Mapping junkspace: Ciaran Carson's urban cartographies

Postmodern procedural poetry has received quite a bit of attention in the last several years. In her book Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy (2004), Marjorie Perloff devotes a chapter to the ...

Wandering in the City: Time, Memory, and Experience in Digital Game Space

Funny Business: Popular Comedy and Entertainment Culture in Northern Ireland Lance Pettitt (bio) This essay offers a case study of a comedy performer within the entertainment culture of Northern Ireland (NI) between 1949 and 1974. Over a decade ago, Sean Connolly outlined some of the definitional difficulties faced by “the would-be historian of popular culture” in Ireland; he observed that the “issue of cultural interaction across social boundaries” (Connolly 1996:83–90) at particular historical conjunctures and specific locations was central to cultural history. Popular comedy (Palmer 1994:7) is replete with representations of social taboos and taste limits made visible and audible, but its production and audiences also involve complex processes of boundary reformulation. This essay explores how an entertainment business was structured during a period of political rule in NI that was dominated by Ulster unionists. Often fiercely, unionists upheld the position of NI within the United Kingdom (UK) after Ireland was partitioned in 1920. This case study is therefore set within an overarching narrative of a unionist political history—from the postwar reassurance about the “permanence” of the union (the Ireland [End Page 123] Act of 1949 with its “guarantee”) to the traumatic dissolution of the NI parliament (1972) at the height of the “Troubles.” It explores how an entertainment business was distinguished by “degrees of shifting attachment and interaction” (Williams 1958:310) with formal and informal political and cultural institutions. And it analyzes the cultural hegemony enacted in comic performance (McConachie 1989:48) by investigating the multiple institutional and cultural contexts in which such entertainment took place. The historiography of social and cultural life in NI before 1968 remains under-researched. Leslie Clarkson has advised that academics “should not partition social processes, nor impose patterns on the past where none existed, but [try] to understand the nature of human activity in the mundane matters of getting and spending” (Clarkson 2000:12). But this model for analyzing material production and consumption seems to capture only partially the role of culture in the social processes of NI. Grey (1983) has surveyed how the urban population of Belfast routinely spent its leisure time on popular entertainment up until 1914, and Bardon has addressed the comedy and entertainment programming of the BBC (Bardon 2000). Non-academic collections of reminiscences of popular hobbies and pastimes from the 1930s to the 1960s (Love 1982) provide insights into the everyday economics of leisure. Such demotic cultures, produced and consumed as inconsequential fun, including those mediated via radio, film, and television, potentially provide rich resources for understanding cultural history and for developing cultural theory (Graham 2001:155).1 The transformations of entertainment culture after 1945 may be usefully tracked through the career of James Young (1918–74), the dominant comic figure within the NI entertainment industry. Though Young has been much celebrated in popular memory, there has been little sustained academic analysis of his significance to a [End Page 124] wider cultural history (Cranston 1996; Bardon 2001; Moore 2003; Pettitt 2005). While The Force of Culture (1999) shows how unionist elites attempted to produce a cohesive political identity out of literary and cultural activities, including various public rituals and BBC programs (McIntosh 1999:2–3), my emphasis here lies in exploring the cultural significance of an entrepreneur-performer operating in a “business” that presented itself as apolitical and was experienced by its audiences as “only entertainment” (Dyer 1992:11–18). I suggest below how one might understand a transitional phase in the contemporary history of the popular culture of a region—a juncture where residual forms of live performance coexist with and are transformed by broadcast transmission; a period of cultural history defined as existing between the lived memories and the electronically recorded traces of comic performance. Though it is axiomatic that to better understand filmed and broadcast comedy, we need to know about prior live entertainment forms (Medhurst 1986:185), we also need to locate such performances, “to make the interpretation conscious by showing historical alternatives; to relate the interpretation to the particular contemporary values on which it rests,” while avoiding the sense that we can “return” the performance to its period (Williams 1961:69). More broadly, within cultural studies there...

This paper examines the new presence of “culture” within politics in Northern Ireland and attempts by cultural policymakers and community activists to constructively shift the meanings of “identity”, “tradition” and “heritage”. It focuses on the work of the Community Relations Council and the strategic development of its three principles of equity, diversity and interdependence, in relation to specific controversies about culture in Northern Ireland and wider debates about pluralism and multiculturalism. The distinctive configuration of questions of pluralism and culture in Northern Ireland highlights the ways in which multicultural theory is shaped by its geographies of development and circulation and how ideas of culture and multiculture work in different places and travel with sometimes ambiguous effects. At the same time, the pragmatic combination of optimism, realism, encouragement and critique in cultural policy in a context of continued division and political instability complicates familiar accounts of the geographies and politics of multiculture.

THE NORTHERN IRELAND PEACE PROCESS RECONSIDERED RICHARD ENGLISH several years ago I wrote an essay ostensibly about the Northern Ireland Cultural Traditions Group, but really addressing what seemed to me to be the problems inherent in British-government policy towards Northern Ireland during the preceding decade. In that essay (which was published in the Irish Review in 1994)1 I discussed what I called the “equal legitimacy” thesis, which has underpinned British-government thinking on Northern Ireland, and argued that this thesis was seriously misconceived. The equal-legitimacy thesis demands that the two broad political and cultural traditions in Northern Ireland—unionist and nationalist—be publicly accorded equal legitimacy. As Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Sir Patrick Mayhew was repeated in his declarations to this effect. In April 1993, he declared that “each of the main components of the community will need to be given recognition by the other, and in any settlement each must be accorded parity of esteem, the validity of its tradition receiving unqualified recognition.” In December 1992, Mayhew assured people that the nationalist aspiration to a united Ireland was “no less legitimate” than the unionist desire to maintain Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom.2 My argument was that such an approach is intellectually incoherent (How can two traditions be equally valid when each rests for its validity on the fundamental invalidity of the other’s logic?), and that it has been politically dangerous (encouraging unionist fears that the government considers nationalist ambitions as valid as those of the unionists, and encouraging nationalist hopes of major political change, which are simply infeasible and therefore bound to be disappointed). THE NORTHERN IRELAND PEACE PROCESS RECONSIDERED 270 1 Richard English, “‘Cultural Traditions’ and Political Ambiguity,” Irish Review 15 (Spring 1994): 97–106. 2 Ibid., 98. Thus, we have the daft, in the form of parity of esteem—a concept that has become extremely pervasive despite the fact that nobody really believes in it; and we have, in the form of heightened unionist fear and disappointed nationalist expectation, a dangerous mixture (as we saw in 1996 at Drumcree ) in a region such as Northern Ireland, in which insecurity and uncertainty continue to have damaging consequences. Such interventions by academics into contemporary political debate carry with them certain risks. One such risk is that people will simultaneously misunderstand and vilify you. Thus, for example, in an article in the Sunday Tribune, Luke Gibbons accused me of supremacism, wrongly attributing to me the view that “the ‘minority’ culture . . . must always be subordinate to the unionist tradition in Northern Ireland.” Authors more intimate with the details of Northern Irish politics, such as Norman Porter and Richard Kirkland, have had no problem in understanding my central argument. And it should be stressed that I was not advocating any form of supremacism, but rather was asking what a state should do in the face of a serious public-order problem. Neither Gibbons nor Declan Kiberd, who made a similar attack on me in the Sunday Press,3 appear to have understood this point. As Charles Townshend has argued, “[o]rder maintenance is probably seen as the elemental task of government.”4 My argument was that the policy of the British government in the period since the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement has been characterized by the dangerous and incoherent attempt to reassure unionists while raising nationalist expectations . Disaffection has been deepened in both communities, and the consequences of this trend have been (and will again prove) dangerous. The notion of the equal legitimacy of unionism and nationalism underpinned the Anglo-Irish Agreement; it was influential in molding Britishgovernment thinking during the late 1980s and early 1990s; and it pervaded the Peace Process period of 1993–1996. As the December 1993 Downing Street Declaration envisaged it, there would be “a process of dialogue and cooperation based on full respect for the rights and identities of both traditions in Ireland.” This current article aims to pick up where the previous THE NORTHERN IRELAND PEACE PROCESS RECONSIDERED 271 3 Norman Porter, Rethinking Unionism: An Alternative Vision for Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1996), 136; Richard Kirkland, Literature and Culture in Northern Ireland Since 1965: Moments of...

This article discusses violent male youth culture in Northern Ireland within the context of a society emerging from a prolonged period of political violence toward peacebuilding. Specifically, the article focuses on the findings from a qualitative study carried out by the Centre for Young Men’s Studies with 130 marginalized young men aged 13 to 16 from 20 different communities across Northern Ireland addressing themes of violence, conflict, and safety. Despite a changing context of peacebuilding, findings reveal that violence and paramilitary influence continue to perpetuate a male youth subculture epitomized by sectarianism and increasing racist attitudes. Underpinning this is an enduring cycle of suspicion, fear, and distrust of others and a confused state of mind that leaves these young men “stuck” somewhere between the ceasefire mentality of paramilitaries and the ambiguous messages of peacebuilding. This article concludes by stating the need for more realistic ways to engage and integrate marginalized young men into their communities.

Pushing the boundaries in Northern Ireland: young people, violence and sectarianism

Going Underground

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a significant increase in mental health issues which general practitioners are now witnessing and managing in communities across Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, this new tsunami of patients with mental health issues has put tremendous strain on our already overburdened health system. As a result, Northern Ireland currently holds the unenviable record for prescribing more anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medication than any other country in the world.Methods: Data was obtained from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), Family Practitioner Services, General Pharmaceutical Services, Annual Statistics 2020/2021 (published June 2021) and 2021/2022 (published June 2022). Data was analysed by age, gender, district, and socioeconomic class on prescription medication [according to the British National Formulary (BNF)].Results: From 2020/2021 to 2021/2022, the prescribing culture for anti-anxiety and/or anti-depressant medication in Northern Ireland did not abate (24% vs. 14%, female to male, respectively). The postcode and index of multiple deprivation (IMD) was analysed and a mean IMD for each constituency was taken as an estimate of the overall IMD to establish if money spent per patient was related to the IMD in each constituency. North Down, South Antrim, and East Antrim were least deprived, as indicated by their high IMD. Whereas, Foyle, and Belfast West were most deprived (low IMD). The cost of mood and anxiety medication per patient was compared against constituency; patients in Belfast West and Belfast North, followed by Foyle, had the highest costs per patient, and the lowest IMD (most deprived).Conclusion: This review concludes that there has been no change in the prescribing culture for anti-anxiety or anti-depressants across Northern Ireland (2020–2022). The cost of mood and anxiety medication per patient did not correlate with the index of multiple deprivation (IMD). Areas of low IMD trended to have higher spend. Is it now time to review the prescribing culture in Northern Ireland and offer greater support to our GPs to initiate a program of deprescribing and manage the wellbeing of our citizens?

Wandering and Placemaking in London: Iain Sinclair’s Literary Methodology

Michel de Certeau: Spirituality and The Practice of Everyday Life Philip Sheldrake (bio) Brenna Moore’s essay highlights the growing divergence and then final “rupture” between Michel de Certeau and his erstwhile hero and mentor Henri de Lubac. This centered around their contrasting understandings of how theology connects, or does not connect, with the everyday world or the “secular” and of whether the past is accessible to and useable in the present. My own sense is that de Certeau refuses to adopt a simple theology versus secular polarity. Even if the importance of the “secular” for de Certeau stems partly from his social and political conversion as the result of the riots of 1968, more straight-forwardly the secular refers to “the here and now,” this age. De Certeau was preoccupied with the way all our relationships—whether with the human or the divine “other”—are shaped by space and time. This sensibility to the immediate and the tentative was born of de Certeau’s immersion both in Ignatian spirituality and in historical theory. In reference to the latter, de Certeau’s historical training, particularly his exposure to the French Annales school of historical theory and interpretation, made him far more sensitive than Henri de Lubac to the unavoidable “otherness” and strangeness of the past. This contrasted strongly with de Lubac’s more fervent belief in the possibilities of historical continuity and its impact on his sense of how Christian tradition “works.” De Certeau’s critical historical perspective on Christianity ran alongside a complex yet deep engagement with faith. Overall, I seriously question the assumption among some English-speaking social scientists that de Certeau’s life and writings are neatly divisible into two parts—a first religious part up to the early 1970s and then a second social scientific period when theological interests and a religious narrative are essentially absent. I do not believe that de Certeau left theology behind or moved in some simple way into a form of postmodern fragmentation and dispersal. However, the problem with some attempts to retrieve him as a religious thinker, for example by “Radical Orthodoxy” theologians, is that they concentrate too much on his explicitly religious writings and bypass the implicit yet real religious underpinning to much of his social scientific writing.1 This omission fails to do justice to de Certeau’s emphasis on the spiritual quality of everyday practices—something which I [End Page 207] Click for larger view View full resolution Picture of a Pitcher © Feldore McHugh [End Page 208] believe has a covert Ignatian trace. My dominant concern in this essay is to underline certain continuities in de Certeau’s work by highlighting key spiritual values that I believe are present in his collaborative social scientific project entitled “The Practice of Everyday Life.” Luce Giard, de Certeau’s closest collaborator and executor, notes in several places his youthful fascination with solitary journeys.2 The theme of journeying is, in various ways, at the heart both of de Certeau and of Ignatian spirituality—including the lifestyle of the Jesuit order of which de Certeau remained a member until his death. This was part of what attracted him to the Ignatian path. Solemnly Professed Jesuits take a fourth vow to journey anywhere in the world to undertake mission. “This is a vow to go anywhere His Holiness will order . . . without pleading an excuse and without requesting any expenses for the journey.”3 “One should attend to the first characteristic of our Institute . . . this is to travel.”4 Ignatius Loyola’s assistant, Jeronimo Nadal, in his commentary on the Fourth Vow, wrote: “The principal and most characteristic dwelling for Jesuits is not the professed houses, but in journeyings.”5 Journeying is both a geographical concept and a spiritual value. In broad terms, this value is implicit in de Certeau’s later religious essays. In “The Weakness of Believing,”6 he suggests that Christian spirituality must avoid the temptation to settle down into a definitive “place.” The temptation of the “spiritual” is to constitute the act of difference as a site, to transform the conversion into an establishment, to replace the “poem” [of Christ] which states the hyperbole with the strength to make...

This article examines the role of ministerial special advisers (SpAds) in Northern Ireland’s government communication. Using data gathered from elite interviews with SpAds, government information officers, and political journalists, we argue that the role of the SpAd is influenced by the post-conflict political culture in Northern Ireland and the consociational structure of government. The article suggests that current theorizing of the role of SpAds in democratic societies must also take account of how they operate within mandatory coalitions such as those found in Northern Ireland. We call for more research into their communication role in post-conflict consociational environments.

At Our Convenience

This study analyses the public relations strategies employed by the mainstream political parties during the ‘Good Friday Agreement’ referendum campaign in Northern Ireland in April/May 1998. Using data from elite interviews, triangulated with content analysis from campaign literature, we assess the communication strategies of the pro- and anti-Agreement parties who were attempting to persuade the people of Northern Ireland to vote Yes or No to the Agreement. Key findings of the research include: first, in comparison to the ‘normal’ political culture in Northern Ireland, there was a significant increase in the deployment of public relations expertise in the referendum campaign; indeed, for many of the political parties it represented their first major investment in political public relations. A second key finding pertains to the communicative model adopted by the key actors. All parties, in different ways, adopted a ‘dissemination’ model rather than a ‘dialogic’ one to communicate with allies, rivals and the general public. In our view this is an entirely appropriate approach to political public relations and we suggest that the communication model of the Social Democratic and Labour Party is particularly noteworthy because it was an approach underpinned, we argue, by dissemination and reconciliation. Moreover, we also suggest that public relations based on dissemination and reconciliation to difference offers a more realistic and appropriate approach, than the currently fashionable dialogic model, for the kinds of communication and information exchange required in contemporary democratic societies.

In Northern Ireland, culture is one of many terrains on which political struggles are waged. The orientation of much of politics around a single axis has meant that issues which might elsewhere be regarded as ‘merely’ cultural acquire here an intense political significance. Culture is seen as one battlefield on which the broader political struggle can be fought, the interests of one’s own national community advanced, and those of the other retarded. Nor is anything in Northern Ireland ‘merely’ symbolic: in this region, symbols mark territory, reinforce identities, and perpetuate political divisions. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that both unionists and nationalists see the conflict over culture as a zero-sum game: any gain for one side must entail a loss for the other. If the insti