Rather than examining the ways in which culture affects the operation of the market, as much of the existing literature does, this thesis seeks to understand how economic change affects culture itself through an analysis of economic development in Ireland since European integration. Orienting the change within the larger project of development since the 1960’s, it argues that fundamental cultural changes have occurred in the country since the Celtic Tiger boom of the 1990’s and 2000’s. The thesis contends that the main force behind the various developments in the Irish economy over this period has been the ongoing process of European integration, at the same time that the country’s history with Britain, and unique connection to the US, means Ireland sits at the center of overlapping economic ideologies and influences. To highlight the change, three key manifestations of the development process in Irish life are examined – migration patterns, transport infrastructure, and suburbanization – in order to better understand how these “modernizations” have affected daily life and what it means to be Irish in the 21st century. In doing so, this thesis argues that, as a country on the periphery of the European and global economies, Ireland exists not only as a site of overlapping economic influences, but also cultural ones, and as such is a place where intersecting, and at times contradictory, cultural practices and ways of life intersect.