The major characteristic of millenarian movements is the essential place they give to eschatology – that is, the mythical narrative of the end of the world – which, generally, implies both the destruction of the current world, rendered necessary by its gradual degradation, and the birth of a new, purified and regenerated world. This is the case of the Rastafari movement, whose eschatology is centrally based on the Revelation of Saint John. Interestingly, the eschatological narrative is one of the most central in reggae music. We live in the time of the prophecy, and the Apocalypse announced by the Bible is a near future that has already started. The rastas believe they are the descendants of the Twelve Tribes of Israel; this identification also takes on a fundamental messianic meaning within the eschatology, because it is linked to the lost tribes evoked in the Book of Revelation. Hope and redemption occupy a central and essential place within the eschatology. In relation to the specific context of the African diaspora, the advent of the New Jerusalem, Zion, is tied to Africa.

The message contained in reggae music is above all a message of denunciation: the point is to show what is really happening, based on the fundamental distinction made by Rastafari between Good and Evil, between Zion and Babylon. Within a world viewed as a permanent struggle, reggae music develops a social critique and a denunciation of oppression. Reggae is therefore a music of resistance, based on a rhetoric of oppression that defines the terms which govern a worldview, and is rooted in the daily reality of the lives of poor people in Jamaica. Reggae music argues that poverty is neither a shameful condition nor in the order of things, but rather is only the consequence of the corruption of an elite that maintains a society based on exploitation, which therefore could be changed. Rastafari can be considered as a strong critique of consumer society and, more generally, capitalism. The rhetoric of oppression developed by reggae music articulates a fundamental opposition between the oppressors and the oppressed (based on the essential distinction of Babylon/Evil and Zion/Good), and the notion of hope.

The conclusion firstly reviews the four main lines of enquiry that have been undertaken by the book. It then highlights the manner in which the state has become enmeshed in the activity of governing children and young people. This increased governmentalisation of the state, in the context of the development of the Irish juvenile justice system, has gained significant momentum in the twenty-first century with the ‘rationalisation and restructuring’ of services and the establishment of the Irish Youth Justice Service and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. In contrast with the state of affairs that existed from the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century in Ireland, the state has assumed a central role in governing children and young people within the juvenile justice system. This can be seen in terms of its increased role in the areas of inspection, advocacy, diversion, detention, care and protection.

Chapter 5 examines the technologies that are employed within the juvenile justice system to govern young people. These technologies are classified as either disciplinary or pastoral. Disciplinary technologies usually involve a specific regulation of time and space. This manifests itself in some form of panoptic architecture combined with the day-to-day regulation of time. They are embodied in detention centres, reformatory and industrial schools and special care units where strict regulations govern the organisation and movement of those contained within them. Pastoral technologies, on the other hand, usually involve some element of confession and self-disclosure and entail some form of pastoral relationship with another person. They are generally found in community-based programmes such as restorative justice initiatives, crime prevention initiatives, youth projects and Probation Projects. Until the early 1970s the juvenile justice system was dominated by disciplinary technologies epitomised by reformatory and industrial schools. With the decline of the institutional model of regulation and the ascendancy of the diversionary model, pastoral technologies have come to dominate the justice system with large numbers of young people governed in ‘open’ sites within the ‘community’.

Reggae music is seldom analysed without a reference to the Rastafari movement, the founding event of which was the coronation of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, which took place on November 2, 1930. In Jamaica, some interpreted it as the fulfillment of the prophecy announced by Marcus Garvey before his departure for the United States. Some scholars have proposed an analysis centered on religion, usually based on the Jamaican case and focused on sacred practices, and the beliefs in which they are grounded. In contrast with the religion-focused approach, other scholars have considered the Rastafari movement from a socio-political standpoint, emphasising its historical emergence in relation to a context of domination and its articulation around the key notion of liberation; these works usually concern the Jamaican case, and often represent a Marxist approach, using terms such as neo-colonialism, social stratification, economic deprivation and racial prejudice. This chapter explores the history of reggae and the Rastafari movement, focusing on dubbing and the emergence of the reggae dancehall.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book demonstrates the important role played by women in the construction of Irish diasporic identities, comparing Irish women's experience in Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. It considers how the Catholic Church could be a focal point for women's Irish identity in Britain. The book examines how members of the Ladies' Orange Benevolent Association (LOBA) maintained a sense of Irish Protestant identity, focused on their associational life in female Orange lodges. It also examines communication between migrants and their 'home' lodges in Scotland which were published in the Belfast Weekly News and the Toronto Sentinel. The book emphasises the varying ways in which gender features in the articulation of social relations within the Irish diaspora.

Influenced by Roberto Orsi's and Louise Ryan's approaches and alongside the scholarship of Joshua Landy and Michael Saler, this chapter uses Irish-Catholic women in 1930s Liverpool to challenge the perceived binary between religion and modernity. The chapter argues that Catholic leaders in Liverpool became increasingly relaxed about modernity and its impact on women. It aims to carve out roles and responsibilities for women that merged their Catholicism with emerging opportunities in paid work, civic duties and leisure and consumer culture. The chapter offers a new way of thinking about the experience of the Irish diaspora in Britain and, in particular, offers Irish-Catholic women more agency and authority than historical scholarship tends to allow. Using the programme of Catholic Action, implemented by Liverpool Archdiocese during the 1930s, the chapter illustrates the positive contribution Irish-Catholic women made to public life in Liverpool as an implication of the Church's strategy towards modernity.

During the interwar period, Orangewomen in Canada came from a diverse set of backgrounds, encompassing both recent migrants from Ireland, Scotland, England and elsewhere in the British world with those who were from more long-standing Canadian families. While a Scottish identity and an interest in Canadian politics came to the fore in the Ladies' Orange Benevolent Association (LOBA) during the 1920s, this chapter argues that an Irish Protestant ethnicity remained central to these women's sense of identity. These Orangewomen embraced the multiple identities of the LOBA across Canada, reflecting the importance of migration and diaspora to the organisation's growth during the twentieth century. Writing in the pages of the Toronto Sentinel, Mrs Charles E. Potter from Saskatoon, articulated the complex relationship with Ireland experienced by many Orange men and women in Canada at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Comparative approaches challenge ways of thinking about particular parts of the Irish diaspora which focus exclusively on national arenas and risk losing sight of the 'bigger picture'. They also bring to the fore relationships between those of Irish cultural background and other ethnicities, which may be lost if the focus is simply on Irish identities. This chapter aims to explore different contexts in which settlement has taken place, both geographically and socially, and presents three case studies. The first is an exploration of intersections between Irish women and members of other diasporic groups in Britain, examining similarities and differences in their lives. The second compares Irish women's experiences of different destinations within the British Empire and its Commonwealth successor. Finally parallels are drawn with a diaspora outside the English-speaking world where social and political similarities point up important facets of women's diasporic experiences.

Given the fact that there is no existing history of juvenile justice in Ireland, this chapter provides a straightforward historical account of some of the main developments that have occurred from the emergence of the Irish juvenile justice system in the early nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. It offers the reader a general overview of these developments and provides a historical context for the main study without attempting any theoretical explanation. It also reviews some of the existing literature relating to the Irish juvenile justice system. It highlights the fact that there have been no serious attempts to account for the historical development of juvenile justice in Ireland. Only fragments of this history have been written, for example, histories of the borstal system and of the industrial school system. However, these accounts are largely descriptive and do not engage in wider theoretical debates.