Spacing Ireland

Northern Ireland has a complex urbanism with multilayered socio-spatial politics. In this environment, issues of communication, self-representation and expression of identity are central to the experience of urban space and architecture where the dichotomy of division and shared living are spatially exercised in everyday life. Unlike other studies in the area, this book focuses on the everyday experiences of local communities in both public and private spheres - issues of ‘shareness’ - challenging conventional approaches to divided cities. The book aims to layer its narratives of architectural and social developments as an urban experience in post-conflict settings over the past two decades.

Maps make the world visible, but they also obscure, distort, idealize. This wide-ranging study traces the impact of cartography on the changing cultural meanings of space, offering a fresh analysis of the mental and material mapping of early modern England and Ireland. Combining cartographic history with critical cultural studies and literary analysis, it examines the construction of social and political space in maps, in cosmography and geography, in historical and political writing, and in the literary works of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Spenser and Drayton.

Ireland in Proximity surveys and develops the expanding field of Irish Studies, reviewing existing debates within the discipline and providing new avenues for exploration. Drawing on a variety of disciplinary and theoretical approaches, this impressive collection of essays makes an innovative contribution to three areas of current, and often contentious, debate within Irish Studies. This accessible volume illustrates the diversity of thinking on Irish history, culture and identity. By invoking theoretical perspectives including psychoanalysis, cultural theories of space, postcoloniality and theories of gender and sexual difference, the collection offers fresh perspectives on established subjects and brings new and under-represented areas of critical concern to the fore. Chapter subjects include: * sexuality and gender identities * the historiographical issues surrounding the Famine * the Irish diaspora * theories of space in relation to Ulster and beyond. Contributors inlcude: David Alderson, Aidan Arrowsmith, Caitriona Beaumont, Fiona Becket, Scott Brewster, Dan Baron Cohen, Mary Corcoran, Virginia Crossman, Richard Kirkland, David Lloyd, Patrick McNally, Elisabeth Mahoney, Willy Maley, Shaun Richards, Éibhear Walshe.

While sectarian violence has greatly diminished on the streets of Belfast and Derry, proxy battles over the right to define Northern Ireland’s identity through its new symbolic landscapes continue. Offering a detailed ethnographic account of Northern Ireland’s post-conflict visual transformation, this book examines the official effort to produce new civic images against a backdrop of ongoing political and social struggle. Interviews with politicians, policymakers, community leaders, cultural workers, and residents shed light on the deeply contested nature of seemingly harmonized urban landscapes in societies undergoing radical structural change. Here, the public art process serves as a vital means to understanding the wider politics of a transforming public sphere in an age of globalization and transnational connectivity.

In light of the innumerable interventions that characterise the transformation of Ireland over the last two decades, Spacing Ireland: Place, society and culture in a post-boom era explores questions of ‘space’ and ‘place’ to understand the nature of major social, cultural and economic change in contemporary Ireland. The authors explore the intersections between everyday life and global exchanges through the contexts of the ‘stuff’ of contemporary everyday encounters: food, housing, leisure, migration, music, shopping, travel and work. These are the multiple layers of space we now inhabit. Ireland is a turbulent place. It is fruitful to consider the contemporary geographies of the island through the various forms where change is expressed. The wide range of topics addressed in the collection and the plurality of spaces they represent make the book appealing not only to students and academics, but to anyone who follows social, cultural and economic developments in Ireland.

The Postcolonial World presents an overview of the field and extends critical debate in exciting new directions. It provides an important and timely reappraisal of postcolonialism as an aesthetic, political, and historical movement, and of postcolonial studies as a multidisciplinary, transcultural field. Essays map the terrain of the postcolonial as a global phenomenon at the intersection of several disciplinary inquiries. Framed by an introductory chapter and a concluding essay, the eight sections examine: Affective, Postcolonial Histories Postcolonial Desires Religious Imaginings Postcolonial Geographies and Spatial Practices Human Rights and Postcolonial Conflicts Postcolonial Cultures and Digital Humanities Ecocritical Inquiries in Postcolonial Studies Postcolonialism versus Neoliberalism The Postcolonial World looks afresh at re-emerging conditions of postcoloniality in the twenty-first century and draws on a wide range of representational strategies, cultural practices, material forms, and affective affiliations. The volume is an essential reading for scholars and students of postcolonialism.