This chapter argues that a myriad of different types of factors came together, to some degree by accident, to result in the Cold War. It sketches out the factors that are essential to the understanding of what results as the Cold War. The factors leading to and shaping the Cold War are: a wide range of developments, often ignored, in United States (US) domestic politics; a set of bureaucratic dynamics both in the US and the USSR; internationally, a set of understandable perceptions of the other; and a set of historical contingencies. Each factor is both political and conceptual. They are domestic; they are international; they are bureaucratic; they are technical; they are matters of historical accident. The chapter then turns to the interplay of these factors with the international situation.

This chapter discusses the problematic social construction of crime, law enforcement, and jurisprudence and highlights some of the consequences of these media portrayals for the public and students of this topic. It then sets out an ethic of phenomenological reduction of crime and the incumbent legal processes as a solution. The chapter draws upon the work of Jean-Luc Marion, Claude Romano, Werner Marx, James Mensch, and Immanuel Levinas, to describe how reducing the complex experience of crime, law enforcement, and jurisprudence opens new understanding and new potential for exploring the very complex nature of crime and the resulting legal processes. The reduction, in this case, entails an ethical argument to reduce what is given to those experiencing these processes and to us as observers. In the case of the one accused of crime, a reduction of their experience often breaks our understanding free of the “good-guy, bad-guy” portrayals in media. Likewise, a reduction of the experience and activity of law-enforcement and jurisprudence professionals highlights their professional, personal, and interpersonal complexities as they do their jobs. Finally, it proposes that this phenomenological ethic, when taken up by the media, would actually not only increase the portrayals of these processes in a more authentic manner, but increase the potential for sharing the dramatic stories of the criminal, law-enforcement, and legal professionals. This would serve to further their agenda of telling marketable and engaging stories by highlighting the incredible personal and interpersonal complexities of the people caught up in these experiences.

The city of London has a long experience of staging great events, including mega-event genres, though to the contemporary period. This chapter looks briefly at some of the history of London's major events in the modern era. It focuses on the particular case of the London 2012 Olympics and its impacts and legacies. The chapter introduces the general policy and planning context and aims of the Olympic project, particularly in relation to its long-term social and sport policy goals and aspirations. It presents in more detail at the project's directly social aspects and legacies, in terms of such things as the construction of housing and of the Olympic Park. It also looks into the Olympic project's indirectly social character in terms of its economic and employment impacts and legacies, particularly in terms of the cultural and creative industries.

This chapter focuses on one of the most well-known episodes in the history of tobacco control in Ireland: the introduction of an overall workplace smoking ban in 2004. It draws some key ideas and concepts put forward by governmentality studies. The introduction of the smoking ban in Ireland is considered by politicians, public health and anti-smoking advocates and Irish citizens as one of the biggest success stories in the history of public health policy and tobacco control. The chapter discusses some of the social and political implications of conducting a governmental analysis by drawing attention to the fact that the regulation of smoking became interlinked with social and moral processes. It exposes how some of these processes played a symbolic role in promoting boundaries between different social groups.

This chapter examines the implications for Irish Catholicism that the ‘Yes’ vote in the May 2015 referendum on same-sex marriage may have for the social and cultural position of the Catholic church in contemporary Ireland and in the future. His analysis channels the thinking of Ferdinand Tönnies, an early German sociologist and a contemporary of Durkheim and Weber, who used the German words ‘Gemeinschaft’ and ‘Gesellschaft’ to distinguish between two fundamentally different structural paradigms for social relations. O’Brien sees marriage as a core ideological signifier of ideological hegemony, and using the fantasy fiction of Terry Pratchett’s satire on religion entitled Small Gods as a lens, he looks at the referendum as a significant turning point in the definition of marriage, and by extension, in the transformation Irish society from the organic community of the Gemeinschaft, to the more postmodern and pluralist notion of the Gesellschaft.

This chapter briefly summarises the main findings of the book and explains the relationship between the different chapters. It introduces the reader to the structure of the book and identifies the common themes and underlying issues. It argues that from the different chapters three main conclusions can be drawn: namely 1) that Law needs myths for its legitimacy, 2) that Law needs myths for its existence and that 3) there is a growing need to unveil the myth about law making processes and procedures.

The deployment of print by Dublin Corporation in the mid-sixteenth century could be deemed to mark the arrival of the Renaissance at least as much as the arrival of the duke of Ormond a century later. However, by the time a Dublin printer became active, Renaissance ideas, implicit in the humanist idea of commonwealth, were already well established in the city. One of the ways in which those ideas had embedded themselves in the social fabric of Dublin was through the books that were circulating in the city. The lack of a Dublin printer meant that the Irish Renaissance was shaped in London and as much by economic as by political or cultural forces. New English officials who planned plantation and colonisation in Ireland or thought about how that society might be reshaped often turned to classical and biblical principles of colonisation and social order to re-imagine Ireland.

This chapter analyses recent Irish interventions into the 'obesity' discourse from the critical stance. It focuses on evidence from the first longitudinal study of children in Ireland, Growing Up in Ireland (GUI), and how its findings have entered the media and policy arenas. The analysis is based on secondary documentation, including published reviews of childhood obesity prevalence and GUI reports. Families and children were to be responsibilised to protect against the risks of overweight and obesity through educational and lifestyle interventions. The chapter considers some examples of how child fatness nevertheless continues to be framed as a pervasive and urgent issue in Irish society. The framing of childhood obesity illustrates how 'governmentality works by positioning or representing a problem in particular ways'. Body Mass Index (BMI) is even less satisfactory as a measure of childhood 'obesity'.

This chapter applies a labour-centred approach to challenge received views about Western navigation and its technologies, and to put forward an alternate analysis centred on people's skills, intentions and techniques. European navigation practices are typically portrayed as highly planned and abstracted in contrast to the responsive and sensitive environmental perception of the Micronesians and others. Thomas Gladwin's ethnography of Micronesian navigation refers to his own sailing experience and is not an ethnography of Western navigation. The chapter also applies 'orientation' to describe the general and comfortable sense of one's position in the world. This is distinct from the challenge of finding 'relative position' to specific affordances or obstacles. While most analyses of navigation assume that its purpose is orientation ('where am I?'), the chapter demonstrates that virtually all navigation devices are used in techniques to solve the problem of relative position ('where is that?').

The 'bomb plot of Zurich' is a prime example of the way in which a marriage of convenience opens up a space for the review of anarchist anti-militarism. The author argues that, in the context of the First World War, Indian anticolonial nationalism was not necessarily incompatible with German imperialism and Italian anarchism. He contends that the First World War offered a unique opportunity for Indian nationalists to overthrow the British Raj with German assistance, regardless of Germany's equally imperialist ambitions. The bomb conspiracy was one of many plans in the so-called Indo-German conspiracy and a prime example of the cross-national networks and strategic alliances forged during the First World War. The Indian nationalists were no strangers to the tenets of anarchist terrorism, and Bertoni in particular had long advocated and celebrated the assassination of kings and heads of state.

This chapter describes some of the key responses by the Omagh community and its agencies to the crisis of the bombing and its anticipated long-term implications. Within minutes of the bombing, the local hospital in Omagh, The Tyrone County Hospital, which was located less than a kilometre away from the scene, began to receive casualties. To convey where the bombing registered as a community tragedy, reference was made to a framework developed some years earlier to reflect upon the impact of the Enniskillen bombing of 1987. As a result of the highly charged political context of the tragedy, additional expectations became apparent, with politicians and community leaders being concerned that services should be provided for those affected by the bombing. It was clear that the bombing posed a serious mental health risk for those who had been involved in the care, treatment and support of casualties and the bereaved.