Part 1: Introduction

Part 1: Introduction The body of work presented for examination here was published between June 2008 and February 2018 and incorporates peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Those ten outputs are numbered, named, and listed in Part 1.2: hereafter the term ‘body of work’ is used to refer to the outputs as a whole. Individual outputs centre on community development, community arts, social movement, and youth work praxis1 in contemporary Ireland. These diverse fields of praxis reflect comparable efforts by people to make sense of, highlight and address their interests through involvement in collective action. They invoke shared discourses of ‘equality’, ‘participation’ and ‘empowerment’, even though their forms of organisation, tactics and strategic approaches may diverge significantly. Taken together these fields of praxis, and the many volunteers, activists, professionals, and other participants engaged in them, constitute a vital part of a variegated and differentiated Irish civil society. Youth work, community development, community arts and social movement organisations can, and often do, appeal to distinct activist, intellectual or practice traditions. Despite their proximate bases in communities, they may appear to be estranged from or in competition with each other, while also exhibiting varying degrees of professionalisation, institutionalisation or popular participation. Acknowledging their specificity, this body of work situates community development, community arts, youth work and social movement organisations together within the contested terrain of collective action. Across the outputs collective action is theorised as: the site of and target for complex and dynamic power relationships; imbricated with various governmental projects through which multiple societal actors seek to mobilise citizens; a potential site of and resource for resistance to particular expressions of government, ideology, and power; and as developing alternative social relationships, organisational forms, and modes of communication. Therefore, the body of work acknowledges and analyses how the meanings, forms and purposes of collective action are constantly reworked, just as they give expression to important societal struggles. The normative, identity, interest and knowledge claims expressed by civil society actors are, at least partly, constructed in, through and against their encounters with the state. From the 1970s, community development became a technique in the Irish state’s anti-poverty repertoire, and successive Governments initiated policy programmes that helped establish 1 ‘Praxis’ refers to a critical, reflexive, symbiotic and ongoing dialogue between ideas and social action or theory and practice (Section 3.1: Covering Document). 1 community development and arts projects in ‘disadvantaged areas’. In the 1990s, the Irish state began to develop a more interventionist approach to the funding and recognition of youth work. Furthermore, civil society actors seek to influence, and in certain instances participate in, the functioning of the state, with strategies that range from partnership to service delivery to advocacy to outright resistance. Consequently, rather than representing civil society and the state as locked in a binary, deterministic and asymmetrical power relationship, this research also analyses the extent to which they are co-constitutive and overlapping realms. 1.1: Research Questions and Structure of Covering Document The body of work references policy and practice developments that span the period 2004 to 2017. Some outputs are explicitly discursive and theoretical in orientation, raising foundational questions about the politics of civil society that might resonate with readers across time and place. Others look more closely at the nuances of the Irish cultural and political scene, and how they mediate or are mediated by collective action. For example, the implementation and rationalisation of austerity following Ireland’s economic collapse in 2008, is identified as a particularly salient influence over the shape and form of state/civil society relationships in the period. Taken together, the outputs are concerned with addressing three broad sets of inter- related questions. Firstly, how is collective action rationalised and (de)legitimised? The research analyses how community development, community arts, youth work and social movements are discursively constructed in contemporary Ireland. What kinds of actors are involved in constructing these fields of praxis and for what ends? What forms of collective action are imagined, foreclosed, elicited, or demonised through these discursive constructions? What knowledge claims, ‘expertise’, evidence-bases and value commitments are mobilised in the various discourses of collective action? To what extent are these discourses changing and how? Secondly, what is the role of the state in governing civil society? Understood as a contested, mobile, and often contradictory actor, the neoliberal state is implicated in the creation of the political-economic contexts giving rise to collective action, whilst also potentially hindering or supporting collective action’s democratic reach. The research asks, how has the Irish state, through its funding regimes and shifting policy priorities, sought to influence the discourses, practices and structures of collective action? How has austerity, as a discourse and practice, informed the state’s engagement with civil society actors in Ireland? 2 What (new) rationalities and technologies of government are being deployed through civil society? Thirdly, what is the scope for resistance and alternative forms of relationships? The outputs consider the extent to which state funded community development, community arts and youth work projects are tasked with responsibilising or managing those who are considered ‘unruly’ and ‘unproductive’ citizens. They analyse if and how projects and their workers are subjected to increasingly intrusive forms of performance measurement as they pursue their objectives. The body of work is critical in that it recognises that the discourses and practices of collective action can be invoked to support narrow conceptions of human freedom, agency, or possibility. Conversely, the research tracks the potential for resistance and critique within civil society, asking can the discourses, concepts and practices of collective action be reclaimed and re-signified for different purposes. What tactics of protest or refusal are practised by actors and movements within civil society? What is the scope for dialogue and interchange across different fields of praxis, between social movements and community development or between community development and community arts, for example? (How) can we think and talk about emancipatory praxis? What alternative sources of inspiration and imagination might inform collective action? The distinctiveness and originality of this body of work lies in its parallel analyses of, and its efforts to encourage dialogue between, community development, community arts, youth work and social movement praxis. It deploys theory and concepts from sociology, social policy, cultural and media studies, making it strongly interdisciplinary in orientation. The body of work also validates the role of cultural production and practices –novels, poetry, or visual arts– in supporting critical re-conceptualisations of collective action, power, identity, and resistance. Another original innovation is the adoption –in four outputs- of a Foucauldian governmentality approach to analysing the civil society/state nexus in Ireland, where liberal, critical-pluralist, neo-Marxist or neo-Gramscian approaches are more commonly utilised by social scientists. Hence, a distinctive feature of the outputs is their interrogation of if and how collective action is both constituted by and constitutive of practices of government in contemporary Ireland. However, the research’s interest in finding resistant and emancipatory discourses and forms of action, distinguishes it from many Foucauldian studies, which tend to regard such normative projections as government by another name. Accordingly, the research suggests that collective action can and should express normative commitments, while appreciating its contingency in mediating and being mediated by complex power dynamics and forms of government. In so doing, outputs interrogate Ireland’s distinctive processes and 3 practices of neoliberalisation, the changing policy priorities of the state, and the ambiguous internal and outer boundaries of civil society itself. Part 2 of this Covering Document, outlines and clarifies core terms or concepts that are deployed across the various outputs. Part 3 details the theory, methodology and methods that have underpinned the research, with some reflections on the body of work as a contribution to and as informed by my own praxis within civil society. Part 4 situates the body of work within the political, economic, and cultural context of 21st Century Ireland, with particular reflection on the significance of the recent regime of austerity, and its treatment within the outputs. This sets the scene for and anticipates points of discussion that are explored further in Part 5. Presenting an integrated thematic overview of the ten outputs, it seeks to demonstrate their coherence, originality, and relevance for a critical analysis of the complex power dynamics shaping collective action in, and perhaps beyond, Ireland today. 4 1.2: The Body of

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