Applied Social Studies - Journal Articles
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Item Solidarity, organizing and tactics of resistance in the 21st century: social movements and community development praxis in dialogue(Oxford University Press, 2017) McCrea, Niamh; Meade, Rosie R.; Shaw, MaeThis article attempts to identify and explore the convergent features of social movements and community development, arguing that they already share a distinctive, if uneasy, alliance around what might be called the politics of democracy. Exploring connections, as well as points of difference, this article suggests that a critical dialogue between the two might, in the longer term, contribute to a positive realignment between social movements and community development groups. In our view, social movement praxis has much to offer community development in reviving and reasserting its more radical potential, by offering untapped opportunities for building community, forging collective identity and imagining political alternatives. Specifically, the article explores why and how protest tactics matter: their political significance and the dilemmas and possibilities they present both for movement participants and community development practitioners. The article, while recognizing the often complex and constraining contexts within which it is deployed, also identifies particular features of community development that may contribute to the building of more grounded and participatory movements. In highlighting the overlapping and progressive commitment of social movements and community development organisations, we recognize the acute challenges involved in building support and forging solidarity among disenfranchised peoples. In the final section, we highlight and explore potential sources of and approaches to solidarity, assessing their relative merits for a more politically engaged community development practice.Item (Neo)Liberal populism and Ireland’s “squeezed middle”(Sage Publications, 2020) Meade, Rosie R.; Kiely, ElizabethAcknowledging definitional problems associated with the concept of ‘populism’, this article shifts the analytic gaze away from actors or politics that are conventionally characterised as populist, on to an analysis of the doing of populism by those who typically evade the populist label. Tracing the discursive construction of the ‘squeezed middle’ in Irish mainstream media and parliamentary debates between January 2014 and March 2019, the authors analyse how this signifier was mobilised to fuel and foment ressentiment among middle-earning taxpayers. This article analyses how the discourses of the ‘squeezed middle’ functioned ideologically, as a form of anti-welfare populism, redirecting blame for middle-class ontological and material insecurities on to unemployed welfare recipients who were depicted as immoral, lazy and insulated from hardship. This article highlights how populism operates from the so-called moderate centres of liberal democracy and not exclusively from the political margins. Irish political and media narratives of the ‘squeezed middle’ are seen as part of a larger project whereby damaging myths about the unemployed are propagated in service of ideological class warfare; legitimising neoliberal austerity and normalising unequal economic relations.Item Transforming the child welfare system from the inside out: Integrating trauma-informed practices into foster care services(Irish Association of Social Workers, 2024) Lotty, Maria; McCormack, Lisa; Campbell, Niamh; Stanley, DylanThe Dublin South Central Area of Tusla identified the integration of trauma-informed practices as a service need, in the current significantly challenging practice climate. In response a research based collaborative project, the TARA Project, was developed that aims to embed trauma-informed practices through an area-wide approach. This article provides a background to the project, key findings of Phase One, which involved participants undertaking a university-based programme to support implementing trauma-informed practices through the TARA practice Model. Concrete practice changes were developed during the project. The article focuses on two new practice changes being implemented by the fostering team in the research site: The TARA Case Review, and the TARA Toolkit. These new practice initiatives are outlined, the rationale and application and implications for practice are discussed, reflecting changing child welfare practice from the inside. Future directions for practice and research are also highlighted.Item Community development and the arts: sustaining the democratic imagination in lean and mean times(Intellect, 2011) Meade, Rosie R.; Shaw, MaeThis paper argues for a more expressive and expansive understanding of culture, citizenship and democracy. It seeks to reaffirm the importance of imagination, creativity and emotion in sustaining and enriching community development, particularly given the inexorable rise of a managerialist and programmatic culture of practice. Community development should have an intrinsic interest in the fostering of a democratic culture within and between communities and between communities and state institutions. In practice, however, democracy often becomes treated as a ‘deliverable’, and community participation is filtered through prescribed and institutionalized relationships. In the context of funding retrenchment and public sector cutbacks, democracy and participation can simply become codewords for neoliberal hegemony. Against this, we argue that the concept of democracy must be reclaimed as an active social, political and cultural process through which change occurs in different contexts and spaces by means of subversion, opposition and resistance as much as by participation and consent. In this regard the arts have much to offer community development, but the relationship should also be a reciprocal one. The arts can be drawn upon to justify particular kinds of social and cultural exclusion, particularly when creativity becomes monetized and subject to market incursions. There are also parallels between the pressures community arts projects experience to demonstrate results and relevance, and those experienced by community development projects. Therefore, this paper considers dialectical tendencies in both community development and the arts. We argue for a more symbiotic engagement between these fields, and by using the term ‘democratic imagination’ we hope to enliven what can otherwise become a deadly culture of instrumentalism in both. By highlighting the concepts of cultural democracy and cultural resistance this paper explores the potential for a more nuanced and less institutionally fixated vision of cultural practice. Cultural democracy acknowledges the centrality of creativity to human experience and emphasizes that citizens be actively supported to engage in the production, consumption and distribution of the arts. Cultural resistance theories recognize that cultural and political expression can occur beyond the radar of mainstream community development and arts practice. Resistance is too easily dismissed as atomized and trivial, and we suggest that practitioners give it more committed attention in order to better understand the issues, identities and ideas that animate communities. Finally, we consider the creative potential of ‘consumption’ which is often dismissed as a degraded form of cultural engagement. In so doing, we challenge some of the underlying assumptions regarding the apathy and passivity of communities that serve to rationalize policy and practice interventions in the current context.Item Mayday, Mayday! Newspaper framing anti-globalizers!: A critical analysis of the Irish Independent’s anticipatory coverage of the `Day of the Welcomes’ demonstrations’(Sage Publications, 2008) Meade, Rosie R.This article provides a critical analysis of the discourses employed in the Irish Independent's anticipatory coverage of the `Day of the Welcomes' demonstrations that occurred in Dublin during 2004. These demonstrations were organized by a broad church of `anti-globalization' activists who sought to use the coincidence of EU enlargement and the May Day holiday as an opportunity to highlight alternative visions of the European project. As Ireland's biggest selling `quality' newspaper, the Irish Independent has had a significant role in framing public debates about key social and political questions in this state. I show how, in the run up to the `Day of the Welcomes', the Irish Independent's coverage discredited both the political aspirations and the potential conduct of protesters. The overwhelming thrust of this coverage was to sanction dominant ideologies in relation to neo-liberalism, EU expansionism and the place of dissent in Irish society.