For the way we live today”: Consumption, lifestyle and place

In Michel Houellebecq’s novel Atomised, the central character seeks to escapethe chaos of his personal life in France by taking a new job in the west ofIreland. He expects to fi nd a rural idyll, but he is disappointed. One of hisnew colleagues tells him, ‘people don’t go to mass as much as they used to,there’s more sexual freedom, more nightclubs, more anti-depressants [and ...]Microsoft of course; every kid in the country dreams of working for Microsoft.’(Houellebecq, 2000, p. 349). These kinds of observation about the lifestyles ofthe contemporary Irish are increasingly commonplace. The expectations offoreigners and of the Irish themselves are ever more overturned by recent trans-formations. Within this commentary, reference to increased consumption oftenlooms large. Reports about new cars, new houses, a surge in foreign holidaysand crowded shopping centres contrast sharply with the traditional image ofthe Irish as a rural peasantry cultivated in Ballykissangel or The Quiet Man .Against a background of continuing modernisation and social and urban trans-formation, this chapter interrogates contemporary representations and practicesof consumption in Ireland. The chapter illustrates how consumption offersinsights into both questions of cultural identity and new relationships whichpeople have to place. In so far as all social relationships write their signature intospace, the chapter highlights how new patterns of consumption demonstratethe restructuring of socio-spatial relations in contemporary Ireland