Marie Moran - Identity and Capitalism

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Marie Moran 2015

First published 2015

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014937806

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-4462-4974-1

ISBN 978-1-4462-4975-8 (pbk)

Editor: Chris Rojek

Assistant editor: Gemma Shields

Production editor: Katherine Haw

Copyeditor: Jane Fricker

Proofreader: Lynda Watson

Indexer: Elizabeth Ball

Marketing manager: Michael Ainsley

Cover design: Shaun Mercier

Typeset by: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India

Cover Designer: Michael Dubowe

Printed in India at Replika Press Pvt Ltd

There are very many people I want to thank for their help and encouragement in writing this book. First, to those who helped me with the academic nuts and bolts. This book began life as a doctoral thesis, under the patient and careful supervision of John Baker at the UCD School of Social Justice. Johns intellectual insights, rigorous feedback and generosity of time and spirit have been an enormous source of help and encouragement to me, and indeed, made this book possible. Thank you John, for your unwavering and continued faith in me, and for setting me on the course I continue today. I want also to thank Jim McGuigan, who has long been an intellectual inspiration of mine, and more recently, a good friend. I have benefited enormously from his active encouragement and stern advice, and take heart from the fact that we are like-minded creatures with a similar admiration for the work of Raymond Williams (though I, apparently, am more prolix than Jim, and have a terrible tendency to meddle needlessly with words). Very many thanks to Harry Browne, who supported me enormously through the summer of 2013 in particular, and in the final stages of editing. Reading drafts while on holidays, even, Harry unravelled historical knots, made incisive interventions and spurred me forward. And to Andy Storey I could not have finished this book without you. In the final weeks, Andy read and commented on every single chapter, with a sharp eye and a sharper pen confirming, in many cases, Jims worst suspicions, but rooting them out, so no one else would be subjected to such boring verbosity (thats the dictionary definition, Jim). Thank you Andy, for your huge generosity, support and attention to detail. John, Jim, Harry and Andy, I am truly indebted to all of you.

Many other people have offered great support and assistance to me over the course of writing this book. I want to thank Kathleen Lynch and all the staff and students of Equality Studies, and latterly, the UCD School of Social Justice. In particular, I want to thank Maureen Lyons and Judy Walsh, for their enduring support and much valued friendship. I am also very grateful to Andrew Sayer, for his deeply generous and insightful guidance during my four-month visit to Lancaster University, and for prompting me mixed metaphors aside to leave behind postmodernism. In addition, I would like to thank my editors at SAGE, Chris Rojek and Gemma Shields, for the support and encouragement they gave me while writing this book, with special thanks to Gemma for her patient assistance, helpful feedback and unwavering enthusiasm. Special gratitude goes to the crew of Debt Justice Action Ireland and ATTAC Ireland, with whom I worked over the course of writing this book: thank you all for being great friends and inspirational proof of collective, anti-capitalist activism.

For other practical and scholarly help when I needed it most, thanks to Conor McCabe, Edel McAteer, Vincent Browne, Gavan Titley, Pilar Villar Argiz, Theresa OKeefe, Niamh McCrea and Eoghan McDermott. A special thanks to Eileen Drumm for lending me her house in Cork for two crucial weeks of writing, even though she had never met me.

To my much loved friends, Laura Craig, Lorna Powell, Sinead ODwyer and Su OMara, thank you for always cheering me up, filling me in, bringing me out and keeping me sane. I would like to give special mention to Keith Darragh, for his motivational text messages, emails and phonecalls. I will quite literally never forget them. And to Pete Drumm, thank you for your huge kindness, practical support and for always making me laugh when I most needed to. You are one in a million.

Finally, to my family. Jean, your continual positive reinforcement, encouragement and steadfast faith in me has been a constant source of strength. Brian, thank you for your practical and humorous outlook, your steady support, and the sense of perspective you have given me over the course of this book. Kate, even though as a 15-year-old you probably doubt this, you are a constant source of happiness in my life, and you make me remember the importance of having fun. If you ever come to me in the future for advice on whether or not to write a book, I will most likely, therefore, advise the latter. Dad, thank you for giving me my love of reading, writing and arguing, and a strong belief in social justice. in particular is for you, as you instilled in me, from a very young age, the power of words I hope I do you justice. And Mam, thank you for your unconditional love, generosity, sense of fun, but most of all, for your optimism. You helped me to keep going during some tough times, and I will always be grateful.