Contested Pedigrees of the Celtic Tiger

Ireland, Empire and Utopia: Irish postcolonial criticism and the Utopian impulse

“…As Peadar Kirby has argued in his essay 'Contested Pedigrees of the Celtic Tiger', the phenomenon of the Celtic Tiger has been readily seized as an object ripe for narration; for strategic emplotment within certain legitimate hermeneutic codes. 7 Kirby's metahistorical interrogation of the Celtic Tiger's pedigree highlights the extent to which this period in recent Irish social and economic history has been seized for narrative justification. The economic vigour that has been, and remains to a lesser degree, has unquestionably brought unprecedented fiscal wealth to many social constituencies to which it would have been here-to-fore unknown.…”

Keeping Them Under Pressure: Masculinity, Narratives of National Regeneration and the Republic of Ireland Soccer Team

“…This mapping of national economy onto individual may be seen as a collective fantasy, whose rhetorical distinction between a supposedly 'old' Ireland of 'it'll do' amateurism and 'new' Ireland of individual and professional competence in each social sphere is routinely peddled by Irish political and economic commentators anxious to depict a newly vibrant 'business culture'. As Kirby argues, this invokes 'binary and even Manichaean polarities derived from crude forms of modernization theory', [96] insensitive to the Irish economy's complexities and contradictions. The differentiation from Charlton and McCarthy additionally entailed the gauging of national progression as the progressive displacement of outmoded masculinities.…”

The Art/Technology Interface: Innovation and Identity in Information-Age Ireland

“…Irish society has undergone two transformations in recent history: one in the 1890s, with the creation of nationalist Ireland, and another in the 1990s with the creation of neo-liberal Ireland, also known as the Celtic Tiger (Kirby 2002b). The reinvention of Ireland during the Celtic Tiger years can be seen as a particularly fast-tracked phase of a longer process of transformation towards what Manuel Castells has called the network society (2000a).…”