Paper short abstract:

Ethnographic fieldwork on Dublin's Moore Street reveals alternative meanings and practices associated with the everyday multicultural reality of the space, which are ignored in the debate around how to fit the Street into the Irish tourism industry while adequately honouring its history.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the excluded voices in the debate around the aestheticization and heritagization of Moore Street, Dublin's oldest surviving market and scene of the Easter Rising in 1916. Since the early 20th century, Dublin's government and commercial developers have ignored the street and otherwise promoted the idea that the dominantly working class character should be "cleaned-up", both in terms of its physical appearance and the so-called deviant activities of some of its occupants. As demolition of some of the

buildings emerged as a viable way forward, small groups of citizens have organized in objection, arguing that the entire street holds significance to Irish national identity and should be protected.

This particular grassroots movement has managed to gain public attention that cannot be ignored by those in power in the context of the upcoming 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising. Meanwhile, the contemporary socio-economic aspects of Moore Street remain invisible in this debate. Over the past two decades, Moore Street has become

one of the most concentrated and ethnically-diverse streets of immigrant commercial activity in Dublin, with the vast majority of shop owners and patrons from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.

Through ethnographic fieldwork carried out with traders on Moore Street in the spring of 2015, this paper examines alternative meanings and practices associated with Moore Street from the people who create the space on a daily basis, which go beyond those based on an homogeneous nationalist identity, historical tourism or commercial gentrification.