UCD Sociology students are participating in the SAI Annual Postgraduate Conference in Belfast this Saturday.

The Sociological Association of Ireland Annual Postgraduate Conference takes place in ​Ulster University, Belfast this Saturday 25th November 2017.

The UCD School of Sociology are delighted to announce that we have three current postgraduate students participating in the conference.

Marta Antonetti (UCD) Gender and Political Suitability in the Irish Dáil. - A Vignette Experiment on the Perception of Legislators’ Suitability for Office.

Philip Ryan (UCD) Joining the everyday nation: A study of naturalisation rates and attitudes towards immigration.

Amelie Aidenberger (UCD) The contagiousness of norm violations: A relational approach.

Best Wishes to all attending.

Can human rights defeat nationalism? Dr. Lea David - Thursday November 23, 1pm, D418, Newman Building. All welcome.

School of Sociology – Seminar Series 2017-2018           

           

Thursday, November 23^rd, 2017, 1pm, D418, Newman Building

Dr. Lea David – Marie Curie Research Fellow

Can human rights defeat nationalism?

The focus of this lecture is the way in which collective memory and memorialization processes are understood within the human rights centred ideology and how such understanding affects nationalism. The basic difference between human rights and nationalist understanding and promotion of memorialization processes is that human rights stand for world-wide inclusion of all people into one moral community, whereas nationalism presumes nationally bounded collectives. For the ideology of nationalism, historical memory is perceived in terms of continuity, provides legitimacy for sovereignty, however, human rights as the grand narrative in the world polity, has provided a new definition – that of coming to terms with (one specific version of) the past - by which collectives are supposed to remember, a phenomenon coined here as “memorialization isomorphism”. Memorialization isomorphism refers to the standardized set of norms, promoted through human rights infrastructures in the world polity, through which societies are supposed to deal with the legacies of mass human rights abuses. States, in particular weak and post-conflict states with troubled pasts, are expected to conform to the international human rights norms of facing their criminal past and becoming accountable for past massive human rights abuses.

I ask here how successful memorialization isomorphism is in promoting universalist human rights values and whether memorialization isomorphism is capable of harvesting micro-solidarity in order to become an ideological cement that can overcome nationalism. Since the experience of micro-solidarity is not instinctive but rather a function of an interpretation of symbols and history, I argue that in contexts within which ethnic symbols and collective histories have played immediate roles in conflicts, and were further legitimized and embedded by peace agreements and human rights institutions, it is nationalist apparatus which has become the ultimate factor in the processes of recollecting micro-solidarity. In other words, I argue that at the world polity level, human rights have produced a norm of memorialization isomorphism that does not actually lead to the advancement of human rights values but is instead likely to further promote nationalist ideologies. Finally, I suggest we look at the current reappearance of nationalism world-wide partially as a result of a graduate and accumulative process of standardization of memory - from “duty to remember” as a moral instance onto policy-oriented “proper way to remember” and try to assess the impact such process has on the perception of the “self” and “other”.

Rituals of Exclusion? Identity, Ideology and Inequality in the Centenary Commemorations of the 1916 Rising - Ryan Nolan

UCD School of Sociology – Seminar Series 2017-2018

Thursday, November 16th, 2017, 1.pm, D418, Newman Building
Speaker: Ryan Nolan, PhD candidate, UCD School of Sociology

Rituals of Exclusion? Identity, Ideology and Inequality in the Centenary Commemorations of the 1916 Rising.

Looking at Irish nationalism and the 1916 Centenary Commemorations, this paper will shed light on the role that nationalism has in sculpting the parameters of these commemorative events. This study will focus on the role that rituals, nationalism and commemoration have in the (re)production of solidarity, nationalist identity and the legitimation of social organisations, social hierarchies, and social inequalities. Examining speeches dated throughout the Centenary Commemorative year sourced from key social and political actors in Ireland, this paper argues that these commemorative events hold more relevant information about Ireland in 2016, than Ireland in 1916. Adopting the methodology of critical-discourse analysis this paper strives to uncover the latent influences and subtle alterations of history adopted in this commemorative period.

This paper attempts to unearth the significant role that elite representations of the Rising have in rewriting the past into a cleaner and more accessible narrative. A narrative which generates legitimacy for Ireland’s political elites through the construction of inconsistent ties with Ireland’s past. This paper exposes the politicization of Irish memory by the political elite in these commemorations, and details how Irish history has been distorted in the 2016 commemorations to specifically generate ties of legitimacy and allegiance between the contemporary political elite and the history, ideologies and philosophies of the 1916 participants. This paper suggests that the centenary commemorations of the 1916 Rising, speak more about the contemporary Irish social and political climate, than an accurate and objective reading of Ireland’s past.

Podcast with MA students and Kathleen Martin and Linda Murray

In this new episode of Dublin Calling, the students of our Masters module Critical Race and Decolonical Theories (taught by Dr Alice Feldman, UCD Sociology) talk with Prof Kathleen Martin, California Polytechnic State University and with Linda Murray, University of California in Santa Barbara. The podcast was recorded as part of the Masters module after a lecture given by Kathleen and Linda with the title 'Native Handprints: Photographs and Stories Written on the Land'.

'Morals and Markets' in Royal Irish Academy, Thursday 9th November

We are pleased to invite you to the event 'Morals and Markets' in the Royal Irish Academy on Thursday 9 November, 11am. The event is partly organized by Prof. Andreas Hess from the School of Sociology (UCD). All are welcome.

Dr. Grund featured in UCD Connections magazine on internationalization

The latest edition of the UCD Connections Alumni Magazine features an interview with Dr. Grund (School of Sociology, UCD) about life as an international scholar at UCD and about internationalization at university more generally.

Click here for full-size page.

Huge congrats to Dr. Andreas Hess for promotion to Professor

We are very happy to congratulate our colleague Dr. Andreas Hess for his successful promotion to the academic rank of "Professor" at UCD. Well done! Here is a link to Andreas' research profile.