Prof. Dominic Bryan (QUB): Authenticity, history and everyday nationalism: comparing Irish pubs to McDonald’s restaurants

This paper will revisit the role of authenticity, and its relationship to our understanding of history, as a part of everyday nationalism. At a time when partisan, patriotic and exclusive nationalisms are on the rise, can we critically unpack the attraction of the idea of the nation based in the everyday? This paper will look at the construction of Irishness through the capitalist market place, consumerism and the idea of the Irish pub. In particular, it will examine the way multinational companies sell Irishness utilising a constructed authenticity. It will explore the way Guinness has been sold as Irish and even question one of the great Irish myths: the double pour. The paper will conclude with a sobering assessment of nationalisms in the 21st century.

Dominic Bryan is Professor of Anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast and former director of the Institute of Irish Studies. His research has examined the nature of intergroup conflict on the symbolic landscape, particularly the role played by symbols and rituals during the conflict and peace in Northern Ireland. It has been avowedly interdisciplinary, published in journals and books of anthropology, history, geography, social psychology, law, Irish studies and conflict studies. He is the author of Orange Parades (2000) and co-author of Civic Identity and Public Space in Belfast (2019, MUP), and has been co-chair of the all-party Flags, Identity, Culture and Traditions Commission for NI which published a report in 2021.

27 University Square 01/003 & online

Register here: Irish Studies Seminar: Dom Bryan at Institute of Irish Studies, QUB event tickets from TicketSource