Waste Management in Ireland: Discourses of Domination in an (un)Reflexive Society

Abstract

In recent times, Ireland has experienced dramatic changes in its economic fortunes, primarily as a result of global/transnational processes. One result of this dynamic modernity has been a greater public and political focus on its environmental consequences, evident for instance in the issue of waste management. Ulrich Beck's highly influential writings on Reflexive Modernity promise a seismic social transformation, where risks such as waste can be negotiated through processes of self-confrontation and democratisation. Yet, this has clearly not happened in the Irish case, where waste policy concentrates on disposal rather than prevention options, governance processes are characterised by power centralisation and marginalisation, and where certain communities are engaged in campaigns of opposition to government plans. This article argues that part of the problem in adapting Beck's framework to Irish waste is that it fails to account for an asymmetry of power relations, at both a macro and micro level, and as a result, underestimates the tenacity of certain societal elites to maintain the current trajectory of economic and technological development. It is proposed here that the application of a Foucauldian framework of a multi-dimensional framework of power can address some of these shortcomings by offering a focus on issues of consent, coercion, self-regulation (individualisation) and subjugation. In doing so, it is hoped that a novel contribution can be made to the relatively under-developed field of sociology of waste and offer a more general critique of Beck's Reflexive Modernisation thesis.