Sociology - Book chapters
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Item Solar rollout in Ireland: Revolution or reinforcing existing social inequity?(Springer Nature, 2024-01-09) Spillane, JeanneAs the uptake of renewables continues to accelerate in Ireland and Europe, driven in large part by government and European Union policy, key questions remain to be addressed around the justice implications of the rollout of solar energy and whether some people or groups are being left behind. This chapter seeks to review and synthesise some of the existing research around energy justice, energy poverty, solar PV and how each of these is applicable to the context of Ireland. It also contends that government policy supporting the adoption of solar PV must be appropriately targeted and adequately measured to ensure equitable access across income groups.Item Ecological and related health crises as symptoms of “wrong life”: Disturbance, reflection and cognitive transformation(Springer Nature, 2024-06-19) Skillington, Tracey; Kallhoff, Angela; Liedauer, EvaBeyond its distinct geological character, the Anthropocene is also a lived social reality, one whose properties are actively processed and internalized by its members in the form of “reflections from damaged life” (Adorno in Minima Moralia: Reflections from damaged life. Verso, London, 2005). The more immediate its destructive tendencies become, the more anthropocentric climate change disturbs the process of equilibration, prompting a need for reassurance that our ontological security is not threatened by powerful, unstoppable forces. Dewey (The later works. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, pp. 105, 1984) draws attention to the importance of not neglecting the function of this need in “creating ends or consequences” that connect intimately with affectivities embedded deep in the subject and exert a powerful influence over cognitive reasoning. Ultimately, it is the “physical moment” of the experience of ecological collapse that “tells our knowledge that [this] suffering ought not to be, that things should be different” (Adorno in Negative dialectics. Routledge, London, p. 203, 1973), prompting a need to change age-old environmental practices and a desire to think beyond “the given” towards better potentialities. This chapter notes how emerging formulations of environmental and related health crises, as symptoms of ‘wrong life’, provoke new thinking about the moral and political promises of cosmopolitan Europe and the need to extend justice relations to non-human others. Even though this contribution does not deliver a clarification of greentopia, it provides a context, a meta-narrative and political proposals for a real greentopia.Item The social manifold(Routledge, 2019) Cuffe, James B.Chapter Five then brings the insights from preceding chapters together we can say something more of the impact of technology as a techno-social force in social change. Social development is necessarily dialogical so the task is then to account or seek a model for the transmission of experiential understanding from those who-have to those who-have-not. The proposed model is for a social manifold through which movements and openings provide mediated arenas for liminal characters so that experiential understanding can be communicated via interpretation rather than explanation. The proposed fields of incongruency is a descriptive term that portrays a role for communication in human cultural transmission that once communicated supersedes conventional understanding in favour of resonance i.e. congruence between lived experiences. Chapter five introduces the first case study looking at the Grass Mud Horse. Introducing some anthropological concepts and establishing a framework for understanding the cultural function of liminal characters and their role in social change, the chapter shows how communications technology radically facilitates the field for such vectors to converge and dissipate and therefore such liminal characters can have vastly exaggerated influence in our technologically complex social systems.Item Diffuse disciplining: On the pervasive nature of autonomous systems and its consequences(Springer Nature Ltd., 2021) Cuffe, James B.; Završnik, Aleš; Badalič, VasjaThis chapter introduces the term diffuse disciplining as a means to articulate the increasingly ubiquitous and pervasive nature of technologies of social control. In particular, the term diffuse draws attention to how borders become porous, legal mechanisms ineffective, and, accountability and responsibility obfuscated. Three proto-case studies are presented that highlight different aspects on how diffuse disciplining can be observed. These case studies (USA, China, Ireland) show how the use of mediative technologies can discipline thoughtlessly without regard to intentions by proponents, and how technical systems can discipline and influence social action without regard to political or cultural systems. This chapter asks us to question what unintended disciplinary effects such systems may have and where, if anywhere, we might locate agents of responsibility. The chapter concludes that criminological research needs to expand in both scope and area to cope with technological innovation in an area marked by learning algorithms, autonomous systems, and diffuse disciplining. If focusing solely on traditional areas of criminal justice and criminology we can miss the wider effects of technological deployment in the age of connectivity, big data, and augmented intelligences.Item The Militarisation of Behaviours: Introduction(Springer, 2022-10-31) Kaucz, BłażejThis chapter is devoted to an introduction to the process of the militarisation of behaviours. It is a mass process of social control employed by the state (and less often by non-state entities) where civilians are subjected to a treatment like that designed for soldiers. When this process is utilised, it leads sections of a society to be subdued to the will of the state officials. It can be a robust power-gaining mechanism used at the expense of the citizens. To build a framework to discuss this process, Ireland and Poland, the two states which are a part of the enquiry are introduced and initially compared. That is done to create a context for an analysis of the historical development of the twentieth-century criminal law in Poland and Ireland in the following two chapters. These two states, at first sight, might not have too much in common especially since both chose somewhat different paths to achieve the militarisation of behaviours. However, both Poland and Ireland promote individualism, self-determinism, and individual agency and it is easier to introduce the militarisation of behaviours in countries supporting these values.