Contemporary Irish Politics and Society

Catalog description

This course provides a rich and comprehensive sociological analysis of Irish Politics and Society, focusing in particular on how Irish society evolved to the society it is today. Specifically, the course examines how Irish society was determined by its historical development and social processes, and how change impacted Ireland. The course illustrates how Ireland can be viewed as a ‘holistic entity’ in itself, where interconnecting processes co-exist in the present day. In other words, The Past is Always Present. The course is divided into three time-frames: the Post-colonial (1920s -1950s), Modern (1960s- 1980s), Twenty-First century Ireland (the Celtic Tiger period and its aftermath) (1990 - 2022), and locates for each of those periods, the dominant characteristic (essential structure), which determined all other aspects of Irish life to the present day. To achieve this aim, we will be critically engaging with conceptual frameworks that have been applied to Ireland from within sociology and other disciplines.