Intergroup contact, forgiveness, and experience of The Troubles in Northern Ireland

Two studies used random sample surveys to test the contact hypothesis on intergroup attitudes of Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. In Study 1, archival data from two different surveys in 1989 (N= 310 Catholics, 422 Protestants) and 1991 (N= 319 Catholics, 478 Protestants) showed that contact was positively related to attitudes towards denominational mixing. Study 2 (N= 391 Catholics, 647 Protestants) explored predictors of intergroup forgiveness, and also showed that intergroup contact was positively related to out-group attitudes, perspective taking and trust (even among those who had worse experience of sectarian conflict). These studies indicate that research in peace psychology can provide a deeper understanding of the conflict in Northern Ireland and, in due course, contribute to its resolution.

Community Relations in Northern Ireland: a shift in Attitudes?

The paper presents an analysis of Northern Ireland Social Attitudes data available at the time of writing. Its significance lay in emerging disparities in the responses, over time, of Protestants and Catholics to key social issues such as integrated education. The data, made public just one year after the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, generated intense media interest. Findings were reported in 400 outlets worldwide (UU media monitoring). Hughes was also interviewed for local and national news programmes (including BBC World Service). The data informed a decision by Government to undertake a major review of community relations policy, and Hughes was invited to advise the Head of the Northern Ireland review team. She was also invited to Chair the Community Relations Panel of the ESRC Devolution

Troubled Geographies: A Spatial History of Religion and Society in Ireland

Ireland’s landscape is marked by fault lines of religious, ethnic, and political identity that have shaped its troubled history. Troubled Geographies maps this history by detailing the patterns of change in Ireland from 16th century attempts to “plant” areas of Ireland with loyal English Protestants to defend against threats posed by indigenous Catholics, through the violence of the latter part of the 20th century and the rise of the “Celtic Tiger.” The book is concerned with how a geography laid down in the 16th and 17th centuries led to an amalgam based on religious belief, ethnic/national identity, and political conviction that continues to shape the geographies of modern Ireland. Troubled Geographies shows how changes in religious affiliation, identity, and territoriality have impacted Irish society during this period. It explores the response of society in general and religion in particular to major cultural shocks such as the Famine and to long term processes such as urbanization.

Disaggregating conservative Protestant groups in Northern Ireland: Overlapping categories and the importance of a born-again self-identification

Rather than treating conservative Protestantism as a homogenous phenomenon, recent literature has underlined the importance of disaggregating this group to illuminate important attitudinal and behavioral differences between conservative Protestants. However, the methods used to empirically operationalize conservative Protestantism have not always been able to capture variations within the groupings. Based on analysis of the 2004 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, we argue that religious self-identification is a more useful way of analyzing conservative Protestant subgroups than denomination or religious belief. We show that many of these identifications are overlapping, rather than stand-alone, religious group identifications. Moreover, the identification category of born-again has seldom been included in surveys. We find having a born-again identification to be a better predictor than the more frequently asked fundamentalist and evangelical categories of the religious and social beliefs that are seen as indicative of conservative Protestantism.

Ethnic habitus and young children: a case study of Northern Ireland

This article presents the findings of an exploratory survey of the ethnic attitudes and identities of a random sample (n=352) of three–six-year-old children in Northern Ireland. The survey represents one of the first of its kind to explore how young children's awareness of ethnic differences develops in contexts where ethnicity is not marked by visible, physical differences. In drawing upon the notion of an ‘ethnic habitus’, the article shows how young children from the two majority ethno-religious groups in the region – Catholic and Protestants – are already acquiring the cultural dispositions and habits of their respective groups even though, at the earlier ages, they have little awareness or understanding of what these dispositions represent. The article shows that young children are capable of developing ethnic identities and prejudices in the absence of physical cues and discusses the implications of these findings for practice as well as for understanding the effects of racial and ethnic divisions on young children in other social contexts.

It's Better to Stick to your own Kind: Teenagers' Views on Cross-community marriages in Northern Ireland

This article presents the attitudes of 80 teenagers-growing up in one of the most contested localities in Northern Ireland-to cross-community marriages, i.e. those between Catholics and Protestants. Research suggests that adults in interface areas continue to exhibit ethno-sectarian prejudices despite wider political developments such as the Good Friday Agreement. The teenagers perceived that their families would be largely unsupportive of cross-community unions but felt that their own views were much less prejudiced than those of their parents. However, while the majority of teenagers had no objections in principle to marrying outside their religious group, they outlined a number of practical difficulties which couples from cross-community unions would face. These included deciding where to live, in which religion, if any, to bring children up and where to send children to school. Most of the teenagers suggested that these potential problems would work against them marrying outside their own religious group. These practical dilemmas provide a more nuanced set of reasons for marrying within one's own community than dilemmas based on traditional prejudices and stereotypes and suggest that teenagers living in sectarian enclaves are more receptive to cross-community marriages than their parents.

Journeys into the unknown: shared schooling and social change in Quebec and Northern Ireland

This article compares experiences of shared schooling in societies with 2 distinctive traits: first, a history of intercommunity conflict and isolation; and second, a segregated school system. Drawing on Parekh’s (2006) reconceptualisation of multiculturalism, this article analyses issues arising from experiences of intercommunity contact in shared schools in Quebec and Northern Ireland—in one case, bringing Anglophones and Francophones together and, in the other, Protestants and Catholics. Research data from both contexts is drawn upon to reflect on how this experience is lived. The metaphor of a journey is used to capture what it represents for those involved. A need to clarify, recognize, and exploit the potential of shared schooling for the transformation of divided societies is identified.

The integrated school in a conflict society: a comparative analysis of two integrated primary schools in Northern Ireland

The purpose of this paper is to compare the approach to promoting positive relationships between Catholics and Protestants in two types of integrated primary school in Northern Ireland. Drawing on qualitative interviews with teachers, governors and parents in one transforming school and one grant maintained integrated school, i.e. one representative of each of the two types, the paper shows that whilst there are distinctions in the ways that the schools promote their image and ethos, the ‘lived reality’ of the schools, as reported by the research participants, is almost indistinguishable. The paper suggests that both schools tend not to refer to or explore cultural difference and that this tendency to ‘minimise difference’ seems to have the potential to silence school members who do wish to explore their own and other cultures. It is argued that such practices are likely to impede rather than facilitate the progress of good inter-community relations.

Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Rise of the Fourth Confession

Negotiating the boundaries of the secular and of the religious is a core aspect of modern experience. In mid-nineteenth-century Germany, secularism emerged to oppose church establishment, conservative orthodoxy, and national division between Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. Yet, as historian Todd H. Weir argues in this provocative book, early secularism was not the opposite of religion. It developed in the rationalist dissent of Free Religion and, even as secularism took more atheistic forms in Freethought and Monism, it was subject to the forces of the confessional system it sought to dismantle. Similar to its religious competitors, it elaborated a clear worldview, sustained social milieus, and was integrated into the political system. Secularism was, in many ways, Germany's fourth confession. While challenging assumptions about the causes and course of the Kulturkampf and modern antisemitism, this study casts new light on the history of popular science, radical politics, and social reform.

Intimate Mixing - Bridging the Gap? Catholic-Protestant Relationships in Northern Ireland

For many years Northern Ireland has been a divided society where members of the two main religious groups, Catholics and Protestants, have limited opportunities to interact due to segregation in their social lives. Attempts have been made to encourage religious mixing through integration in schools, housing and workplaces predicated on the theory that bringing people together can improve community relations and remove prejudices – known as the ‘contact hypothesis’. However, little is known about those who enter into mixed-religion partnerships often against the wishes of their families and communities. This paper examines the characteristics and attitudes of mixed-religion couples and suggests that they differ in their socio-demographic characteristics and in their attitudes from those who marry within their own religion. These findings add to the weight of evidence from other countries in conflict suggesting that intermarriage has a role to play in contributing to less sectarian views and improved community relations.

Residential segregation in Northern Ireland in 2001: assessing the value of exploring spatial variations

Segregation measures have been applied in the study of many societies, and traditionally such measures have been used to assess the degree of division between social and cultural groups across urban areas, wider regions, or perhaps national areas. The degree of segregation can vary substantially from place to place even within very small areas. In this paper the substantive concern is with religious/political segregation in Northern Ireland—particularly the proportion of Protestants (often taken as an indicator of those who wish to retain the union with Britain) to Catholics (often taken as an indicator of those who favour union with the Republic of Ireland). Traditionally, segregation is measured globally—that is, across all units in a given area. A recent trend in spatial data analysis generally, and in segregation analysis specifically, is to assess local features of spatial datasets. The rationale behind such approaches is that global methods may obscure important spatial variations in the property of interest, and thus prevent full use of the data. In this paper the utility of local measures of residential segregation is assessed with reference to the religious/political composition of Northern Ireland. The paper demonstrates marked spatial variations in the degree and nature of residential segregation across Northern Ireland. It is argued that local measures provide highly useful information in addition to that provided in maps of the raw variables and in standard global segregation measures.

Leadership for inclusion: Conceptualising and enacting inclusion in integrated schools in a troubled society

Inclusion is increasingly understood as an educational reform that responds to the diversity of all learners, challenging the marginalization, exclusion and underachievement which may result from all forms of ‘difference’. Leadership for inclusion is conceptualized here as driving a constant struggle to create shared meanings of inclusion and to build collaborative practice, an effort that needs to be rooted in critical practice lest it risk replicating existing patterns of disadvantage. In response to calls for further research that challenge how school leaders conceptualize inclusion and for research that investigates how leaders enact their understandings of inclusion, this paper aims to increase our understanding of the extent to which leadership vision can map onto a school’s culture and of the organizational conditions in schools that drive responses to diversity. We investigate the enactment of leadership for inclusion in the troubled context of Northern Ireland by looking at two schools that primarily aim to integrate Catholic and Protestant children but which are also sites for a range of other dimensions of student ‘difference’ to come together. Whilst the two schools express differing visions of the integration of Catholics and Protestants, leadership vision of inclusion is enacted by members of the school community with a consensus around this vision brought about by formal and informal aspects of school culture. Multiple and intersecting spheres of difference stimulate a concerted educational response in both schools but integration remains the primary focus. In this divided society, religious diversity poses a significant challenge to inclusion and further support is required from leaders to enable teachers to break through cultural restraints.

Sharing Classes between Separate Schools: a mechanism for improving inter-group relations in Northern Ireland?

One manifestation of division and the history of conflict in Northern Ireland is the parallel education system that exists for Protestants and Catholics. Although recent decades have seen some advances in the promotion of integrated education, around 95% of children continue to attend schools separated on ethno-religious lines. In 2007 a programme for sharing education was established. Underpinned by intergroup contact theory, and reflecting educational priorities shared by all school sectors, the programme seeks to offer children from different denominational schools an opportunity to engage with each other on a sustained basis. In this article the authors adopt a quantitative approach to examining the impact of participation in the Sharing Education Programme on a range of outcomes (out-group attitudes, positive action tendencies and out-group trust) via, first, intergroup contact (cross-group friendships) and, second, intergroup anxiety. Their findings confirm the value of contact as a mechanism for promoting more harmonious relationships, and affirm the Sharing Education Programme as an initiative that can help promote social cohesion in a society that remains deeply divided.

Extended contact effects as a function of closeness of relationship with ingroup contacts

Using survey data from Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland (N = 428), the authors examined the effects of extended contact via different types of ingroup contacts (neighbors, work colleagues, friends, and family members) and tested whether closeness to ingroup contacts moderated the effects of extended contact on outgroup trust. Results demonstrated that extended contact effects varied as a function of the relationship to ingroup contacts, and that extended contact interacted with closeness ratings in predicting outgroup trust. Consistent with hypotheses, extended contacts via more intimate ingroup relationships (i.e., friends and family) were overall more strongly related to outgroup trust than extended contacts via less intimate ingroup relations (i.e., neighbors and work colleagues). Moreover, within each level of intimacy extended contact was related to outgroup trust only at high, and not at low, levels of rated closeness to ingroup contacts. The theoretical contributions, limitations and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Contact, trust and social capital in Northern Ireland: a qualitative study of three mixed communities

In a recent paper, Robert Putnam (2007) challenges the contact hypothesis by arguing that ethnic diversity causes people to ‘hunker down’ and essentially withdraw themselves from society. Drawing on
qualitative data collected from three mixed communities in Northern Ireland, this paper explores the extent and quality of contact experienced by Protestants and Catholics in their everyday lives. Themes emerging from our data are generally consistent with the contact hypothesis. There is also some support for Putnam’s theory that mixed environments can induce ‘hunkering down’ and that inter-group trust may be compromised. However, our data challenge Putnam’s argument that these responses are a consequence of ‘anomie’ or ‘social malaise’. Rather, we find that withdrawal from social activity in the neighbourhoods we observed was a calculated response at times of threat, often aimed at protecting existent positive inter-ethnic relations.