The Domestic, Moral and Political Economies of Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland: What Rough Beast?

This book examines the collective representation of Ireland after the sudden death of the 'Celtic Tiger'. The central organising theme is articulated by Yeats (1920) in his famous poem 'The Second Coming': in a period following crisis, in conditions of liminality and anomie, when 'Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold', Yeats asks: '... what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?' Three sections follow, on the domestic, moral and political economies of post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. These categories are not analytically separated in this book, for such analytic separation has been at the very source of the problem of the fragmentation of knowledge, the retreat into the present, and the losing sight of ideals. All three are treated as an integrated whole, and in this way economics is reconciled and situated within its wider parental discourses of society as 'collective household' and the primary processes and principles of social integration. Not only is oikos the root of 'economics', it is also the root of 'ecology' broadening the frame to integrate issues of environment and speaking to themes of sustainable development on one level, and at another level to the themes of mythology, lore and poetic unity that comprise the linguistic household of society. The reconnecting of economics with historical and general anthropological deep human needs explores the grounds for a re-humanised political economics and suggests pathways to a sustainable future other than a second coming of recent patterns.