Exploring the intersection of technology and political ideology, this work delves into how the liberal state increasingly supports illiberal practices and subjects. It presents an intellectual history of a burgeoning technology aimed at fostering peace, highlighting the complexities and contradictions in the liberal framework as it navigates these emerging dynamics. Through this lens, the book challenges conventional understandings of state power and societal values.
This book explores the theories of cultural identity and pluralism that support the peace process and questions their adequacy, both with respect to the ethno-national conflict they were originally developed to comprehend, and to the difficulties Ireland now faces in coming to terms with immigration and increasing cultural diversity. Some of the contributors are more optimistic than others, but all share the belief that Ireland's long theoretical and practical engagement with issues related with belonging, citizenship, cultural difference, and conflict are of global significance in a post-Cold War world.