Equality. What it means and why it matters by
this compelling dialogue, two of the world’s most influential thinkers reflect on the value of equality and debate what citizens and governments should do to narrow the gaps that separate us. Ranging across economics, philosophy, history, and current affairs, Thomas Piketty and Michael Sandel consider how far we have come in achieving greater equality. At the same time, they confront head-on the extreme divides that remain in wealth, income, power, and status nationally and globally.
What can be done at a time of deep political instability and environmental crisis? Piketty and Sandel agree on much: more inclusive investment in health and education, higher progressive taxation, curbing the political power of the rich and the overreach of markets. But how far and how fast can we push? Should we prioritize material or social change? What are the prospects for any change at all with nationalist forces resurgent? How should the left relate to values like patriotism and local solidarity where they collide with the challenges of mass migration and global climate change?
To see Piketty and Sandel grapple with these and other problems is to glimpse new possibilities for change and justice but also the stubborn truth that progress towards greater equality never comes quickly or without deep social conflict and political struggle.
Inside Rural Ireland. Power and change since independence by
In the early decades of native rule rural Ireland - and in particular the new farmer-owners who had emerged as the major winners in the recent agrarian revolution - exerted a considerable influence over the new Free State and over Irish Catholicism. Patriarchal power on the land had been strengthened by the transfer of land ownership from landlord to tenantfarmer and was given further strength by patriarchal Catholicism and patriarchal nationalism. After 1932 the strides protected import-substituting industrialisation was making never went nearly far enough to threaten agriculture's economic primacy or the countryside's central position in Irish society. Inspired by the traumatic experience of severe crisis conditions in the 1950s, a transformation that set southern Ireland on the path of urban industrialism commenced in earnest in the 1960s.
What emerges is that the power of the state to promote rural change has at once contracted and expanded in the years since Ireland joined the EEC in 1973. Views are divided as to how urban industrialism has impacted on different rural interests. Throughout much of the period since the 1950s the power of organised farmers to represent Irish farming interests remained high as those working the land continued to dwindle in number. In recent decades the always limited power of clerical activists and intellectuals to restructure rural civil society along Catholic (or even Christian) lines has undergone further decline. Most recently the prospects for farm women increasing their relative power have arguably improved the most in certain respects, even if land ownership still remains stubbornly and overwhelmingly in male hands.
Inside Rural Ireland delves deeply into the evolution of Ireland's rural history to explore rural Ireland before and after these momentous transitions by examining the power of ruling politicians and state bodies, farmers, clerical and non-clerical civic activists, intellectuals (social commentators as well as fiction writers), returned emigrants, and farm women to promote or impede a wide range of rural changes.
Developing Rural Ireland. A history of the Irish Agricultural Advisory Service by
Rural Ireland and its agricultural way of life are emblematic of this country. For most of modern history, however, rural Ireland and Irish agriculture were comparatively underdeveloped. This changed dramatically in the twentieth century, during which they were transformed. In 1900 they were synonymous with poverty; by 2000 they had become synonymous with progress. Many people and organizations contributed to this, but chief among these were the Irish agricultural advisory services.
First established in the early 1900s, they are today operated as a public service by Teagasc, Ireland's Agriculture and Food Development Authority. With their establishment, agricultural instructors, trained to the highest international standards, were dispatched to every community in rural Ireland. Their brief was to work with farmers, helping them to improve their farm enterprises and, in so doing, to develop rural Ireland. This gradually bore fruit, as each succeeding generation of agricultural advisors and farmers cooperated to adopt the most modern agricultural approaches. This book tells their story.
Changemakers. Radical strategies for social movement organising by
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Crafted for those who dare to challenge the status quo, this revolutionary guide asks crucial questions about organising and social movements in the 21st century. Drawing from frontline experiences of activists, it explores essential themes from leadership to the art of negotiation, empowering changemakers of today for a more just world.
The Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Modern Ireland by
This collection of focused, cohesive and persuasive essays is based on the newest research on gender, sexuality and sexual politics. It offers historical reflections and contemporary analyses of issues related to the contested and often hidden histories of sexual politics and gender identities in Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Including but going beyond the binary of male and female heterosexual experience, the book explores LGBTQI+ histories, the treatment of intersex persons, and the history of trans people and activism in Ireland. As an interdisciplinary work, this reader draws together scholars working in a range of fields on innovative, new research on this theme.
