Ireland Now

William Flanagan is professor of sociology at Coe College. He is the author of Urban Sociology: Images and Structure and Contemporary Urban Sociology.

"This is an accessible guide explaining how Ireland and the Irish people have changed during the past fifteen years. Largely a result of the country's rapidly expanding economy, Ireland has transformed from one of the poorest to one of the richest countries in the EU. The author uses personal, first hand stories from a wide range of Irish citizens, including the elderly, farmers, people in small towns and rural areas, and recent immigrants to show how various segments of the population are coping with the shifting social landscape." —Abstracts of Public Administration, Development, and Environment, 2007"An American of Irish descent, Flanagan has traveled often to Ireland studying and working since the 1970s and became intrigued with the stories people told about how their lives were changing. From the late 1990s, he began writing the stories down, and here delivers a selection of views on Ireland today by Irish people living there." —Reference-Research Book News"William Flanagan focuses on the past decade and a half, which have seen such profound economic, religious, and cultural changes in Ireland. Perhaps most interesting about Ireland Now is that it combines analysis of broad current events with interviews with regular Irish people whose lives have been upended in recent years—for better or worse." —Irish America"William Flanagan has provided us with a terrific introduction to contemporary Ireland, its peoples, and its complex identities. At the heart of this highly original interdisciplinary study is the nuanced Irish voice speaking in multiple ways, and at various registers, of everyday life in Global Ireland." —Eamonn Wall, Jefferson Smurfit Professor of Irish Studies, University of Missouri-St. Louis"This book is valuable because it digs beneath the endlessly repeated litany of the rapid changes in modern Ireland, such as 'globalization,' 'the Celtic Tiger,' 'Fourth highest per capita GDP in the world,' 'church in decline,' 'educated young people,' and the list goes on. Ireland Now lays out the changing Ireland framework and the goal of finding how it plays out in the everyday life of the people in the book. Readers in sociology, cultural anthropology, and political science will find or recognize the pressures on people located in a kaleidoscopically changing environment." —Richard B. Finnegan, Stonehill College