Belongings

"The contributors to this volume deal with the notion of belonging - how it evolves, manifests itself, is shaped and challenged - across a range of contexts in contemporary Ireland. In Belongings, the reader is invited to contemplate recent developments in Irish society through the eyes of sociologists, who scrutinise a series of events and issues relevant to the years 2005 and 2006. The book provides sociological insights into such diverse topics as the Michael Neary case, the Miss China Ireland pageant, Paddy Power's provocative advertisements and the Jumbo Breakfast Roll. It re-visits events such as the 2006 commemoration of the 1916 Rising, the opening of the Dundrum Town Centre and the Irish Ferries dispute. Issues such as apartment-living, new planned communities, the busyness of everyday life, the attraction of self-help books, and the fervour of 'Munster mania' are examined in a fresh and engaging way."--BOOK JACKET.

"In her reading of cyberculture studies after the affective turn, the author argues for a new cyberculture studies that goes beyond dominant cultural narratives of the Internet as dystopian or utopian space, and pays attention to the ways in which online culture has become embedded in everyday lives. The book intervenes in narratives of virtual reality to propose that the Internet can be re-read as a space of fantasy.

‘Just because you appear to have secrets don't mean your secrets are all that interestin'.’ A young female soldier returns from Afghanistan to a home she no longer recognises or connects with. She has proved herself in combat but her hardest battle is yet to come, as she navigates family politics, old relationships, and the memory of betrayal. From the deserts of a modern war to the battleground of a family kitchen, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's explosive new play delves into one woman's quest for identity and a place she can call home. Nominated for Charles Wintour Most Promising Playwright Award (Evening Standard Awards)

Land used to produce food is at the core of disputes, violent conflicts and despair across the world. As farmers increasingly can no longer afford to grow food and as one in ten Canadians faces food insecurity each year, it is clear that our culture-specific land systems lie at the heart of the current food and farm crises. Solutions must be implemented to ensure food security and food sovereignty in Canada and the world. In Belongings, Sally Miller illustrates how food and farm crises result from adherence to the rules of private property. Miller looks at the state of farmland and farmers in Canada and across the world as a way of understanding ownership, land regulation and the dire situation of our ability to produce food. Hundreds of acres of prime farmland are lost each day to residential development, further restricting the ability of farmers to supply our food needs. Farmers face ever-increasing financial risks and often have to sell farmable land for commercial development to make ends meet. Finally, Miller highlights several alternative structures of land use that are proving to be successful in Canada and across the globe and argues that the way in which we understand and manage foodlands needs to be reconsidered to achieve sustainable food systems with healthy food access for all.

This book traces the formation of Italian migrant belongings in Britain, and scrutinizes the identity narratives through which they are stabilized. A key theme of this study is the constitution of identity through both movement and attachment. The study follows the Italian identity project since 1975, when community leaders first raised concerns about 'the future of invisible immigrants'. The author uses the image of 'invisible immigrants' as the starting point of her inquiry, for it captures the ambivalent position Italians occupy within the British political and social landscape. As a cultural minority absorbed within the white European majority, their project is steeped in the ideal of visibility that relies on various 'displays of presence'. Drawing on a wide range of material, from historical narratives, to political debates, processions, religious rituals, activities of the Women's Club, war remembrances, card games, and beauty contests, the author explores the notion of migrant belongings in relation to performative acts that produce what they claim to be reproducing. She reveals how these acts work upon the historical and cultural environment to re-member localized terrains of migrant belongings, while they simultaneously manufacture gendered, generational and ethnicized subjects. Located at the crossroads of cultural studies, 'diaspora' studies, and feminist/queer theory, this book is distinctive in connecting an empirical study with wider theoretical debates on identity. Nominated for the Philip Abrams Memorial Book Prize 2001.

Belonging is an issue that affects us all, but for those who have been displaced, unsettled or made ‘homeless’ by the increased movements associated with the contemporary globalising era, belonging is under constant challenge. Migration throws into question not only the belongings of those who physically migrate, but also, particularly in a postcolonial context, the belongings of those who are indigenous to and ‘settlers’ in countries of migration, subsequent generations born to migrants, and those who are left behind in countries of origin. Negotiating Belongings utilises narrative, ethnographic and autoethnographic approaches to explore the negotiations for belonging for six women from Dinka communities originating in southern Sudan. It explores belonging, particularly in relation to migration, through a consideration of belonging to nation-states, ethnic groups, community, family and kin. In exploring how the journeys towards desired belongings are haunted by various social processes such as colonisation, power, ‘race’ and gender, the author argues that negotiating belonging is a continual movement between being and becoming. The research utilises and demands different ways of listening to and really hearing the narratives of the women as embedded within non-Western epistemologies and ontologies. Through this it develops an understanding of the relational ontology, cieng, that governs the ways in which the women exist in the world. The women’s narratives alongside the author’s experience within the Dinka community provide particular ways to interrogate the intersections of being and becoming on the haunted journey to belonging. The relational ontology of cieng provides an additional way of understanding belonging, becoming and being as always relational.

Outside Belongings argues against a psychological depth model of identity--one in which individuals possess an intrinsic quality that guarantees authentic belonging. Instead, Probyn proposes a model of identity that takes into account the desires of individuals, and groups of individuals, to belong. The main ideas she considers--"the outside", "the surface", and "belonging"--allow her to articulate, in concrete terms, her precise concerns about sexuality and nationality.