Film policy under globalization: the case of Mexico

The changing economic and technological conditions often referred to as ‘globalization’ have had a deep impact on the very nature of the state, and thus on the aims, objectives and implementation of cultural policy, including film policy. In this paper, I discuss the main changes in film policy there have been in Mexico, comparing the time when the welfare state regarded cinema as crucial to the national identity, and actively supported the national cinema at the production, distribution and exhibition levels (about 1920-1980), and the recent onset of neoliberal policies, during which the industry was privatized and globalized. I argue the result has been a transformation of the film production, from the properly ‘national’ cinema it was during the welfare state—that is, having a role in nation building, democratization processes and being an important part of the public sphere—into a kind of genre, catering for a very small niche audience both domestically and internationally. However, exhibition and digital distribution have been strengthened, perhaps pointing towards a more meaningful post-national cinema.

The Catholic Church and revolution in Ireland

Despite the involvement of radical socialists like James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army in the 1916 Rising and the unanimous passing of the Democratic Programme (a socialist manifesto for the new Government) by the First Dáil in 1919, the Irish state has since its inception exhibited a highly conservative approach to social and economic policy, and politics generally in Ireland, North or South, have never faced a serious challenge from those seeking radical change. Several factors have played a part in this and this article focuses on one of these - the power and conservatism of the Catholic Church and its influence in shaping the political landscape. Despite a decline in recent years, the Church remains influential north and south of the Border in education provision, the current debates in relation to abortion and in culturally important aspects of life - baptism, communion and burial. In the past the Church���s political influence among Ireland’s majority Catholic community had been even more pronounced. The article begins by looking at the Church���s attitude to revolutionary change in Ireland historically before focusing on its influence in the North during the Stormont years and during the more recent ‘Troubles’ – 1969 - 98. It shows how the Church attempted to influence political thought and discourse in Ireland when it was at the height of its power. Whilst it is true that the Church was not a monolith, and there have always been individual priests who have adopted a more radical approach, the general thrust of the Church was conservative, attempting to ally itself with the power elites of the day where possible. It is this influence which appears to have stood the test of time despite attempts in past generations to radicalise the Irish population.

Dutch influence in the urban landscape of Cork City pre-1800: Fact or myth?

The early years of the eighteenth century Irish port town, Cork saw an expansion of its city limits, an era of reconstruction both within and beyond the walls of its Medieval townscape and a reclamation of its marshlands to the east and west. New people, new ideas and the beginnings of new wealth infused the post Elizabethan character of the recently siege battered city. It also brought a desire for something different, something new, an opportunity to redefine the ambience and visual perception of the urban landscape and thereby make a statement about its intended cultural and social orientations. It brought an opportunity to re-imagine and model a new, continental style of place and surrounding environment.

Leisure and surveillance in Irish childhoods: A cross-class study of Cork city

This research provides an interpretive cross-class analysis of the leisure experience of children, aged between six and ten years, living in Cork city. This study focuses on the cultural dispositions underpinning parental decisions in relation to children’s leisure activities, with a particular emphasis on their child-surveillance practices. In this research, child-surveillance is defined as the adult monitoring of children by technological means, physical supervision, community supervision, or adult supervised activities (Nelson, 2010; Lareau, 2003; Fotel and Thomsen, 2004). This research adds significantly to understandings of Irish childhood by providing the first in-depth qualitative analysis of the surveillance of children’s leisure-time. Since the 1990s, international research on children has highlighted the increasingly structured nature of children’s leisure-time (Lareau, 2011; Valentine & McKendrick, 1997). Furthermore, research on child-surveillance has found an increase in the intensive supervision of children during their unstructured leisure-time (Nelson, 2010; Furedi, 2008; Fotel and Thomsen, 2004). This research bridges the gap between these two key bodies of literature, providing a more integrated overview of children’s experience of leisure in Ireland. Using Bourdieu’s (1992) model of habitus, field and capital, the dispositions that shape parents’ decisions about their children’s leisure time are interrogated. The holistic view of childhood adopted in this research echoes the ‘Whole Child Approach’ by analysing the child’s experience within a wider set of social relationships including family, school, and community. Underpinned by James and Prout’s (1990) paradigm on childhood, this study considers Irish children’s agency in negotiating with parents’ decisions regarding leisure-time. The data collated in this study enhances our understanding of the micro-interactions between parents and children and, the ability of the child to shape their own experience. Moreover, this is the first Irish sociological research to identify and discuss class distinctions in children’s agentic potential during leisure-time.

Locating the transnational: representations and aesthetics of the city in contemporary European cinemas

This thesis focuses on two Western European cinematic cities, and two unique periods of their respective nations’ histories, in a bid to “locate” the transnational within a contemporary European milieu. I argue that my geo-cinematic case studies are emblematic of broader questions of the problematics of national identity in contemporary Europe in the face of cross-national flows yet, as a result of their representations as cities both “anchored” and “in flux”, they reject a European postnational identity. Through its engagement with cinematic Rome as the “Eternal City” of Europe and cinematic Dublin as the “newly Europeanised” city, my thesis traces how representations and aesthetics of the urban spaces of these two cities correspond with the tensions at the heart of the respective eras in question. Via the figures that inhabit it, navigate it and search for it, the city is utilised to highlight fixity and mobility, centrality and dislocation, in explicit and implicit ways, amid the rapidly changing landscape of its national terrain. It is through my analyses of the filmed places and sociopolitical, socioeconomic and sociocultural spaces of these capital cities under the rubric of the transnational that this research demonstrates the “pluralities” of the construct in its cinematic manifestations. It is also my aim to evaluate the concept of cinematic transnationalism when identifying and accounting for representations of a specific national, historical timeframe, when the momentousness of the changes that occur is not bound by the national, but rather is reflective of the influence of both domestic and external forces. To this end, my thesis draws attention to instances in which the nation is shown to persist and resist dilution, arguing that it is only against the backdrop and continuity of the nation (in its evershifting guises) that the transnational can be conceived in representative and aesthetic terms.