Brendan Bartley

Icon and structural violence in a Dublin ‘underclass’ housing estate

This paper deals with the complex relationships between, and some of the everyday practices that go into, remem- bering and forgetting within a conflicted political field. The object of this analysis is a set of murals in an eco- nomically and socially marginal housing estate on the out- skirts of Dublin, and some of the social activities that they either commemorate or pass over. This analysis requires an ‘archaeology’ of a sort, in the sense that both virtual and material layers have to be scraped away, not to reveal some deeper truth, but to outline the field of forces that create truth-effects within this context (Foucault 1973a, Rabinow 1996). If this process is conducted carefully with due regard for local knowledge, however, the rewards are high. An obscure wall in an unfashionable Dublin suburb that most people in the capital have never been to (and that many people would never want to visit), displays multiple and conflicting configurations of violence, resistance, community, ownership, even hope. To understand this wall, though, an entire local world needs to be outlined, and the connections between this local world and national and transnational forces need to be appreciated. Perhaps appropriately, the analysis begins and ends with a defaced tabula rasa.

Engineered Healing and the Northern Ireland Question: Collaboration Across an Increasingly Invisible Border

While the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland are physically united as one island, they are in effect distinct territories that remain politically, economically and socially divided. As a result of partition in 1921, and the ensuing “differences” which many would argue continue right up to present day, the counties that straddle the Irish border are today defined by their under-development and peripherality. In response to this, and the weakness of other border regions, and in recognition of the additional challenges confronting these communities (in their broadest sense), EU policy has for the past decade and a half been pointing towards the need for further research and investment into local economic development and complementary functional areas. Both intra- and inter-regional policy has become increasingly important throughout Europe as evidenced by the launch of the International Fund for Ireland (IFI) and the on-going INTERREG funding program in 1986 and 1989 respectively, the later publication of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) by the European Commission in 1999 and the subsequent adoption by member states in the following five-year period of national and sub-national spatial strategies. These innovative documents were the first attempt by both governments to work collaboratively in a formal capacity on spatial planning policy – and while the commitments outlined in both constitute ‘low policy’ initiatives, it was exactly this approach that was required to encourage the new milieu of policy engagement and ensure that “face-to-face” policy development for this small island remained on the political agenda. They also played a key role in copper-fastening government support at all levels for the community-led cross-border collaborations that had been taking place, oft without political support, at the local level. The challenge since has been whether the socio-political divide that has persisted will permit a more formalized collaborative arrangement to develop or insist that the informal status quo continues.