Knowing what it means to be Irish

Experience as Practice in the Advertising Industry

Bibliographic Data

ID2962616
AuthorsNeil O’boyle (0000-0002-3865-2579, University College Dublin, corresponding author), Neil O''Boyle, Neil O'Boyle
Year2009
Volume15
Issue5
Pages565-584
Publication date2009-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Identities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1350-4630 • E-ISSN: 1363-0296
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13504630903205217
OpenAlexW2114402435
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited70

This article derives from sociological research examining practitioners in the Irish advertising industry. Drawing from interviews with workers in this field, I examine how Irish advertising practitioners have co-opted the 'idiom of identity', enabling them to speak with greater confidence and in more emotionally compelling ways about advertising audiences, to humanize business strategy and to operationalize personal biographical experience in production. This article focuses on the ways Irish advertising practitioners describe their work and their understandings of Irishness in the context of a globalized Ireland and draws attention to what I describe as a 'discursive affinity' between cultural identity and professional acumen in the accounts of these workers. In concentrating on their valorizing of innate 'knowing', and drawing especially on the work of Foucault, this article attempts to explain why Irish advertising practitioners regard their own life experience as practice

Advertising · Aesthetics · Business · Epistemology · Irish · Media studies · Operationalization · Political science · Public relations · Sociology · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Gender, Feminism, and Media