Focusing upon scapegoating in post-crash Ireland, this article considers a pervasive political process that is protective of powerful interests and the status quo following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Drawing from group conflict theory and framing analysis as part of a broader critical realist take on society, we consider how blame has been placed on myriad targets, ranging from a collective 'we who went a bit mad with borrowing' to more specific groups such as public sector workers, the unemployed, single mothers and immigrants. In conclusion, we underscore the need for sociology to assert its relevance by challenging such processes and defend civil society in a capitalist world-system that is in structural crisis.

In 2009, US financier Bernard (Bernie) L. Madoff was jailed for 150 years after pleading guilty to running a massive ponzi scheme. While superficial condemnation was widespread, his US$65 billion fraud cannot be understood apart from the institutions, practices and fictions of contemporary finance capitalism. Madoff’s scam was rooted in the wider political prioritization of accumulation through debt expansion and the deregulated, desupervised and criminogenic environment facilitating it. More generally, global finance capital reproduces many of the core elements of the Madoff scam (i.e. mass deception, secrecy and obfuscation), particularly in neoliberalized Anglophone societies. We call this ‘Madoffization’. We suggest that societies are ‘Madoffized’, not only in the sense of their being subject to the ill-effects of speculative ponzi finance, but also in the sense that their prioritization of accumulation through debt expansion makes fraudulent practices, economic collapse and scapegoating inevitable.

Mostly not-employed mothers set the cultural standards for 'good' parenthood and 'good' education, while childless subjects set the standards in the world of work; [those] … want to do both, will be measured by the standards set by those … that are only into one of the spheres (Bomert and Leinfellner, 2017:118, citing König, 2012: 193) Lynch, Ivancheva, O'Flynn, Keating and O'Connor 2020 Care Ceiling in Higher Education -Irish Educational Studies (pre-publication version) 2relations more generally, especially in terms of their interface with love and/or care relations with family, colleagues and students.The paper also contributes to on-going debates about the gendered and care-disinterested character of organisations, (

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Sudden explosions of street violence and disorder tend to evoke simplistic responses. Echoing Victorian moralising and condemnation of urban street fighting at the end of the nineteenth century, politicians depicted England's August 2011 riots as ‘mindless criminality’. Critical of such rhetoric, we maintain that the recent riots should not be misrecognised through the class politics of the advantaged. Instead, we locate this unrest in a larger historical, social, economic and political context. This context includes the progressive predominance of finance capital in the post-1970s era and related neoliberal policy agendas and ideological forms. We posit that neoliberal transformations in the economy and society have undermined many young people's capacity to lead useful and meaningful lives, and that the potential for hopelessness, resentment, frustration and outbursts of anger has significantly increased as a consequence. We argue that the alienation of young people today cannot be separated from forms of accumulation that depend on massive debt-expansion. Neither can it be separated from the proliferation of related practices and institutional supports that enable this expansion, further accelerating the deterioration of already disaffected young people's prospects and futures. We refer to the enabling elements of this process as ‘Madoffization’ at a time when ponzi finance has made economic collapse and ongoing social unrest inevitable.