Abstract
Economic and political forces have probably the greatest influence on people’s lives. Whatever meaning people create, whatever they do each day, they are all subject to the state, to its legislations—particularly in relation to taxation—and to the ways in which it provides for education, social welfare, health, housing, and so forth. Consequently, what political parties propose, what politicians get elected, what trade unions struggle for, and what interest groups lobby for, shape what people do and say and how they live their lives. The webs of meaning that people spin and maintain in families and communities are enmeshed in overwhelmingly powerful webs of economics and politics structured by world capitalism. Whatever bonds of belonging they develop, whatever webs of meaning of love and care they maintain, what people do and say is structured by institutional discourses propagated by the state, the European Commission, international agreements, pacts and policies, transnational corporations, global markets, media corporations, and so forth.
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Notes
On the distinction between political and social revolutions, see Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
Alexander sees the civil sphere as the public space beyond power and selfinterest. “Feelings for others matter, and they are structured by the boundaries of solidarity. How solidarity is structured, how far it extends, what it’s composed of—these are critical issues for every social order, and especially for orders that aim at the good life.” Jeffrey Alexander, The Civil Sphere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 3.
As discussed in chapter 2, there is, of course, a gap between this structural realist analysis of the webs in which people are suspended and the description and explanation they give for what is important and meaningful in their lives. Much of the explanation that I have developed here derives from a reading of Bourdieu. See Pierre Bourdieu, On the State: Lectures at the College de France 1989–1992 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014).
Pierre Bourdieu and Löic Wacquant, The Purpose of Reflexive Sociology (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1992), 104–115. In many respects, the reluctance and inability of the state to deal with the market, banks, and bondholders is in stark contrast to its willingness and ability to resist and challenge the power of the Catholic Church in relation to sexuality, health, and education, and to set up tribunals to investigate clerical child sex abuse and to send members of the clergy and religious orders to prison.
Much of contemporary Western philosophy is concerned about what constitutes and how to form a good society. The problem, of course, is transcending the gap between theorizing what constitutes a good society and how to get there and translating these ideas into policies and practices that animate and lead to engagement in participative democracy. See Maeve Cooke, The Good Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006).
The classical discussion of the role of the public sphere in democratic societies and within the public sphere, the role of the media is Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).
See also Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992);
Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992).
Obviously there have been times in Irish history, such as during the War of Independence and the subsequent Civil War, when political debate and activity permeated everyday life. The importance of politics increases in unsettled times, particularly during conflicts, rebellions, wars, and revolutions. Sewell, for example, has done extensive studies of the different types of political activity in France, and the differences they made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See William H. Sewell “Ideologies and Social Revolutions: Reflections on the French Case,” Journal of Modern History 57 (1985), 57–85;
Sewell, “Collective Violence and Collective Loyalties in France: Why the French Revolution Made a Difference,” Politics and Society 18.4 (1990), 527–552. Swidler argues that political culture, like culture generally, becomes more significant in unsettled times,
Ann Swidler, Talk of Love: How Culture Matters (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2001), 89–107.
See Pipa Norris (ed.), Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999);
Mattei Dogan and Ali Kazancigil, “The Pendulum between Theory and Substance: Testing the Concepts of Legitimacy and Trust,” in Comparing Nations, ed. Mattei Dogan (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 296–313. In their analysis of trends in seventeen different democracies, using data from various World Values Surveys, Newton and Norris found that confidence in public institutions declined in the 1980s and 1990s: confidence in parliament declined from 48 to 43 percent. The decline in confidence in parliament in Ireland was from 52 to 50 percent. While there was no significant difference between men and women, the young, the unemployed, working-class respondents, and those without third-level education all indicated less interest or involvement in politics. See, Kenneth Newton and Pippa Norris, “Confidence in Public Institutions: Faith, Culture or Performance?” American Political Science Association Conference, Atlanta, 1999.
Tony Fahey, Bernadette Hayes, and Richard Sinnott, Conflict and Consensus: a Study of Values and Attitudes in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2005), 185–21. However, when asked, in the same year, if they were satisfied with the way democracy was developing in Ireland, 64 percent said that they were either rather or very satisfied. However, only 56 percent voted in the 2011 presidential election, while 58 percent voted in the 2009 European Parliament elections.
Sarah Jane Delaney, Richard Sinnott, and Niall O’Reilly, “The Extent of Clientelism in Irish Politics: Evidence from Classifying Dáil Questions on Local-National Dimension,” AICS: Proceedings of 21st Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, 2010; Elaine Byrne, Political Corruption in Ireland 1922–2010 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012).
For more detail about these debates see, Peter Mair, Ruling the Void: The Hollowing-Out of Western Democracy (London: Pluto Press, 2013);
David Farrell, “‘Stripped down’ or Reconfigured Democracy,” West European Politics 37.2 (2014), 439–455;
Craig Calhoun, Social Theory and the Politics of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994);
Michael Saward, The Representative Claim (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010);
Russell Dalton, The Good Citizen: How a Younger Generation is Reshaping American Politics, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2009).
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© 2014 Tom Inglis
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Inglis, T. (2014). Politics. In: Meanings of Life in Contemporary Ireland. Cultural Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137413727_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137413727_5
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