(Un)settlement: Political Parody and the Northern Irish Peace Process

This essay examines Tim Loane’s political comedies, Caught Red-Handed and To Be Sure, and their critique of the Northern Irish peace process. As “parodies of esteem”, both plays challenge the ultimate electoral victors of the peace process (the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin) as well as critiquing the cant, chicanery and cynicism that have characterised their political rhetoric and the peace process as a whole. This essay argues that Loane’s transformation of these comedic pantomime horses into Trojan ones loaded with a ruthless polemical critique of our ruling political elites is all the more important in the context of a self-censoring media that has stifled dissent and debate by protecting the peace process from inconvenient truths. From these close and contextual readings of Loane’s plays, wider issues relating to the political efficacy of comedy and its canonical relegation below ‘higher forms’ in Irish theatre historiography will also be considered.

Per una genealogia della giustizia penale internazionale: ambiguita' e paradossi

This article aims to consider the role for a critical criminology outside the national dimension, highlighting its continuities with studies in the critical tradition which have suggested the need to address State criminality and criminogenic structures more in general, but also suggesting a critique of international criminal law as a governmentality project.It reconstructs the genealogy of the international criminal justice system, following on from Schmitt and other well known authors, but it focuses in specific on its paradoxes, contradictions and ambiguities rather than its purely political effect. The authors argue that critical criminologists should engage with the international dimension of crime and control and approach this venture of a international criminal justice system as the possibility of “telling the truth” about State atrocities without missing on using strategically the category of human rights and law to bring to the fore minoritarian interests which are
usually denied by power discourses and economic forces.

Re-imagining DDR Ex-combatants, leadership and moral agency in conflict transformation

Drawing upon criminological studies in the field of prisoner rehabilitation, this essay explores the relevance of the Demobilisation, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) framework to the process of conflict transformation in Northern Ireland. In a similar fashion to the critique of 'passivity' offered by, for example, the 'strengths based' or 'good lives' approach to prisoner resettlement and reintegration more generally, the authors contend that the Northern Ireland peace process offers conspicuous examples of former prisoners and combatants as agents and indeed leaders in the process of conflict transformation. They draw out three broad styles of leadership which have emerged amongst ex-combatants over the course of the Northern Ireland transition from conflict-political, military and communal. They suggest that cumulatively such leadership speaks to the potential of ex-prisoners and ex-combatants as moral agents in conflict transformation around which peacemaking can be constructed rather than as obstacles which must be 'managed' out of existence.

Le poeme comme ecriture de vie

This article is a critique of the biographical approach using Celan's notion of Lebensschrift (life writing) to bring forward the life constitutive dimension of poetry.

‘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.

Seen but never heard: rethinking approaches to researching racism and young children

This paper is concerned with the methodology underlying attempts to understand the nature and impact of racism among young children. In drawing upon data gathered from a year-long ethnographic study of five- and six-year-old children in an English multi-ethnic, inner-city primary school, the paper provides a critique of traditional approaches to the study of racial attitudes among young children. It is argued that such research has been conceived through the articulation of two, inter-related discourses on children and on 'race'; the former couched in traditional socialisation and developmental models of childhood with their tendency to neglect the agency and social competency of young children and the latter being embedded within essentialist notions of 'race' and ethnicity that tend to deny the contingent and context-specific nature of racialised identities. The paper argues that the result of this has been that while children have often been the objects of research they have rarely been the subjects; in other words they are often seen but never heard. The paper argues for the need to move beyond the methodological confines set by these discourses and rethink alternative approaches that begin with the assumption that young children are socially competent. One such approach, drawing upon ethnographic methods and fore-grounding the importance of largely unstructured small group interviews with young children, is illustrated. Through the use of a number of examples, it is shown how this approach can help to emphasise the ability of children as young as five and six to respond to and negotiate their social worlds and more specifically within this the competency with which they are able to appropriate, rework and reproduce a number of discourses on 'race' to make sense of their own social experiences. In doing this the paper also illustrates the way in which it provides a methodology able to draw out and highlight the contradictions, contingency and complexity of racialised identities among young children. Ultimately, it is an approach concerned with placing the children themselves central within the research processes and foregrounding their voices and experiences.

Social Accounting Research as If The World Matters: An essay in postalgia and a new absurdism

This essay is intended as a self-reflective, auto-critique of the ‘social accounting community’. The essay is directed at the academic community of accountants concerned with social accounting. This `community' is predominantly concerned with English language accounting journals and is preoccupied with the social and environmental practices of the larger private sector organisations. The essay is motivated by a concern over our responsibilities as academics in a world in crisis and a concern that social accounting is losing its energy and revolutionary zeal. This community's social accounting endeavours have taken place in almost complete ignorance of the activities and developments in non accounting communities and, in particular, developments in the public and third sectors. The essay reaches out to the public and third sector work and literature as an illustration of one of the ways in which ‘our’ social accounting can try to prevent itself from becoming moribund.

Multiprofessional Views on Older Patients' Participation in Care Planning Meetings in a Hospital Context

Care planning meetings (CPMs; sometimes referred to as family meetings) for older patients involve group decision-making between the multidisciplinary team, the older person and their family. However, service user participation is challenged by the inequity of knowledge and power between participants, together with organisational and resource pressures for timely discharge. The effective use and perhaps, potential misuse of communication strategies within CPMs is of ethical concern to all participants. Habermas' essential critique of participatory communication provides insight as to how older people's involvement can be either enabled or blocked by healthcare professionals (HCPs) depending on their use of communication strategies. Seven discipline-specific mini-focus groups provided an opportunity for HCPs to reflect on the participation of patients over 65 and their families in CPMs. Findings explore HCPs' understanding of older patients involvement based on key dimensions of communicative participation, namely, mutuality, inclusiveness, patient centredness and clear outcomes. Whilst the benefits of collaborative decision-making were confirmed, legitimate concerns as to the quality of participatory practices, limited attention to group work processes and the exclusion of older patients with cognitive impairment were identified. © 2013 Copyright British Association of Social Workers.

“Boundary-setting as a core activity in complex public systems”

Title: Boundary-setting as a core activity in complex public systems
Authors: Joanne Murphy & Mary Lee Rhodes

The definition of the boundary of a system is at the core of any systems approach (Midgley 2000; 2003). By defining boundaries we enable – and delimit – the range of outcomes sought and the actions and resources that can be brought to bear. In complex adaptive systems (CAS) analysis, the conceptualisaion and definition of boundaries is particularly challenging as they are constantly undergoing redefinition through agent action, interaction and entry/exit. (Rhodes et al 2011). The concept of ‘boundaries’ appears regularly in a wide range of literature around public management, administration, geopolitics, regeneration and organisational development. Discussions around boundaries focus on many things from concrete physical manifestations and barriers, to virtual interfaces between one organisational unit and another, or even entirely theoretical demarcations between different schools of thought (Kaboolian, 1998, Levi-Faur, 2004, Agranoff & McGuire, 2004).

However, managing ‘beyond’ such boundaries is a routinely recurring aspiration that transcends sectors and local concerns. Unsurprisingly then, there is an increasing understanding of the need to acknowledge and manage such boundaries (whether they be physical, social or organisational) within public management as a discipline (Currie et al 2007, Fitzsimmons and White, 1997, Murtagh, 2002). This paper explores the impact of boundaries on public management strategic decision-making in the sectors of urban regeneration and healthcare. In particular, it focuses on demarcations to physical space, communal identity and within professional relationships in these sectors.

The first section describes the research that gave rise to the paper and the cases examined. Next we briefly define what we mean by boundaries. We explore issues that have emerged from our analysis of urban regeneration and health care singularly, before looking at how the concept of boundaries is a recurrent concern across the sectors. The main contribution of the paper is an exploration of how a CAS lens can bring a new insight into the concept of boundaries and decision-making in the two sets of case studies. This discussion will concentrate on initial conditions, bifurcation and adaptation as key CAS factors in relation to boundaries. We conclude with a brief discussion on the benefits of a CAS lens to an analysis of boundaries in public management decision-making.
References:

Agranoff, R. and McGuire, M. (2003) Collaborative Public Management: Strategies for Local Government. Washington, DC: Georgetown Univ. Press.

Currie, G., Lockett, A. (2007) “A critique of transformational leadership: moral, professional & contingent dimensions of leadership within public services organizations”. Human Relations 60: 341-370.

Fitzsimmons and White, (1997) "Crossing boundaries: communication between professional groups", Journal of Management in Medicine, Vol. 11 Iss: 2, pp.96 – 101

Kaboolian, L. (1998) “The New Public Management: Challenging the Boundaries of the Management vs. Administration Debate” Public Administration Review Vol. 58, No. 3 pp.189-193

Levi-Faur D. and Vigoda-Gadot Eran (eds) (2004) International Public Policy and Management: Policy Learning Beyond Regional, Cultural and Political Boundaries, Marcel Dekker,
Midgley, G. (ed) (2003) Systems Thinking. London: Sage Publications

Midgley, G. (2000) Systemic Intervention: Philosophy, Methodology and Practice. New York, NY: Kluwer.

Murtagh, B. (2002). The Politics of Territory: Policy and Segregation in Northern Ireland. Basingstoke, Palgrave.

Rhodes, ML, Joanne Murphy, Jenny Muir, John Murray (2011) Public Management & Complexity Theory: Richer Decision Making in Irish Public Services, UK: Routledge

Terry Eagleton, Postmodernism and Ireland

Terry Eagleton devoted considerable thought to the nature of postmodernism during the heyday of the postmodernist debate in the Eighties and Nineties, and always expressed strong reservations about it.1 It is worth noting that these reservations do not imply any hostility to formal experimentation, or to the registering of alienation in its postmodern form. Rather, he seeks to show how there might be a politically and morally engaged art which was very much of our time. His position is consistent with those he adopts in dealing with other subjects, and may be illuminated by reference to those works where he does so. Of all these other subjects, the most illuminating for understanding his work is that of Irish literature, for it was during this period that Eagleton became a major figure in Irish studies, and his thinking on postmodernist relativism was developed alongside his critique of revisionism in Irish historiography.

Deriving the Edge: What's in a phase?

This article offers a critical conceptual discussion and refinement of Chomsky’s (2000, 2001, 2007, 2008) phase system, addressing many of the problematic aspects highlighted in the critique of Boeckx & Grohmann (2007) and seeking to resolve these issues, in particular the stipulative and arbitrary properties of phases and phase edges encoded in the (various versions of the) Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC). Chomsky’s (2000) original conception of phases as lexical subarrays is demonstrated to derive these properties straightforwardly once a single assumption about the pairwise composition of phases is made, and the PIC is reduced to its necessary core under the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT)—namely, the provision of an edge. Finally, a comparison is undertaken of the lexical-subarray conception of phases with the feature-inheritance system of Chomsky 2007, 2008, in which phases are simply the locus of uninterpretable features (probes). Both conceptions are argued to conform to the SMT, and both converge on a pairwise composition of phases. However, the two conceptions of phases are argued to be mutually incompatible in numerous fundamental ways, with no current prospect of unification. The lexical-subarray conception of phases is then to be preferred on grounds of greater empirical adequacy.

Confined Site Construction and its Impact on Personnel Productivity

Inner city, confined site construction is quickly becoming the norm within the construction sector. The aim of this paper is to identify and document the effect, if any, that a confined construction site environment has on the productivity of on-site personnel. In order to compile the relevant information and attain appropriate results on the matter in question, a qualitative analytical approach is adopted. This process incorporates multiple cases studies from Ireland, Northern Ireland and USA. From the resulting case studies, a minimum of three individual interviews and focus group seminars are conducted to aid in the collection of the data while also assisting in the confirmation of the factors identified from a critique of the relevant literature. From the resulting case studies and discussions, a list of the key issues pertaining to the on-site productivity of personnel emerged and is documented as follows; 1) Overcrowding of personnel at workstations, 2) Lack of space for the effective movement of personnel on-site, 3) Numerous trades working within the one space on-site. Through identifying the issues highlighted and proactively mitigating or eliminating the factors detailed, on-site management professionals can strive to ensure maximum productivity from the industry’s most important resource – people.

Realist evaluation - promise, problems and practicalities

Realist evaluation is an innovative, multi-method approach to evaluating the effectiveness of complex health care interventions that is having an increasing impact on the research community. Drawing on their experience doing four realist evaluations in diverse areas of healthcare, the authors offer a comprehensive overview and critique of essential theory and practice. The first paper (Realist review and realist evaluation: an introduction) introduces the main components of the approach and shows how realist review can support realist evaluation. The second paper (Concepts and methodology for realist evaluation: help or hindrance?) provides further detail on the key concepts, shows how they can be operationalised, and discusses the advantages and difficulties of using these ideas. Following these two papers introducing and illustrating the major concepts, the third paper (Realist Evaluation: a critical realist critique) takes a step back to re-consider realist evaluation in relation to its critical realist roots, asking whether it leads to evaluators abandoning the attempt to understand (and if necessary challenge) the underlying values of health care interventions and contenting themselves merely with explicating the factors that help or hinder implementation. The fourth and final paper (Data analysis and theory development in realist evaluation) plunges back into the tangled undergrowth of multiple-method data collection and shows how disparate forms of data can be synthesised for theory development, and the results presented in a form that is useful to practitioners and policy-makers.

Luce Irigaray: Back to the Beginning

In 2014 it will be 40 years since Luce Irigaray’s (second) doctoral thesis Speculum de l'autre femme was first published. That book, widely recognized as the most important text in feminist philosophy, was to introduce Irigaray’s critique of western philosophy and psychoanalysis and her ethics of sexual difference for which she was to become so well known. Irigaray, well into her eighties now, has published continuously since Speculum, despite her exclusion from French academic life after her expulsion in 1974 from the Université de Paris VIII Vincennes. That her latest book In the Beginning, She Was, released on the eve of Speculum’s anniversary, is perhaps the most personally revelatory of her works and revisits many of the same themes and issues that concerned her in Speculum cannot be coincidental. In this critical notice we examine Irigaray’s latest offering arguing that her contribution is twofold as she combines with new clarity her longstanding critique of phallocratic culture and her transformative vision of humanity as a culture of sexuate difference. There are a number of important themes addressed in the six chapters of the book, but for the purposes of this discussion our analysis will focus mostly on elaborating her critique of Western culture, on the usefulness of her work for rethinking masculine subject formation and on the figure of Antigone, as a feminine subject on her own terms, as a way of imagining a possible relation between two subjects within a culture of sexuate difference. We argue that this book continues to illustrate Irigaray’s importance as one of the most radical and prophetic philosophers of our time.

Fleuve glauque : les départements de la Seine, banlieue des romans « Spécial Police » de Frédéric Dard

This paper studies the representation of suburbs as a place of anguish in the “Special Police” novels (Fleuve Noir publisher, Paris) by Frédéric Dard. This anxiety, it is argued, is what lends this collection of 25 novels some of their essential qualities, their unhealthy climate and absolute darkness. Dard’s suburbs fit into the traditions of realism; but the atmosphere, characters and plots owe to the American hardboiled school and like in film noir, space is stylized and dramatized, and often used to express a judgment of moral nature. Spatial representations in these novels are part of a critique of civilization and constitute a comment on the social modernization and public intervention in the development of the French territory in the postwar period. The novels written by Frédéric Dard from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s offer a profoundly original representation of suburban angst and what was not yet known at the time as the suburban malaise. Avoiding clichés and excessively connoted referential spaces, Dard anchor these noir novels he called “novels of the night” in landscapes that are both biographical and intertextual. The West Suburbs of Paris and what was
to become the Yvelines department are at the centre of Dard’s novelistic geography, turning into a mythical and deadly space in which is negotiated an acculturation in France of the evil and ruined world described in American noir.