‘Towards a Green New Deal on the Island of Ireland: from economic crisis to a new political economy of sustainability’

This article begins from the assumption (which may seem controversial to many) that anyone who thinks that our current economic crisis is a temporary blip until ‘normal service’ (i.e. a return to ‘business as usual’) is resumed, profoundly misunderstands the severity and significance of what’s happening to the global economy and its impacts on the future prosperity of the island of Ireland. The economic recession represents nothing short of a re-structuring of the global economy and the creation of a new dispensation between governments, markets and citizens. The full implications of the re-regulation of the market, with the state bailing out and part nationalising the financial sector in both jurisdictions on the island (as in other parts of the world) have yet to be seen, but what we are witnessing is the emergence of a new economic model. Those who think we can, or even ought to, return to the pre-2008 economic model, are gravely mistaken. The current economic downturn marks the end of the ‘neo-liberal’ model and the beginnings of the transition (an inevitable transition, this article will argue) towards a new low carbon, renewable, green and sustainable economy and society.

‘Marxism and Ecology: From Political Economy to Political Ecology’

One of the reasons for the 'fin de seicle' angst within western liberal capitalist societies is the rise in prominance of ecological concerns within these societies. Long before the New Right declared the post-war welfare state to be untenable, early green critics had claimed it to be ecologically unsustainable. The addiction of the welfare state on ever increasing levels of economic growth was pronounced to be simply impossible within the context of a finite planet. Although it was not expressed in this manner, what these early ecological concerns with Limits to Growth were in effect saying was that the accumulation of capital rendered capitalism unsustainable. Yet the ecological critique of capitalism has not found much favour within the Marxist critique untile recently. Early Marxist analyses of the ecology movement dismissed them as ‘petty bourgeios radicals’ while many greens still view Marxism as ‘fair shares in extinction’. The lack of positive engagement and dialogue between Marxism and ecology has in recent years been put right with a discernable overlap between the two critiques of capitalism. This article seeks to present the areas of disagreement and agreement between the two and seeks to provide an ‘environmental audit’ on both the Marxist method and political project.

‘Towards a Concrete Utopian Model of Green Political Economy’

Much of the thinking about the appropriate ‘political economy’ to underpin sustainable development has been either utopian (as in some ‘green’ political views) or ‘business as usual’ approaches. This article suggests that ‘ecological modernisation’ is the dominant conceptualisation of ‘sustainable development’ within the UK and other ‘developed’ Northern polities and most corporate/business interests, and illustrates this by looking at some key ‘sustainable development’ policy documents from the UK Government. While critical of the reformist ‘policy telos’ of ecological modernisation, supporters of a more radical version of sustainable development need to also be aware of the strategic opportunities of this policy discourse. In particular, the article suggests that the discourse of ‘economic security’, which can be attached to a radicalised notion of ecological modernisation, ought to be used as a way of articulating a radical, robust and principled understanding of sustainable development, which offers a normatively compelling and policy-relevant path to outlining aspects of a ‘green political economy’ to underpin sustainable development.

Risk: A Study of Its Origins, History and Politics

Over a period of several centuries, the academic study of risk has evolved as a distinct body of thought, which continues to influence conceptual developments in fields such as economics, management, politics and sociology. However, few scholarly works have given a chronological account of cultural and intellectual trends relating to the understanding and analysis of risks. Risk: A Study of its Origins, History and Politics aims to fill this gap by providing a detailed study of key turning points in the evolution of society's understanding of risk. Using a wide range of primary and secondary materials, Matthias Beck and Beth Kewell map the political origins and moral reach of some of the most influential ideas associated with risk and uncertainty at specific periods of time. The historical focus of the book makes it an excellent introduction for readers who wish to go beyond specific risk management techniques and their theoretical underpinnings, to gain an understanding of the history and politics of risk.

Parenting Control in Contexts of Political Violence: Testing Bidirectional Relations Between Violence Exposure and Control in Post-Accord Belfast

Objective. The authors examined bidirectional relations between youth exposure to sectarian and nonsectarian antisocial behavior and mothers' efforts to control youths' exposure to community violence in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Design. Mother-child dyads (N = 773) were interviewed in their homes twice over 2 years regarding youths' exposure to sectarian and nonsectarian community antisocial behavior and mothers' use of control strategies, including behavioral and psychological control. Results. Youths' exposure to nonsectarian antisocial behavior was related to increases in mothers' use of behavioral and psychological control strategies over time, controlling for earlier levels of these constructs. Reflecting bidirectional relations, mothers' behavioral control strategies were associated with youths' reduced exposure to nonsectarian and sectarian antisocial behavior over time, whereas psychological control was not related to reduced exposure. Conclusion. Only nonsectarian community violence was associated longitudinally with mothers' increased use of control strategies, and only behavioral control strategies were effective in reducing youths' exposure to community antisocial behavior, including sectarian and nonsectarian antisocial behavior.

Sectarian and Nonsectarian Violence: Mothers' Appraisals of Political Conflict in Northern Ireland

Past research on peace and conflict in Northern Ireland has focused on politically motivated violence. However, other types of crime (i.e., nonsectarian) also impact community members. To study the changing nature of violence since the signing of the Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland, we used a qualitative approach and the Constant Comparative Method to analyze focus group discussions with mothers from segregated Belfast neighborhoods. Participants articulated clear differences between sectarian and nonsectarian violence, and further distinguished sectarian violence along 2 dimensions—overt acts and perceived intergroup threat. Although both sectarian and nonsectarian antisocial behavior related to insecurity, participants described pulling together and increased ingroup social cohesion in response to sectarian incidents. The findings have implications for the study of violence and insecurity as experienced in the everyday lives of mothers, youth, and families in settings of protracted conflict.

Guns don’t kill people, cyborgs do::a Latourian provocation for transformatory arms control and disarmament

This article seeks to provoke a deeper engagement of Critical Security Studies with security's relations to technology and weapons. It explores existing assumptions about these relations in mainstream arms control and disarmament theory, and the way such assumptions are deployed and distributed in the current settlement of arms control and disarmament practice. It then draws on recent social and philosophical discussions of materiality, particularly on the thought of Bruno Latour, to propose a different set of concepts for exploring the aims and limits of arms control and disarmament. These concepts emphasise the mediating roles of material things in social relations and they may offer a richer view of the object of arms control (weapons and violence) and of the practices of arms limitation and reduction; one that may ultimately gesture towards a different understanding of arms politics, and that may be used to explore the transformatory potentials of arms control and disarmament.

Convergence/Divergence: Party political discourse in Northern Ireland's transition from conflict

This paper illuminates the role of political language in a peace process through analysing the discourse used by political parties in Northern Ireland. What matters, it seems, is not whether party discourses converge or diverge but rather how, and in what ways, they do so. In the case of Northern Ireland, there remains strong divergence between discourses regarding the ethos of unionist and nationalist parties. As a consequence, core definitions of identity, culture, norms and principle remain common grounds for competition within nationalism and unionism. There has, however, been a significant shift towards convergence between unionist and nationalist parties in their discourses on power and governance, specifically among the now predominant (hardline) and the smaller (moderate) parties. The argument thus elaborated is that political transition from conflict need not necessarily entail the creation of a “shared discourse” between all parties. Indeed, points of divergence between parties’ discourses of power and ethos are as important for a healthy post-conflict democratic environment as the elements of convergence between them.

Photographing Vladimir Putin: Masculinity, Nationalism and Visuality in Russian Political Culture

This article introduces the study of photographs of politicians as an object of geopolitical analysis. It does this through exploring the holiday photographs of Vladimir Putin released by the Kremlin in 2007, 2009, and 2010. Putin's biography provides a backdrop to a detailed analysis of the geopolitical representations contained in the photographs of him. In the same fashion as other images, the photographs seek to provide a contemporary view of events and, at the same time, serve as a medium through which particular political scripts are narrated. The photographs also help to reproduce (and question) hegemonic discourses about public forms of masculinity in Russia. This article is intended to contribute to the debate on how visual images can help make sense of the geopolitical world

Scientific revolutions, progess and accounting research

Thomas Kuhn’s concept of a normal science paradigm has been utilised and criticised across a range of social science fields. However, Kuhn’s aim was to argue that science progresses not in an incremental manner but through a series of paradigms that need a revolution in thought to shift from one to the next. This paper addresses Kuhn’s work focusing on the totality of his model, but recognising the ambiguities concerning paradigm shifts that have led to charges of relativism. To address this weakness an argument is advanced for a political economy analysis of the publication process and the development of critical accounting research centred on human emancipation. The paper concludes with some suggested research agendas particularly relevant to the Irish context.