Adaptive utilitarianism, social enterprises and urban regeneration

Social enterprises have been placed at the centre of Big Society politics and an emphasis on the local as a site for experimentation and service delivery. Nationally, this has been supported by legislation in community transfer and procurement, social finance and new intermediaries to strengthen skills and loan readiness. This paper examines the role of social enterprises involved in urban development in Northern Ireland and highlights the multiple ethics, legitimation strategies and modalities that are necessary for sustainable forms of progressive regeneration. The paper concludes by stressing the possibilities of a more independent and reformist social economy and how this offers some practical alternatives to the enthusiasm for neoliberal policies in the local state.

Precarious spaces and urban change in post-conflict Belfast

The Northern Ireland conflict is shaped by an ethno-national contest between a minority Catholic/Nationalist/Republican population who broadly want to see the reunification of Ireland; and a majority Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist one, who mainly wish to maintain the sovereign connection with Britain. After nearly three decades of violence, which intensified segregation in schooling, labour markets and especially housing, a Peace Agreement was signed on Good Friday 1998. This paper is concerned with the peace process after the Agreement, not so much for the ambiguous political compromise, but for the way in which the city is constitutive of transformation and how Belfast in particular, is now embedded with a range of social instabilities and spatial contradictions. The Agreement encouraged rapid economic expansion, inward investment, especially in knowledge–intensive sectors and a short-lived optimism that markets and the neo-liberal fix would drive the post-conflict, post-industrial and post-political city. Capital would trump ethnicity and the economic uplift would bind citizens to a new expression of hope based on property speculation, tourism and global corporate investment.

Measuring the macrosystem in post-accord Northern Ireland: A social-ecological approach

The macrosystem refers to the overarching patterns that influence behavior at each level of the social ecology (Bronfenbrenner, 1977), making it a necessary component for assessing human development in contexts of political violence. This article proposes a method for systematically measuring the macrosystem in Northern Ireland that allows for a subnational analysis, multiple time units, and indicators of both low-level violence and positive relations. Articles were randomly chosen for each weekday in 2006-2011 from two prominent Northern Irish newspapers and coded according to their reflection of positive relations and political tensions between Catholics and Protestants. The newspaper data were then compared to existing macro-level measurements in Northern Ireland. We found that the newspaper data provided a more nuanced understanding of fluctuations in intergroup relations than the corresponding measures. This has practical implications for peacebuilding and advances our methods for assessing the impact of macro-level processes on individual development.

Interpretations of national identity in post-conflict Northern Ireland: A comparison of different school settings

It is generally accepted that education has a significant role to play in anysociety transitioning from conflict to a more peaceful dispensation. Indeed,some have argued that the education system potentially represents the singlemost effective agent of social change with the capacity to bridge ethnicdivision in conflict affected countries. Despite the potential, educationalpolicy-makers grapple with the dilemma as to precisely how school systemscan best facilitate this agenda. This paper thus attempts to shed lightupon the dilemma by exploring pupil identity and associated intergroupattitudes across various school types in Northern Ireland. Five schools wereselected for the study with each one representing a particular sector withinthe Northern Irish education system (maintained grammar, maintainedsecondary, controlled grammar, controlled secondary, integrated). This led toa total sample size of 265 pupils. The main findings show that children acrossseparate Catholic, separate Protestant and mixed Catholic and Protestanteducational contexts construct and interpret identity differently. At thesame time, our data suggest that no one school setting has supremacy inpromoting social cohesion. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Growing Up On an Interface: Findings and Implications for the Social Needs, Mental Health and Lifetime Opportunities of Belfast Youth

In this research we aimed to find out what types of risk (if any) affected young people and children growing up in places of high religious segregation or what we normally call interface communities. This is important as we know that risk and experiences of harm and violence can have negative impacts upon development, emotional well-being and future prospects. It is important to understand what types of risk affect young people and children so as we can respond to these in terms of aiding better personal and community development with regard to health, work, education and wider opportunities.