Kirjahaku

This book provides an engaging and informative insight into the experiences, dreams and hopes of children and teenagers in contemporary Ireland. O’Connor analyses a unique data set: a random sample of 4,100 texts drawn from roughly 34,000 texts written by young people aged 10–12 years and 14–17 years, in response to a nationwide invitation to describe themselves and the Ireland they inhabit. The young people’s voices give the book a vivid reality, which is illuminated by the application of sociological concepts including global and local, individualization, and ways of ‘doing boy/girl’. The study leads us towards a better understanding of contemporary social problems by locating these young people’s accounts within the broader context of cultural changewhere collective identities have become weaker; where the local is enmeshed with the global; where children anticipate a predictable future and teenagers focus on an extended present; where gender is no longer salient but yet in many ways remains a submerged framework mapping their life styles, life choices and relationships. Written in an accessible style, the book presents a picture that is sometimes challenging, sometimes reassuring but always informative. Containing extensive quotations, it will be of interest not only to students and lecturers in sociology, education, child and youth studies, Irish studies and psychology but to thoughtful parents and teachers at first and second level, and especially those whose students took part in the Write Hear, Write Now project.

This book provides an engaging and informative insight into the experiences, dreams and hopes of children and teenagers in contemporary Ireland. O’Connor analyses a unique data set: a random sample of 4,100 texts drawn from roughly 34,000 texts written by young people aged 10–12 years and 14–17 years, in response to a nationwide invitation to describe themselves and the Ireland they inhabit. The young people’s voices give the book a vivid reality, which is illuminated by the application of sociological concepts including global and local, individualization, and ways of ‘doing boy/girl’. The study leads us towards a better understanding of contemporary social problems by locating these young people’s accounts within the broader context of cultural change where collective identities have become weaker; where the local is enmeshed with the global; where children anticipate a predictable future and teenagers focus on an extended present; where gender is no longer salient but yet in many ways remains a submerged framework mapping their life styles, life choices and relationships. Written in an accessible style, the book presents a picture that is sometimes challenging, sometimes reassuring but always informative. Containing extensive quotations, it will be of interest not only to students and lecturers in sociology, education, child and youth studies, Irish studies and psychology but to thoughtful parents and teachers at first and second level, and especially those whose students took part in the Write Now project.

This book is a definitive examination of higher education: locating it in a wider neo-liberal context involving the state and the market, with a specific focus on recent higher policy and on the elite group of senior managers in universities. Written in a clear accessible style, it provides an in-depth analysis of university structures, cultures and practices at senior management level. Despite the managerialist rhetoric of accountability, we see structures where access to power is through the Presidents' ‘blessing’, very much as in a medieval court. We see a culture that is less than comfortable with the presence of women, and which, in its narratives, stereotypes and interactions exemplifies to a rather nineteenth-century view of women. Sites and sources of change are also identified. In a global context where diversity is crucial to innovation, it challenges us to critically reflect on management and on higher education.

«A fascinating, well-paced, beautifully written memoir.» (Professor Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, Author and Director, MA in Creative Writing, University of Limerick, Ireland) «A wonderfully honest, often witty, personal account from someone who experienced discrimination -and challenged it - at every level of academia. So much of what has changed for women in recent decades is chronicled through Pat’s life, research and actions. A tour de force.» (Micheline Sheehy Skeffington, plant ecologist and feminist activist) «This book evokes the lived experience of a woman who, out of her time, marshalled the brains, the courage and--I have to say it--the sheer bloody-minded and tireless determination to confront others with one question: ‘why?’. Asking the question came at no small personal cost, but--slowly and surely--it started to prise open some of the seemingly impenetrable male-centric power edifices that exist across academia; openings which now give so many others hope. Don’t be afraid of reading this book about the lifetime of someone who asked why, it may just inspire you to do the same.» (Paul Walton, Professor of Chemistry, University of York, UK and international gender equality advocate) This book, written by an insider, explores experiences over a 46-year career in five academic organisations in Ireland and the UK: moving from contract research assistant to full professor and line manager (Dean). Highlighting success and failure, strength and fragility, it challenges ideas about what it is to be a ‘proper' woman. It describes the subtle and relentless processes of devaluation, marginalisation and disempowerment that are often ‘normalised.’ Written in a clear accessible style, with flashes of humour, it asks whose interests are served by taken-for-granted ideas about what it is to be a woman – ideas which deny the reality of many women’s day-to-day experiences. Who wants us to think that all women find identity and satisfaction in housework and child care? Who wants us to think that universities are meritocratic institutions? The book will inspire and entertain all those who have struggled in any male-dominated organisation and wondered if they were the problem.