: What rough beast? (Irish Society)

History

Keohane, Kieran

Kuhling, Carmen

Europe

Manchester University Press

Cosmopolitan Ireland: Globalisation and Quality of Life

 Ireland is going through a period of unprecedented economic and cultural growth and renewal. These changes are due in part to neoliberal policies that have attracted foreign investment. The globalization of Ireland’s economy has had major social consequences. Living standards are rising quickly. Emigration has reversed. Catholicism has been secularized, laws on divorce and sexuality have been liberalized. Ireland has become an urban society for the first time. But there is stark inequality and social exclusion; epidemics of depression, alcoholism, and obesity; traditional values and community are declining; and there is deep ambivalence towards immigrants. Ireland’s economy is globalized, but is Irish society cosmopolitan? Wealth has increased, but has quality of life improved? The authors explore the developments of the last 15 years, capturing the intensity of the debates that make up the new cosmopolitan multi-cultural Ireland.

Cosmopolitan Ireland: Globalization and Quality of Life

Business & Money

Economics

Pluto Press

Symptoms of Canada: An Essay on the Canadian Identity

In This Provocative Essay On The Canadian Identity, Kieran Keohane Gives Us his outsider's take on Canada's most debated issue. Keohane argues that conflicting objectives have caused the impasse in our search for collective identity. These objectives are marked by Official Multiculturalism, a proliferation of interest groups, and resurgent xenophobia. Integrating social and political theory with witty examples, he explores how a strong Canadian identity might be constructed.Keohane steers us away from the pitfalls of universalism or postmodern fragmentation into particularisms. The Canadian identity, he observes, lies in our unique commitment to remaining open to difference. Canadians maintain this commitment with a certain jouissance: for us, difference is both painful and pleasurable, conflicting and conciliatory. 'Symptoms' of our relationship to difference appear in everyday phenomena -- in our recreation, patterns of interaction, ordinary language, poetry, politics, sexuality, and sense of humour. Keohane draws on two currents of discourse: the discourse on identity derived from Hegelian dialectics and Lacanian psychoanalysis, and the discourse on politics as hegemonic articulation, after Laclau and Mouffe.Symptoms of Canada breaks the stalemate in our search for the Canadian identity. A refreshing read for Canadians who are tired of the polemics surrounding this issue, it offers valuable insight to all countries where the question of identity is a national concern.

Americas

Univ of Toronto Pr

Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents: Anxiety, Depression and Alzheimer’s Disease (The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization)

This book analyses three of the most prevalent illnesses of late modernity: anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, in terms of their relation to cultural pathologies of the social body. Usually these conditions are interpreted clinically in terms of individualized symptoms and responded to discretely, as though for the most part unrelated to each other. However, these diseases also have a social and cultural profile that transcends their particular symptomologies and etiologies. Anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s are diseases related to disorders of the collective esprit de corps of contemporary society. Multidisciplinary in approach, the book addresses questions of how these conditions are manifest at both the individual and collective levels in relation to hegemonic biomedical and psychologistic understandings. Rejecting such reductive diagnoses, the authors argue that anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as other contemporary epidemics, are to be analysed in the light of individual and collective experiences of profound and radical changes in our civilization. A diagnosis of our times, Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents will appeal to a broad range of scholars with interests in health and illness, the sociology of medicine and contemporary life.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

van den Bergh, Bert

Petersen, Anders

Mental Health

Routledge

The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization (Classical and Contemporary Social Theory)

The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization explores the nature of contemporary malaises, diseases, illnesses and psychosomatic syndromes, examining the manner in which they are related to cultural pathologies of the social body. Multi-disciplinary in approach, the book is concerned with questions of how these conditions are not only manifest at the level of individual patients' bodies, but also how the social 'bodies politic' are related to the hegemony of reductive biomedical and individual-psychologistic perspectives. Rejecting a reductive, biomedical and individualistic diagnosis of contemporary problems of health and well-being, The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization contends that many such problems are to be understood in the light of radical changes in social structures and institutions, extending to deep crises in our civilization as a whole. Rather than considering such conditions in isolation - both from one another and from broader contexts - this book argues that health and well-being are not just located at the level of the individual body, the integral human person, or even collective social bodies; rather, they encompass the health of humanity as a whole and our relationship with Nature. A ground-breaking analysis of social malaise and the health of civilization, this book will be of interest to scholars of sociology, social theory, social psychology, philosophy and anthropology.

Politics & Social Sciences

Sociology

 This book analyses three of the most prevalent illnesses of late modernity: anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, in terms of their relation to cultural pathologies of the social body. Usually these conditions are interpreted clinically in terms of individualized symptoms and responded to discretely, as though for the most part unrelated to each other. However, these diseases also have a social and cultural profile that transcends their particular symptomologies and etiologies. Anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s are diseases related to disorders of the collective esprit de corps of contemporary society. Multidisciplinary in approach, the book addresses questions of how these conditions are manifest at both the individual and collective levels in relation to hegemonic biomedical and psychologistic understandings. Rejecting such reductive diagnoses, the authors argue that anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as other contemporary epidemics, are to be analysed in the light of individual and collective experiences of profound and radical changes in our civilization. A diagnosis of our times, Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents will appeal to a broad range of scholars with interests in health and illness, the sociology of medicine and contemporary life.

The central premise of Collision Culture is that Ireland's experience of economic boom"" has resulted in the collision of incompatible ways of life. These collisions occur between the local and global, between traditional and modern, between Catholic and secular, and between rural and urban. They have become apparent in a variety of changes - changes in patterns of rates of suicide, in patterns of consumption, in representations of Irish celebrities, in patterns of home ownership, in the rise of tribunals, and in a variety of other points of public discourse and Irish culture. The authors argue that the above categories clearly are not starkly divided, but rather are analytic reference points that are useful in trying to understand the conflicts behind various social problems in Ireland. By investigating cultures of everyday life - driving, housing, music, religion, consumerism, fashion, and sexuality, among others - the book shows how recent social transformations are manifest at the everyday level.

Collision Culture: Transformations In Everyday Life In Ireland

Anthropology

The Liffey Press

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Books by Keohane, Kieran