Karen Keaveney

Placing Neoliberalism: The Rise and Fall of Ireland's Celtic Tiger

In this paper we provide an account of the property-led boom and bust which has brought Ireland to the point of bankruptcy. Our account details the pivotal role which neoliberal policy played in guiding the course of the countrys recent history, but also heightens awareness of the how the Irish case might, in turn, instruct and illuminate mappings and explanations of neoliberalisms concrete histories and geographies. To this end, we begin by scrutinising the terms and conditions under which the Irish state might usefully be regarded as neoliberal. Attention is then given to uncovering the causes of the Irish property bubble, the housing oversupply it created, and the proposed solution to this oversupply. In the conclusion we draw attention to the contributions which our case study might make to the wider literature of critical human geographies of neoliberalism, forwarding three concepts which emerge from the Irish story which may have wider resonance, and might constitute a useful fleshing out of theoretical framings of concrete and particular neoliberalisms: path amplification, neoliberalisms topologies and topographies, and accumulation by repossession.

Policy and conflict transformation in the ethnocratic city

Abstract Belfast has changed remarkably in the past decade. It has gradually abandoned its ethnocratic character, where economic and political control, the allocation of resources and culture were used to assert the hegemony of the old Unionist order. However, growth in the macroeconomy, housing market and central business district mask deeper problems of sectarianism, poverty and community fatalism. These problems are correlated and concentrated, increasingly in inner- and outer-city public housing estates. This paper locates urban policy in attempts to reconstruct the politics of the region and the attempts of the peace process to undermine its ethnocratic rationale. It argues that this project has been selective and that there is a lack of a serious policy commitment to address the injustices of segregation and socio-spatial exclusion. The paper concludes by highlighting the need for integrated policy commitment to the management of segregation and diversity, if Belfast even hopes to reposition itself as a progressive European city.