Much of the research on the topics of gender, self-destruction and social change are treated in a kind of pan-phenomenological manner where implicitly the Western world (mostly English-speaking) is debated in a culturally and socially neutral manner. Although this very broad cultural map share many similar patterns I see this approach as highly inappropriate for this thesis where I explicitly and consistently refer to the specifics of culture, class, gender, and age. In highlighting local, socially
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and culturally specific problems which I would suggest, have equally specific solutions, I have made efforts to explicitly distinguish the different settings. Reading about cases and empirical examples on the contemporary issues ‘on men’ for
example, one is mostly left with the impression that whether the context is Australia, the US or Britain is irrelevant. Even in the case of Irish-British relations where history, politics and culture are often inseparable and similarities are abundant, there are still specifics that are relevant. This is why I rely primarily on literature that discusses the specific Irish context. When I refer to an author who is discussing a different social, national, cultural context I will make this explicit.
I found it very rewarding to communicate personally with some of the local authors on contemporary Irish social change and suicide out of my own bibliography. One cannot get more updated information and further reflections than those from direct conversation. In my case, this was of fundamental importance as I am not Irish, was not overly familiar with the historical context and was without first-hand insights into just what changes Ireland had gone through and how this might be qualitatively felt. Finally, it was important to make sense of some rather shocking local reports and discoveries made in the field. Barnes, McCormack, Feeney, Keohane, Kuhling, and MaLachlan (all listed below) were all very helpful and engaging in their
meetings with me:
Dr. Cliona Barnes, Department of Sociology, University of Limerick: Barnes’s thesis Boy Cultures and the Performance Of Teenage Masculinities (2007), is a classroom ethnography about the reception (and rejection) of the Exploring Masculinities programme (EM) as it was taught to second-level pupils in a working class area in Cork City. Her field work covered the two school years of 2002-2003. The
generation of boys studied by Barnes are interestingly in the ‘same-year-generation’
as my ‘lads’ as they would have been in, or about to enter the transition year in 2002-03. Hence I follow the same age group some five to ten years later as they enter into the adult world of disappearing manual labour and continue to build on ideological frameworks around the concept of masculinity. Field: Cork
Dr. Maria Feeney, (School of Sociology, University College Dublin)
Dr. Feeney was finishing her PhD thesis Pain and Distress in Rural Ireland: The Narratives of Men who Engaged in Suicidal Behaviour (2012) when I met up with
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her to discuss the burning of issues of suicide and theories social change. I owe her my Alternative Reading (part 2.2) and interpretation of anomie. Anomie has had significant influence on how Irish research has framed and interpreted Irish
modernity and social change and is therefore a major part of this study. Field: Rural west of Ireland.
Dr. Orla McCormack, Department of education, University of Limerick: As it stands clear from the title of her thesis Exploring Masculinities – the Sequel (2010),
McCormack also investigates EM, as “An examination of the views and attitudes of Irish parents and a sample of journalists towards the exploration of masculinities with young men at senior cycle”. Field: Ireland
Dr. Kieran Keohane, (Dep. of Sociology, University College Cork) and Dr. Carmen Kuhling (Dep. of Sociology University of Limerick): Keohane and Kuhling’s books Collision Culture: Transformation in everyday life in Ireland (2004) and
Cosmopolitan Ireland: Globalisation and quality of life (2007) provide the broader theoretical framework on the most important changes Ireland underwent during the
‘boom-years’ and how fundamental cultural, social and economic changes impacted on the quality of life in Ireland. Field: Ireland
Dr. Malcolm MacLachlan: (Dep. Of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin) edited and co-authored Cultivating Suicide? Destruction of self in a changing Ireland (2003) and Binge Drinking – Alternative Perspectives (2004) These volumes bravely deal with the most inflammatory topics that I also tackle in this study; the complex processes of over-consumption and self-destruction. With the contributing authors’
honesty, self-examining approach and culturally introspective insights these books are important pieces to the very difficult and painful puzzle I lay out in the following chapters. Field: Ireland
There are some other relevant researchers that have explored the issues of Irish lad culture and social change in Ireland that deserves mentioning. Although the authors were not interviewed for my research their texts have greatly informed this thesis and my own learning:
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Gaetz, S (1997): Looking Out for the Lads is based on an ethnographic study in Cork carried out in the 1980’s, a time also marked by a deep recession. With its focus on community action this book considers in detail the workings and structures of lad culture. Field: Cork
Cleary, A. School of Sociology, University College Dublin: I believe the relevance Cleary’s work Young Men on the Margins: Suicidal behaviour amongst young men,(2005b) is rather self-explanatory to my work. In the same year, Cleary also edited a special edition on masculinity in the Irish Journal of Sociology where she wrote one of the articles which critically addressed culturally informed coping mechanisms and male vulnerability to self destruction Death Rather Than Disclosure: Struggling to be a real man.(2005a) Field: Ireland
Inglis, T: (Dep. Of Sociology, University College Dublin) I look to Inglis’s texts;
Global Ireland – Same difference (2008) and Moral Monopoly: The rise and fall of the Catholic Church in modern Ireland (1998 [1987]) for an ‘home-grown analysis’
of how traditional Catholic morality was learnt and embodied by the Irish and how this became “intuitive knowledge” and “an in-built, automatic way of relating to situations” (1998:10). I was raised by parents (one born Catholic and one
Protestant’) who had denounced religion or was indifferent to it. Also, I was born in a secular society where morality is structured and operates differently. For these reasons I had to rely on ‘insider-sources’ (also O’Connell (2001), Garvin (2005), Cleary and Brannick (2007)) who discuss, based on research and personal
experience, the “inherent, inner logic to the practice of Irish Catholicism which those involved know and understand and enact almost intuitively.” (Inglis 1998:10)
With some helpful inputs from local authors I have come to contextualise what to me have become some very useful concepts; van Gennep’s and Turner’s extended or permanent “liminality” (thanks Dr. Kieran Keohane) and “disavowal of dependence”
(thanks Dr. Carmen Kuhling). In those cases where concepts and theories have been discussed in person with the authors they will appear as interviews as any other statement or quotation in the text.
Finally, I could not but turn my gaze back to Sweden and relate back to how in the Swedish context, it is young women who have been the focus of public and academic
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debate for quite some time as the sufferers of the demands of (post)modernity.
Swedish research on the gendered crisis of self-mutilating and self-sacrificing girls and young women are in abundance while academic literature and debates on male suicide are a bit of a scarcity. (The Swedish gender ratio is just over 2:1, male to female) To make sure I consulted with my MA supervisor and leading man on masculinity studies in Sweden, Lars Jalmert (University of Stockholm) who
confirmed that there have been no significant or recent developments on the issue of male suicide in Sweden. That concerns in the Swedish debate focus on women adds a new interesting dimension to the development on a concept that I will highlight as part of my study: Susan Bordo’s (2004) historical analysis of “gendered histories”
(see part 2:6) helps explain the contrast of public debate on gender in Sweden (Wiklund 2010, Dagens Nyheter 2009) and in Ireland and how discourses and understandings of gender are contextually specific and shaped by culture.
What is important to note here is how all these authors emphasise culture as a
fundamental focal point in their analyses whether it be binge drinking; suicide, social change, or the implementation of educational programmes to interrupt the
problematic and self-destructive behaviours of Irish young lads.