Reclaiming Respectability? The Class-cultural Dynamics of Crime, Community and Governance in Inner-city Dublin

This paper critically examines developments in Irish urban governance through an ethnographic account of one community’s historical memory and contemporary structure. During an era of rapid economic growth, the Irish state has courted previously excluded communities, offering them greater ‘inclusion’ as ‘partners’ in responding to urban decay and crime. The micro-governance structures this creates, however, become sites of contest between competing community factions and class-cultural imperatives. Tensions emerge between aspirational community leaders championing the aesthetics (if not the values) of ‘respectability’ and residual residents who are presented as ‘rough’. The paper demonstrates that nuances of class-cultural identity dictate the character of partnership governance at the community level with particular implications for local regeneration and crime control agendas.