Neoliberalism and Shared Consumers

Abstract

There is an apocryphal story that during a visit by Catherine the Great to view her newly acquired lands in the Crimea she was delighted to see beautiful villages lined along the banks of the river Dnieper. Little did she know, the vision was a hollow façade built by her Minister Potemkin to obscure the desolate tundra. Trite as the comparison seems, it is tempting to conclude that tourists visiting contemporary Belfast city centre are endowed with a variation of the ‘Potemkin Village’ (see Nagle 2009e).