Múscailt

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In this episode, Niamh chats with Professor Kath Browne, a social and cultural geographer at UCD. We discuss her fascinating ERC-funded project, Beyond Opposition, which seeks to explore the everyday experiences of people who are opposed to, or have concerns about, legislative and cultural changes around same sex marriage, abortion, gender self-identification and other sexual and gender equalities. The project also explores how we might address the social polarisation that has emerged between people occupying different standpoints on sexual and gender rights.

Kath’s work probes what it means for feminist/LGBT+ movements ‘when we feel both under threat and simultaneously we are gaining some forms of power?’. In our conversation, Kath discusses the heterogeneity among those opposed to different forms of gender/LGBT+ equalities; the ways in which they experience public space now that they can no longer assume that their views are widely accepted; the ethical and emotional aspects of doing research with people opposed to your very way of being; and the potential for radical empathy. Kath’s research also questions some of the unintended consequences of some LGBT+ activism, and asks how, if at all, we might overcome some of the social polarisation that defines contemporary politics and social life.

For more information on the Beyond Opposition project, check out: https://beyondopposition.org/

The Gaza Fundraiser is here:https://www.patreon.com/posts/thank-you-from-100216021

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Emma Penney is a working class academic whose work contributes to the exciting and ever-expanding field of ‘Working Class Studies’. She is also an activist and archivist who is committed to celebrating the still woefully under-recognised and ignored arts and praxis of working class communities in Ireland. Now based in Sligo, Emma is a lecturer in the Atlantic Technological University and she’s also a joint founder, with the poet and activist Sophie Meehan, of the extraordinary online Working-Class Writing Archive.

In this episode, Emma talks about the importance of her self-identification as a working class academic, and why she has used the term ‘welfare class’ to capture her embodied experiences of life and work in the purportedly class free environment of the university.

Emma is currently completing a book for Liverpool University Press, entitled: ‘Women Writing the Margins: Working-Class Writing and Activism in Ireland’s Second Wave Feminist Movement’. Here she discusses the distinctive forms of feminism and creativity that emerged from working class women’s groups during the 1980s and 1990s, but which often operated below the radar of state funding and employment scheme priorities, or indeed academic interest. The importance of archival work is a central theme in this interview, and Emma explains the origins and rationale behind the online Working-Class Writing Archive, and her hopes for its future.

She also reads some poetry, giving listeners a brief but beautiful taster of the cultural practice of the working class communities, poets and writers whose work constitutes the archive.

The Gaza Fundraiser is here:https://www.patreon.com/posts/update-from-from-99005710

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In this episode, Rosie and Gavan Titley consider the politics behind ‘PC gone mad’ or ‘Cancel culture’ type controversies, and what might be distinctive or new about contemporary free speech related anxieties. Gavan explains the concepts of ‘post-racial’ societies and ‘frozen racism’ and how, when linked to dominant ideas about free speech, they are used to close down discussions about racism and racialisation.

Gavan Titley is based in the Department of Media Studies in Maynooth University, and the interview largely centres on his important book, ‘Is Free Speech Racist?’ which was published by Polity Press in 2020. It also anticipates some of the issues that will be explored in his upcoming book ‘What is Free Speech For?’ (Bristol University Press).

Gavan talks about his motivations for writing the books, before moving onto a philosophically rich exploration of what ‘free speech’ means and what it is (often) taken to mean. He explains how ‘commitments to free speech’ and a willingness to be ‘offended’ are used to police racialised non-European peoples and Muslims, in particular; how the cover of ‘freedom’ becomes a measure of their capacity to be integrated into western society, dovetailing with migration control and so-called counter-terrorism regimes.

It is also apparent, within the current conjuncture, that if some people and communities are deemed ‘suspect’ in relation to free speech, they are also deemed less deserving of it. The interview closes with some thoughts on the scope for activists to challenge or push back against these cynical and racist deployments of free speech in politically productive ways.

Gaza Fundraiser:https://www.patreon.com/posts/important-update-98690483

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In this episode, Niamh talks to Dr Majella Mulkeen of Atlantic Technological University about her research on the framing of care within the Standards of Proficiency for Social Care Workers (SOPs) in Ireland. As Majella explains, the SOPs are set down by the Social Care Workers Registration Board.

They detail the skills and abilities that individuals must possess in order to enter the register of social care workers, i.e. to be able to legally practise in Ireland using the protected title of ‘social care worker’. Drawing on research outlined in her 2020 paper in the Irish Journal of Applied Social Studies, Majella explains the background to these developments and offers a critical yet constructive reading of the SOPs.

This is a timely interview, not only because the Social Care Workers Register opened in November 2023, but also because how care is understood, practised and valued in Irish society is a pressing concern, whose significance extends far beyond one sector.

The latest report from the West Bank with Hannah McCarty is out now here:https://www.patreon.com/posts/patron-exclusive-98331907

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In this wide-ranging conversation, Rosie talks with Patrick Bresnihan and Naomi Millner about their wonderful co-authored book ‘All We Want is the Earth - Land, Labour and Movements Beyond Environmentalism’.

Published by Bristol University Press in July 2023, the book critiques what its authors describe as ‘modern environmentalism’ and conventional understandings of who does and what counts as environmental politics. In this interview, Naomi and Paddy highlight and re-centre the radical ecological legacies of a diverse array of movements, activists and thinkers from the Global South, and other contexts, over the past 80 years or so. These include Dolores Huerta, César Chávez and United Farm Workers’ who organised on behalf of migrant farmworkers in California during the 1960s; Mexican agronomists such as Edmundo Taboada; and movements associated with Autonomous Marxism, Wages for Housework and Zero Work.

Paddy and Naomi recognise the prescience of Amílcar Cabral, Sylvia Wynter and others who forged essential connections between anti/decolonial and ecological struggles. They consider more recent movements too, such as La Vía Campesina, The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, the Zapatistas and how they challenged capitalist globalisation and resource extraction in the name of food-sovereignty, indigenous rights and the commons. And they point us towards vibrant forms of Earth Politics, that centre Indigenous knowledges and the imagery of Madre Tierra (Mother Earth), while also re-imagining human and non-human relationships.

The Múscailt on Social Care is out now here:https://www.patreon.com/posts/97892405

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In this episode Rosie talks with Emma Dolan, a lecturer in Peace and Development Studies at the University of Limerick. Their conversation centres on Emma’s fascinating book ‘Gender and Political Apology: When the patriarchal state says “sorry”’ which was published by Routledge in 2022. The period since the 1990s has been characterised as the ‘age of apology’, reflecting the frequency and prominence of political apologies internationally. This is something we’ve witnessed in Ireland too through, for example the Taoiseach’s statement on Mother and Baby Homes in 2021 and UK PM David Cameron’s 2010 apology for Bloody Sunday. In the interview, Emma considers the diverse forms that political apologies can take and how complex or controversial they can become. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler and other feminist scholars, she explains how apologies are ‘performative’ ‘excitable’ and ‘gendered’, and why victims of violence or social harms can experience state apologies in contradictory and even troubling ways.

This is borne out in two case studies that Emma has researched in detail: the Japanese Government’s apologies for the treatment and sexual abuse of Korean ‘Comfort Women’ during World War 2; and official US responses to the infamous photos of US Military Police’s sexualised violence against detainees in Abu Ghraib prison during the occupation of Iraq. Emma weighs up the political value of state apologies for activists in Ireland and beyond who are seeking redress for injustices. And the interview closes with some reflections on her ongoing research into the politics and practices of commemoration and representation in relation to the British military.

Múscailt is a tortoise shack production. Support independent media at patreon.com/tortoiseshack

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Múscailt is a podcast of interviews with scholars and writers who are raising important questions about Irish society through their research. Committed to critique and hope in equal measure, the show features discussions on a range of issues relating to ecology, criminal justice, politics, sexuality, culture, identity, social policy and more. Join hosts Rosie Meade and Niamh McCrea for in-depth, convivial conversations with guests who want to share their work on Irish society with new audiences.

In this the first episode of Season 2, Rosie and Niamh are joined by producer Tony Groves to look back at some of the earlier episodes and give you a taste of what is lined up over the next several weeks.

Episode 1 is out now here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/patron-exclusive-96963425

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In this episode, Niamh speaks with Marie Moran, assistant professor in Equality Studies, and director of University College Dublin’s Equality Studies Centre. Marie is author of Identity and Capitalism, published by Sage in 2015, and of ‘Rethinking Elites in Populist Times’ which is forthcoming from Verso. She is also working on another monograph for Polity called ‘Inequality in the 21 st Century’.

In this discussion, we focused on Marie’s highly original historicisation and conceptualisation of ‘identity’ – a concept that continues to cause controversy in left academia and beyond. We talked about her use of, and contribution to, the cultural materialist method as originally set out by Raymond Williams, and what it means to view ‘identity’ as a contemporary keyword. We then talked through five key points of controversy within contemporary debates on identity politics, namely essentialism; recognition vs redistribution; the place of solidarity; call-out culture; and the meaning and limitations of the concept of intersectionality. Finally we briefly discussed Marie’s current work which applies the keyword method to the knotty concept of ‘elites’.

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In this episode, Rosie talks with Michael G Cronin, Lecturer in English at Maynooth University, about his new book, Sexual/Liberation, published by Cork University Press, as part of the Síreacht series. Michael’s book critically reflects upon cultural images of and ideas about sexuality, desire, and the gay man that circulate within contemporary Irish society, and it explores what they might tell us about both dominant and alternative political imaginaries.

Michael and Rosie discussed the keywords - equality, vulnerability, revolution, liberation and hope - around which the book’s arguments are organised; responses to Leo Varadkar’s election as Taoiseach in 2017 and the figure of the ’homohero’; distinctions between ‘liberation’ and sexual equality or freedom; what a materialist understanding of sexuality looks like; how readings of cultural images and texts can contribute to political and social analysis; the contradictory politics of marriage equality; the paradoxes of identity and identity politics; and how an acknowledgement of our shared vulnerability might generate new possibilities for hope.

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In this episode, Niamh talks to Elizabeth (Liz) Kiely, senior lecturer in the School of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork, about her book, co-authored with Katharina Swirak, The Criminalisation of Social Policy in Neoliberal Societies, that was published by Bristol University Press in 2022. The criminalisation of social policy refers to the growing intersection between social policy and crime control, and, more broadly, to the ways in which social policy can stigmatise, exclude and penalise social groups deemed to be problematic.

Niamh and Liz talked about the relationship between the disciplines of social policy and criminology; the link between the criminalisation of social policy and neoliberalism; the penalisation of lone parenthood; the rise of the ‘squeezed middle’ discourse; the significance of interventions to address ‘adverse childhood experiences’; the role of the social professions, and, finally, the potential for alternative forms of social policy that are grounded in equality and social justice.

Here's a link to the article on the ‘squeezed middle’ which was mentioned during the show: (Neo)Liberal Populism and Ireland’s ‘Squeezed Middle’.