Search

During the COVID-19 pandemic TikTok became a vibrant virtual space to circulate dance performances and challenges when other forms of movement were heavily restricted. A new generation of Irish dancers joined the app to share their choreographies and creativity, bringing this form of Irish culture to young global audiences. Evident as part of this trend were new mediations of Irishness attached to the cultural concerns of Gen Z (primary users of the TikTok app). African American Irish dancer, Morgan Bullock, provides an informative case study on the tensions that emerge between national Irish and diasporic identities. Articulations of Ireland as especially inclusive are explored through a range of popular culture productions including viral short videos, comment sections, television series and dance performances. These explorations reveal layers of meaning attached to "being Irish" through the contestations and negotiations of Irish identity in online spaces. The article concludes that while performances of inclusion carry considerable weight in virtual spaces like TikTok, this is not for the most part reflected in the social and political policies that shape the everyday experiences of people of colour living and working in Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protracted pandemic shut-downs, which began in Spring 2020, rapidly relocated workplaces to domestic spaces. This article explores how "home" as a distinctly gendered space has been recalibrated in the pandemic to accommodate a range of new uses. Detailing the ever-increasing scrutiny of and technological intrusion into the home/private space, we examine the now curtailed mobility of professional class workers and the conspicuous gendering of new work-at-home arrangements made visible in "Zoom fails" and viral videos of interrupted experts. Analysis of these "interruption" videos catalogues the ways male authority is destabilized through domestic chaos and technological failure. Temporal frameworks are employed to explore dominant aesthetics and affective qualities of viral interruption videos highlighting how children tend to provoke anxiety, manifest to different degrees and in differently gendered registers depending on whether an interview subject is male or female. By comparison, pets appear to carry no such connotations and seem to be a uniformly welcomed presence. Conceiving of the interruption as an ambivalent temporal event, we argue that these videos stage the collision of professional and domestic identities in a way that presses on the charged thematics of time-keeping and care-giving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irish (N=50) and American (N=50) graduate and undergraduate students in psychology and counseling were compared on the ways they rated feelings of love, anger, and guilt on a semantic differential. Multivariate analysis was used. Cultural differences are explored; results are discussed. (Author/EMK)

Examined effects of personal growth group conducted to allow 22 graduate students in counseling opportunity to experience what it is like to participate in unstructured group. Compared to controls, growth group students scored higher on evaluative scale of counseling on pretest. Controlling for initial differences, growth group students still scored higher than controls on scale following group sessions. (NB)

Explores love as a human behavior that has emotional, intellectual, volitional, relational, and transcendental dimensions. Notes that emotional and volitional dimensions seem to be essential. Contends that, even though love is often identified as relationship with particular person, it is essentially a matter of caring about oneself and others. (Author/NB)

Considers the characteristics of the father as sexual abuser and discusses appropriate treatment. Concludes treatment of incestuous father involves the establishment of an empathic relationship and admission of responsibility on offender's part is necessary if out-patient treatment is to be feasible. (Author/ABL)

Traces 22-year development of counseling into an established profession in Ireland, paying particular attention to pertinent training courses that have emerged in 1980s. Examines the practice of community counseling. Claims the evolution of a professional association for community counselors has not yet been established, and collaborative relationships between self-help groups and community counselors need to be developed. (Author/ABL)

Discusses school counseling in the context of Irish culture, and reviews research on the role of school counselors in Ireland, first as perceived by themselves, and then as perceived by others, including school principals, teachers, and students. Implications of this research are discussed, along with future trends in Irish school counseling. (TE)

An after effect of the 2008 global financial crisis was a significant generational divide, fuelled by growing inequality, that limited access to necessities such as secure work and housing for the post-crash generation in Ireland. Faced with issues including political upheaval, climate crisis, and austerity, young people in Ireland and elsewhere have recently organized themselves online and on the streets as social, environmental, and political activists. This article examines recent Irish reality television texts that encourage intergenerational cooperation and solidarity, offering visions of mutual reliance and positive relationships between young and old that dissipate any notion of "generation wars." Familial and community structures are thus reinstated as a safety net for current uncertainties. This article proposes that these programmes reflect a desire that the cohesion and transformation gained through intergenerational exchange and cooperation on social issues in Ireland might also be leveraged towards addressing the more stubbornly divisive economic inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examined current practices for dealing with child sexual abuse in Ireland. Seven social workers and nine psychologists responded to questionnaires exploring incidence of child sexual abuse, training of practitioners, therapeutic techniques used with victims, treatment of perpetrators, and treatment of families. Found localized, ad hoc arrangements and responses, with therapeutic approach varying from place to place. (Author/NB)

This article examines how pre-existing Irish migratory cultural logics have been re-tooled in the post-Celtic Tiger period as a form of adaptation to the new imperatives of global capitalism. In this analysis, we show that just as Julien Mercille has discovered in regard to the Irish press and its role in normalizing and promoting neoliberal responses to the economic crisis, representations of the new emigration in the Irish broadcasting environment traverse a narrow spectrum that runs from optimism to resignation. Reality genres heavily tout the values of enterprise and resilience as well as the material affordances that are seen to accrue from emigration, while dramas are more customarily committed to the emotional management of experiences of loss and separation. Structural inquiry into national economic programmes and priorities is customarily excluded in such an environment, although it may be seen that more vernacular forms such as YouTube videos and a low-level but consistent preoccupation with the experiences and concerns of the returned migrant in the Irish press suggest public interest in unsettled questions about the permeability of Irish society and what it means to be located within or dislocated from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the cultural and ideological management of mass migration in twenty-first-century Ireland, arguing that narratives of return have come to dominate representations of emigration. The almost universal focus on the moment or experience of return distinguishes the current era from other periods of high emigration in Ireland. The phenomenon of the surprise homecoming video is scrutinised alongside recent cinematic releases, newspaper articles, blogs and cultural events including The Gathering (2013) and the Marriage Equality Referendum (2015). By drawing these sources together, the article exposes how cultural representations of emigration have been shaped to fit with official narratives of a business-friendly nation in recovery. By repeatedly showcasing the emotional pleasures of return these popular culture forms support a fantasy of easy return and mask the real economic and social problems driving the latest wave of emigration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]