URBAN SPACE, LUXURY RETAILING AND THE NEW IRISHNESS
2010; Routledge; Volume: 24; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09502386.2010.502732
ISSN1466-4348
Autores Tópico(s)Urban Planning and Governance
ResumoAbstract Written in 2006, at the end of an era that Fintan O'Toole has aptly characterized as one in which the Irish economy served as ‘the poster child of free-market globalization,’ (O'Toole, F., Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger, London, Faber & Faber, 2009) this essay seeks to elucidate some of the features of what we might now designate late stage Celtic Tigerism. Its central concern is with an exploration of the affective parameters of boom-era Irishness in a period driven by the national priority of being “business-friendly.” Charting a shift in the discursive repertoire of Irishness from warmth to coolness, and considering the emergence of Ireland's position as an exemplary scene of capitalism in the first half of the twenty-first century's first decade, the piece examine a range of suggestive examples including a music video by an Irish pop group, an Irish-themed financial advice book and the rhetoric of promotion that surrounded the opening of Ireland's largest shopping mall in 2005. Keywords: new IrishnessCeltic Tigerism Acknowledgements 2009 audiences at the St Patrick's Festival Symposium at Dublin Castle, the Screening Irish-America Symposium at Boston College's Connolly House and the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology kindly offered thoughts and suggestions in response to talks based on this article. I also thank Pat Brereton, Michael Higgins and John Storey who invited this contribution to Cultural Studies. Notes 1. The term Celtic Tiger is popularly understood to describe the period of dynamic, transformative economic growth in Ireland between 1994 and 2001. In a presidential address delivered to the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland in Citation2004, Brendan Walsh observed that while the growth associated with the Celtic Tiger peaked in 2001, a widely-anticipated ‘day of reckoning’ after that peak did not arrive. As this essay goes into publication, the advent of the global financial crisis offers clear signs that the era I am discussing here (whatever its precise temporal parameters) may be drawing to a close. 2. On this subject see my ‘The New Primitives: Irishness in Recent U.S. Television’ (Negra Citation2001). 3. I am, of course, not arguing that the shift to this New Irishness is so totalizing that other long-established modes of representation have automatically receded. Recent popular culture remains replete with traditionalist depictions of ‘warm’ Irishness that correlate it with the practice of good family values (as in the romantic comedy Must Love Dogs [2005] with its depiction of a tribalistic Irish-American family), an expression of love and care between a grizzled boxing coach and his female protégée (Million Dollar Baby [2004] in which Frankie Dunn uses the Irish endearment ‘mo cuishle’ to Maggie Fitzgerald) and musical, mystical Colleens (as in Celtic Woman, the choral act frequently featured on US public television). Additionally, the emergence of Northern Irish-born professional wrestling star Finlay, who cites heritage inspiration for his sports prowess and presents himself as a contemporary manifestation of recidivist sectarian violence suggests that ‘Troubles’ themes still have some popular culture currency. 4. In so doing, I am assuming that a robust Irish Cultural Studies practice should be prepared to engage a wide range of popular culture manifestations if it is to try to grasp hold of changing cultures of public emotion. 5. The assumption here that artistic creation emerges from a (particularly privileged) act of shopping is in keeping with the consumerist cast of the New Irishness as I discuss later in the article. 6. As the Poles are in Kevin Cullen's article ‘Poland Chases After Ireland's Pot of Gold’ (Citation2004). 7. The New York Times reported that U2 had topped Billboard's 2005 Money Makers Chart, a tabulation of the highest earning acts based on album and digital sales as well as concert grosses. The band's revenues for 2005 exceeded $255 million. See Van Gelder (Citation2006). 8. For an astute examination of the ways this plays out in the 1952 film The Quiet Man for instance see Luke Gibbons’ The Quiet Man (Citation2002). 9. ‘Bewleys Café Closures like “Part of City Dying.”’ Available at: http://www.breakingnews.ie/2004/10/29/story173423.html (accessed 29 October 2004). 10. ‘Closure of Bewley's and the New Ireland’, Letter to the Editor, David Marlborough, The Irish Times, 2 and 3 November 2004. Available at: http://www.ireland.com 11. A similar and more recent event has been the closure of the Dublin Wholesale Fishmarket in St Michan's Street and its transfer to the Millennium Business Centre at Ballycoolin. See O'Cleirigh (Citation2006). 12. See Garver (2005). The relocation of the Abbey is just one of a number of development initiatives to expand leisure options in The Docklands. A scheme is in place to construct The Point Village around the existing music venue The Point, while a new 10,000 square metre public space called Grand Canal Square is also in development. A theatre, five star hotel, cafes, shops and restaurants will face the public square whose name, river frontage and geographical position are reminiscent of such spaces in Italy. Arguably this development is part of a modest ‘Italianization’ of public space in Dublin with the large number of Italian cafes, pressed sandwich shops, etc. that have arisen in the city in recent years. 13. I am grateful to Paula Gilligan for bringing this feature of the opening ceremony to my attention. Her account of it in ‘The New Baroque: Notting Hill and the Terrorist Society’ (2004) is drawn from an article by Rosita Boland in The Irish Times (Citation2005). 14. My account of the incident is drawn from ‘Picnics or Politics Not Welcome in the New Company Towns’. Available at: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/70469 (accessed 27 June 2005). 15. The remaking of Aer Lingus in the brutally competitive aviation industry offers another instance of commercially instructive Irishness, particularly with the appointment of the company's former chief Willie Walsh to British Airways where he has been expected to take draconian cost-cutting measures similar to those that ‘saved’ Aer Lingus. 16. Florida (Citation2005, p. 176) references Austin, Texas, whose popular image is of a city able to unify significant economic growth tied to high-tech industry with lifestyle attractions based in a range of creative industries including live music performance and cinema. Austin's urban brand also tempers the prospect of over-corporatization through sponsorship of a subculture of idiosyncratic consumerism currently grounded in the city's slogan ‘Keep Austin Weird.’
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