What Factors Have Most Influenced the Development of Youth and Community Sector in Ireland - Term Paper Example

Since independence, What Factors Have Most Influenced the Development of Youth and Community Sector in Ireland and What Has Been the Effect of These Factors? Introduction At the time of Irish Independence at the turn of the 20th century a great many social changes influenced the nature of the development of the social understanding of childhood and adulthood. Where childhood was originally considered to be a precursor to adulthood, children working alongside of their parents towards the survival of the family, childhood became a separate set of stages when work became a more often experience that was outside of the family and home environment. In order to understand the gap between childhood and adulthood, the development of the concept of the adolescence defined how school, growth, and the eventual entry into adulthood could be framed. Behaviour of the youth of Ireland was intended to conform. The policies of subsidiarity were intended to create a conformed society to local tradition. The state began to step in after independence and one of the results was the provisions of moral codes that were created through state based Acts. Many of the Acts were defined by gender as women were targeted for their sense of conformity and morality. The concept of moral fortitude was placed on the female gender which included conforming to the practice of marriage. Being unmarried was enough to be subject to punishment under the state based morality programs. The following paper will discuss the changes that have occurred concerning youth and community in Ireland since the time that independence was gained. Community is an important part of how society is defined in Ireland with subsidiarity being a form of control in which local communities define how they will solve their problems and handle their anti-social elements. Through the development of locality in relationship to soical control, the youth of different regions are acculturated through various ideas about social construction. On a national level, the development of youth as a social group has given rise to a number of issues that must be addressed. While there has been a series of problems associated with the concept of youth and adolescence, the overall advantages to acknowledging and working with developmental theories on childhood and adolescence has been a benefit to the development of contributing adults. Community According to John Keane (2009, p. 1) writes that ” civil society meant a realm of social life – market exchanges, charitable groups, clubs and voluntary associations, independent churches and publishing houses – institutionally separated from territorial state institutions”. In other words, the civil society is the immediate community in which people live that is conducted under ecologically determined constraints and permissions through which social order exists. Keane (2009, p. 1) also goes on to define civil society as a “complex and dynamic ensemble of legally protected non-governmental institutions that tend to be non-violent, self organising, self reflexive and permanently in tension with each other and with the state institutions that “frame”, construct and enable their activities”. Civil society and the community are defined as a place in which social order is created through the way in which culture defines behaviour and activity within a defined region that is a portion of a state. Subsidiarity is the function of culture for defining how a community will police and create order on its own terms in isolation from the state. The policy of subsidiarity was put into place in order to maintain the idea of a traditional community that was Irish (Fanning 2004, p. 45). It came from the demand for a larger amount of local democracy so that communities had the advantage of their history as a way to frame their future. Nationalism became a problem, however, as the concept of nation extended well before the invasions of the Romans, Vikings and Norman conquests. The concept of national boundaries and identity were defined by this pre-invasion concept that was affected but not fundamentally changed by both the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution (Kearney 2002, p. 144). This was the cause that has been at the root of subsidiarity. The Irish people and their heritage is based on a concept of identity that was formed thousands of years ago, regional boundaries holding them together through all of the social storms that assaulted their overall identity. Each individual community has had a long history that provided for context for self rule and policy implementation. O’Sullivan (2007, p. 156) defines subsidiarity “affirms that people should make decisions at a level close to them, should be free to take initiatives with others and should not have that freedom taken away by others or by Central government”. The impinging urbanization of Ireland was one of the battles of the 20th century where self-determined community became a combat against the homogenisation that could occur through encroaching urban crawl. Rural community had been designed through community help when tools and modernisation had not been available to work farms that required numerous hands. This sense of community translated into self defined social control (Forde 2009, p. 10). The way in which youth will develop values, behaviours, and even the way in which they will defy and rebel against the organized community is defined by the culture of the community and society in which they live. Social class, distinctions of ethnicity, as well as gender all are defined by how the culture of the region identifies the individual roles within the community. Forde (2009, p. 11) discusses the idea that a shift occurred from community based on work divisions to a community based on social group divisions. This meant that the youth of Ireland became a focus post-Independence so that understanding their position in society was important in order to define their roles. Work In order to understand the position of youth in the Irish culture, as well as most cultures in the Western world, it is important to understand how the concept of work and childhood has been reframed for the industrialized world. There was a time before industrialization that children worked with their parents in order to create survival and the concept of childhood was not considered merely a time of play and learning. Having children meant having additional hands that could make a family unit survive. The key to survival was creating a balance between the number of hands that could help and the number of mouths to feed (Jenkinson 2009, p. 35). During the industrial revolution when work became an activity that was developed outside of the region of the home, children were put into factories and treated like small adults, often the expectations on them were the same as on adult workers. Long hours and back breaking work could result in poor development, thus creating a need to change the nature of child involvement in the work force. This development of the need for a barrier between childhood and adulthood created the concept of adolescence (Jenkinson 2009, p. 36). Current aspects of youth work are concerned with creating community volunteerism, appropriate involvement in community issues and events, and the provision of work for those who are experiencing poverty. The state has combined with the local regional governments in order to create socially relevant policies through which the youth work ethic is shaped and used towards the best possible benefit. The rise of poverty has required a correlating rise in the power of the state in creating policy through which to affect the rate of poverty that has come as a result of industrialisation. Poverty The early state was not conscience of the idea of poverty. Urbanization and the development of industry had carried with it a curse of dependence because the land was no longer the resource of sustenance that it had been. The worker no longer depended on his own devices to create survival, but was defined by a wage that was determined by the number of hours worked, which in turn created poverty when that wage did not meet the demands of consumerism in relationship to food and shelter. Poverty was defined by both those who worked and did not make enough and those who were unemployed and without the means to gather and construct what was needed without someone else giving them a job. Poverty was soon criminalized so that the focus of poverty was on the most vulnerable. Women and children were scrutinized for their poverty based on an assumption of immorality in relationship to unwed mothers. The Report for the Commission on the Sick and Destitute Poor in 1924 and 1927 was focused on the illegitimacy of children and in creating punishments which ranged from segregation to detention for women whose moral fibre did not meet the expectations of the state. In 1930 the Illegitimate Children Act provided for support from fathers, but in a Report of the Department of Local Government and Public Health between 1930 and 1934 there was an emphasis on creating institutions for ‘fallen women’ (Crowley and Kitchin 2008, p. 356). The gender inequality in relationship to morality and defining the criminalisation of poverty was stark and frightening. The National Youth Council of Ireland was established in 1966 in order to act as an umbrella organisation under which regional groups who were in support of youth work could have a state based resource. In modern contexts, the Council works to create policies that approach the problems of youth which include drug use, homelessness, and other poverty related social problems (Harvey and Ireland 2008, p. 30). Behaviour and Leisure Time One of the ways in which behaviour was intended to be controlled in the period just post the time of independence in 1922 was through the control of morality and sexuality. Sin, shame, and guild were used as social control devices by the Catholic Church in order to set the course of adolescent and adult sexuality based on abstinence and marriage. In 1922 The Local Government (Temporary Provisions Act created punishments for unwed mothers with provisions for female sexual offenders and recidivists. The Poor Law Reform Commission and the Workhouses were intended to provide for punishments for women who were considered ‘fallen’ (Crowley and Kitchin 2008, p. 356). This meant that women, in particular young women, were the focus of the state based war on immoral behaviour. Morality became an issue of gender with young women being associated with the Pope Gregory I version of Mary Magdalene in which she was reduced from a woman of means who was a great supporter of the spread of the word of Jesus to a woman who was a redeemed prostitute. This was the basis upon which the Magdalene Laundries were created in which women were condemned for any hint of sexual behaviour, real or imagined, by the community so that they could be placed in a segregated institution where they were turned to hard labour and devout expressions of their spirituality, whether they chose to or not. McCarthy (2010, p. 93) writes “Eventually, any undesirable, marginalized, odd, headstrong, or unwed woman was placed into Magdalene laundries”. Women who were not willing to marry or conform to societal expectations were put into institutions in order to discourage their independence. The study of adolescent behaviour began a series of types of information that supported problems within the adolescent population. Leisure time became the bane of adolescent behaviour. A sharp increase in crime by adolescents became controversial, but the notice of adolescents and their behaviours created an increase that was observable rather than there being an actual increase (Jenkinson 2009, p. 36). In other words, the crime of youth had not been noticed before because previous to this time it had not been measured. Conclusion The definition of the idea of childhood has changed dramatically since the time of independence in 1922, but much of this was due to industrialisation and modernisation that resulted in the development of farther reaching centres of urban development. The idea of subsidiary has created identity for regionally based cultures within the nation of Ireland so that traditions and belief systems that are centuries old thrive and create a sense of social control. With urbanisation, however, came a stronger population of those in poverty where the control of survival was taken from the individual and put into the hands of industry. When someone could not get work or demand a high enough wage, poverty could not be combated by gathering and building because control of food and resources has become that of the industrial powers. While children no longer were required to work alongside the family, they too were vulnerable to the control that the power of industry had over the future of the people. Because of the development of more centralized needs, however, the state has taken a greater interest in the position of the nation’s youth and created policy through which action has been taken. One of the areas that the state has been most active in is that of the morality of the people, the young having been affected more than any other social group. Adolescent and young adult females were persecuted for their sex and locked away when their behaviour did not conform to the belief that the state had in their purpose within the greater society. The nature of youth has changed over the course of the last century so that the influence of the state has been greater and the influence of local culture has diminished. Local belief systems are still important in the development of community, but the development of state based policy has begun to override those of local policies. Education has increased, but the moral issues that women faced coupled with crippling policies that diminished their ability to be independent from men has created a long road on which to travel in order to gain any of the rights that males have had in the history of Ireland. While the nature of being young has improved for many, there have been many problems along the road. Since Independence, the state of being young in Ireland has had to endure a great many changes that has created affiliation, cost in freedoms, and overall provided for a reconstruction of the idea childhood and the creation of adolescence. Resources Crowley, U. and Kitchin, R. (2008). Producing ‘decent girls’: governmentality and the moral geographies of sexual conduct in Ireland (1922–1937). Gender, Place and Culture, 15(4), 355-372. Fanning, B. (2004). Theorising Irish social policy. Dublin: University College Dublin Press. Forde, Catherine. (2009). History of Community Work. Harvey, B. and Ireland. (2008). Working for change: A guide to influencing policy in Ireland. Dublin: Combat Poverty Agency. Hurley, Louise. (1992). The historical development of Irish youth work (1850-1985). Irish Youth Work Center. Jenkinson, Hilary. (2009). History of Youth. Keane, John. (2009). Civil societies, definitions, and approaches. Heidleburg: Springer Verlag. PDF Retrieved from http://johnkeane.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/ 01/jk_civil_sciety_definitions_encyclopedia.pdf Kearney, Richard (2002). Post-nationalist Ireland: Politics, culture, philosophy. London: Routledge. McCarthy, R. L. (2010). Origins of the Magdalene laundries: An analytical history. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co., Publishers. O'Sullivan, T. (2007). Could Subsidiarity Help?. Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 96(382), 155-168. Read More