SEAMUS HEANEY LECTURE SERIES 2008-09

Cultúr agus féiniúlacht in Éirinn an lae inniu
Culture and identity in contemporary Ireland

23 February 2009

Globalisation and Identity: Reflections from the Irish Experience'

 

 

Professor Peadar Kirby

The advent of globalisation has brought the issue of identity to the fore in debates within international relations. This lecture will draw on these debates to offer some critical perspectives on contemporary debates within Ireland on how globalisation is impacting on identity. The lecture will begin by offering some working definitions of globalisation and identity, stressing that central to identity is identification with collectivities, whether the nation or more particularistic groups. The lecture will then argue that globalisation is undermining the primary identification with the national community that was a legacy of late 19th century nationalism and the development of the liberal state in the early decades of the 20th century. As this primary identification is being eroded and weakened, more particularistic identities are taking its place. This argument will then be applied to the case of Ireland. It will be argued that Ireland’s success over the past 15 years has masked a particularly subservient and uncritical integration into neo-liberal corporate globalisation. This, much more than immigration or cultural pluralism, forms the backdrop for debates about identity in today’s Ireland as it is eroding the fragile sense of national identity that was perhaps the most successful, if unfinished, legacy of the struggle for national independence. On this reading, therefore, the form of Ireland’s integration into globalisation raises fundamental questions about the collectivities with which people resident in Ireland now identify, questions that take us far beyond the simplistic and self-serving Boston vs. Berlin debate of the early 2000s. The lecture will end by suggesting some alternative trajectories for identity in 21st century Ireland.

Professor Peadar Kirby
Professor of International Politics and Public Policy
Department of Politics and Public Administration
University of Limerick
Tel: 061-233757
E-mail: peadar.kirby@ul.ie
Website: www.ul.ie/peadarkirby

Last Updated: Thursday December 04 2008