Collision Culture: Transformations in Everyday Life in Ireland

The central premise of Collision Culture is that Ireland's experience of "economic boom" has resulted in the collision of incompatible ways of life. These "cultural collisions" in Irish life today occur between the local and global, between "traditional" and "modern", between Catholic and secular, and between rural and urban. They have become apparent in a variety of changes - changes in rates of traffic accidents, in suicide patterns, in patterns of consumption, in representations of Irish "celebrities", in patterns of home ownership, in the rise of tribunals, and in a variety of other points of public discourse and Irish culture. The "new" is everywhere, but the "old" has not vanished and Collision Culture sits at the crossroads between the two.

Dr Kieran Keohane is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at National University of Ireland, Cork. Dr Carmen Kuhling is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Limerick.