Hearne, Rory and Boyle, Mark and Kobayashi, Audrey
(2018)
Taking liberties with democracy? On the origins, meaning and implications
of the Irish water wars.
Geoforum, 110.
pp. 232-241.
ISSN 0016-7185
Abstract
This paper offers a reading of anti-austerity protests in the Irish Republic, placing under scrutiny in particular the
origins, meaning, and implications of the country's water wars. It notes the proclivity of some post-crash antiausterity populisms to fall prey to a politics of retrenchment and exclusion and even to degenerate into nationalist spasms or what Jean Paul Sartre would term fraternity terrorisms. It contributes conceptual novelty to
existing human geographical scholarship on protest movements by convening Jean Paul Sartre and Judith Butler
in conversation; registering therein the political potential of the fused group, performing popular sovereignty
through public assembly. What makes the Irish case fascinating and worthy of scrutiny is the fact that protest
never ossified and totalised into an oppressive or regressive form of political populism. Our central argument is
that Ireland's water protest movement was effective because it was constituted from outside mainstream politics;
from molecular and atomised struggles which scaled and agglomerated into large public assemblies which,
whilst ultimately inchoate and indeterminate, signified that popular sovereignty had usurped the centre-right
representative regime and challenged the latter's right to custody over democracy.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Keywords: |
Austerity;
Protest;
Ireland;
Sartre;
Butler;
Scarcity;
Public assembly; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Applied Social Studies |
| Item ID: |
13110 |
| Identification Number: |
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.08.003 |
| Depositing User: |
Mark Boyle
|
| Date Deposited: |
26 Jun 2020 21:53 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Geoforum |
| Publisher: |
Elsevier |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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