This chapter comprises seven separate contributions from independents who have been elected at various levels in Ireland, from local councils, to the Seanad, the Dail and the European Parliament. The independent contributors provide an insider's account of life as an outsider within the Irish political system. Finian McGrath and Maureen O'Sullivan detail their involvement in deals negotiated with Taoisigh leading minority governments. Sean D. Loftus recalls his time in the Dail when his vote was likewise needed, but no deal was forthcoming. Catherine Murphy, with a history of involvement in political parties, both past and present, is able to provide an insightful comparison of life in a party and outside it. Kathy Sinnott, as a complete outsider, recalls her experience of narrowly missing out on a Dail and Seanad seat, before eventually being elected to the European Parliament in 2004.

This chapter debates that engaging urban futures as a heuristic reveals important tensions connected to future developments and imagined uses of the city centre. It shows that the process of eliciting visions and imaginary of the future of Manchester city centre renders explicit some of the value judgments and priorities that different stakeholders may pursue. The chapter draws on research conducted on Manchester city centre between 2011 and 2014, using qualitative mixed-methods. Drawing on Science and Technologies Studies (STS), and specifically on the sociology of expectation, the chapter provides a theorisation of the processes of visioning, for increasing democratic scrutiny and contributing to more socially resilient policy making. The chapter describes some of Manchester city centre's salient features, and discusses its future trajectories and its resident population.

This book introduces the readers to an important yet little-acknowledged trend in French cinema, in which multilingualism, and the relationship between French and other languages, is fundamental. Rather. It demonstrates how the representation of French as the only prominent or useful language in cinema is being progressively dismantled. More than ever, it is worthwhile and valuable to acknowledge, learn and use multiple languages in France, and, as Laura Rascaroli describes it, to consider how multilingual film 'comments on today's Europe'. French remains an indispensable element to all eight films examined in the book, whether it is used as the official language on French soil, a language of fading influence (Welcome), an unanchored lingua franca (London River), a native language Des hommes et des dieux or an acquired one (Dheepan).

Emmet O' Byrne's contribution describing the efforts of the Tudor state to tighten its grip on the Gaelic lords of east Leinster, though providing a necessary background, is political rather than cultural in content. Peter Dronke's words of caution were primarily directed at scholars of the medieval love lyric, and should hold equally true for early modern Gaelic love poetry. Sir John Harington made a translation of Amores II.iv in 1593 and this poem appeared in his Epigrams which were published posthumously in 1618 and reprinted in 1625 and 1633-34. The English exception was Christopher Marlowe's posthumous publication of his translation of the first three books of the Amores in 1597. The story of Narcissus and Echo in Ovid's Metamorphoses, III, is the locus classicus for the echo device in literature.

Postdramatic theatre attempts to stage the abstract, numinous financial structures of neoliberalism, capitalising on its ghosts in order to ground its own phantasmagorical formal experimentation. This chapter discusses the structural similarities and links between neoliberal financial models and postdramatic theatre. It analyses an early German response to the rise of neoliberal ideology and economics following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Heiner Muller's Germania 3.Gespenster am Toten Mann documents the expansion eastwards of western ideology from the perspective of a playwright from the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). It develops an image of western consumerism and finance as a motor for new forms of haunting. It also analyses Dea Loher's later Manhattan Medea as an example of gothic postdramatic theatre that employs spectral figures to reproduce and critique the spectral financial models at the heart of an established global, neoliberal world order.

The First World War was portrayed by the Orange Order in England as an imperial event. In the pavilion of Trent Bridge, Orangewomen demonstrated their commitment to the Orange soldiers who were fighting for Ulster and for the British Empire. The Orangewomen of England have much to tell us about the nature of working-class women's activism during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the gendered nature of popular imperialism and Toryism. This chapter outlines the overall patterns of growth of female Orange lodges in England. Having established how the female Orange Order developed in England and the largely English-born working-class nature of its membership, it is important to consider what these women actually did. Exploring the weekly, monthly and yearly activities of the English Orangewomen, at their lodges, in their streets and in their broader communities help us to understand the motivations women had for joining the Order.

This chapter explores the Assessment of Need (AoN) process as a governmental technology which literally brings into being a new classification of people with disabilities and their assessed needs as governable entities. Governmentality literature has provided a fruitful hunting ground in terms of finding conceptual tools to analyse the ways in which states problematise and govern 'the wealth, health and happiness of populations'. Ireland has witnessed significant developments in the domain of disability policy and legislation. In a declared commitment to furthering the participation of people with disabilities in society, the government published a National Disability Strategy in 2004, the cornerstone of which was the passing of the Disability Act 2005. The chapter explores the spaces in-between the rationalities of particular policy programmes on the one hand, and the end point of many Foucauldian studies, namely the creation of self-governing subjects, on the other.

As his political thinking matured against the backdrop of the Spanish Revolution and the post-war decades that seemed to herald 'the long-expected death of the capitalist system', Herbert Read began to reassess his involvement in the First World War. What emerged was an anarchistic reading of his military life that offered a novel model of socialist militarism, one that looked to small-group 'fidelity' as an abiding lesson of the war, rather than the power of collectivism. Read argued that he remained committed to the 'broad basic principles of socialism', and noted that his anarchism developed during the war years. He also argued that fidelity was a 'social virtue', and was thereby 'inculcated, not by precept, but by example and habit'. The bonds of reciprocity and mutual support that made life in combat endurable could similarly under-pin a society organised horizontally, but in neither situation would they exist without conscious nurturing.

The structural violence present in contemporary ecological systems, and in the capitalist relations that currently produce them, is made visible in Scottish fishing wrecks. Structural violence experienced through work, over the course of a person's life, can build to an increasingly traumatic 'state of emergency' that people must 'get used to' in order to maintain their livelihood. Fishermen and seafarers who did confront the constant danger posed by the impossible contradictions they had to cope with usually left the industry, or carried on in a jittery traumatised state. The contradictions between the logics of the market and of seamanship were most vividly illustrated in how it affected fishermen's judgement of the weather. In the case of fishermen, the mainstream ideology of nature subordinates their health and well-being not only to their seafood 'products', but to the whole environment they work in and have made productive.

Eamonn Wall’s discussion of Irish American Catholic experience reveals many similarities on either side of the pond, and some differences also. The Irish American authors and commentators provide unique perspectives on many facets of Irish life, including the unique role played by the Catholic Church. Among the authors discussed are Frank McCourt, whose account of a poor Catholic childhood in Limerick is so memorably captured in the best-seller, Angela’s Ashes, Colum McCann, Colm Tóibín and Mary Gordon. Similarly, the theologian Richard P. McBrien, journalist and writer Maureen Dezell, and sociologist Andrew Greely combine to illustrate the impact that the Irish Church has had on its American equivalent. Wall maintains that looking towards Ireland from the US, and drawing on American notions of egalitarianism and individual freedom, sometimes allows for a more dispassionate view of Ireland’s Catholic heritage and enables envisaging its future with a far greater clarity than can be achieved when change is all around you.