The Local and the Global: Contested Terrains
30 September 2004

Professor Joe Lee

Globalisation is nothing new to Ireland, said Professor Joe Lee, in his keynote address at `The Local and the Global: Contested Terrains' conference which took place in DCU over two days from Friday 24 September 2004. The conference was organised by The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, DCU, St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Mater Dei Institute of Education and All Hallows College.

Taking as his subject `Globalisation: An Irish Perspective?', Professor Lee emphasised that Ireland and Irish people were deeply involved in global affairs since the middle of the nineteenth century if not before. He instanced the very high levels of emigration from Ireland since the Great Famine, the language shift to English that attended it, and the widespread missionary movement from Ireland, as examples of the impact on Ireland of an earlier form of globalisation.

Turning to the present situation, he said that the intense pressures of globalisation today challenge peoples and countries throughout the world to find their own responses out of their own resources. Some small countries, such as those in Scandinavia, have not felt the need to abandon their own languages in adjusting very successfully to globalisation. Quoting extensively from speeches made by Eamon de Valera from the 1930s to the 1950s, Professor Lee showed how the former taoiseach was well aware of the need for Ireland to respond to these challenges drawing on the resources of its own history. Far from advocating an insular turning inwards, as sometimes alleged, these speeches showed de Valera emphasised what Ireland had to offer to the task of fashioning a better world order, said Professor Lee, anticipating some common themes of today's political discourse such as sustainable development and the need for effective global governance.