Culture and the Irish Border:Spaces for Conflict Transformation

The Irish border has been described as a ‘natural’ cultural divide between the island's two dominant indigenous ethno-national communities. However, an examination of key resources of ethno-national group culture - religion, sport and language - provides evidence to challenge this representation. Moreover, in the post-1994 period of conflict transformation, evidence is also presented to support the proposition that the Irish border region has developed into a cultural space in which Irish nationalist and Ulster unionist ethno-national communities can explore cultural differences and commonalities through cross-border, cross-community contact and communication in small group encounters. This space underpins the reconfiguration of the border from barrier to political bridge between North and South. European Union (EU) Peace programmes for Ireland, beginning in 1995, provided the support for a cross-border approach to escaping the cage of ethno-national conflict in Northern Ireland. However, post-2004 EU enlargement signalled the beginning of the end for EU Peace funding and severe economic recession has undermined the expectation of British-Irish intergovernmental intervention to support cross-border partnerships and their work. Therefore, the outlook for the sustainability of this cross-border cultural space is gloomy with potentially deleterious consequences for the continued reconfiguration of the border from barrier to bridge.

Informalilty in the Social and Culture Life in the City Centre of Nairobi

We live in a world of advanced technology, stiff global competition and rapid transformation of all facets of life and as a result architecture has not been spared. These transformations affect the social relations, cultural consumption and political economy that have influenced the manner in which people perform in and out of space in the city centres. The residents have adopted strategies for negotiating through the spaces sanitized by authorities and other agents. The public spaces provide the background materials for informal urban practices that are sometimes deemed illegal yet are necessary for animating the city spaces. Cities market themselves ecstatically beyond the baroque with a more visible presence of the contending parties through trademarks, public relations invasively advertised in streets, monuments (signature buildings or projects), and language. This paper comes out of a research carried out in Nairobi in February and March 2007. It examined how the notions of globalisation are reflected in the life in the city centre; the impacts on the quality of life of users of the city centre and how informal urbanism has developed as copying strategy to deal with the transformations due to liberalization and globalization.

Contact and Culture: Mechanisms of Reconciliation in Northern Ireland and Israel

In Northern Ireland and Israel schools have long been recognised as key sites for addressing the problems of poor intergroup relations (see Dunn, 1990; Murray, 1985). The developments of integrated schools which welcome members of the main communities have been regarded as a key development which is likely to be instrumental in promoting more harmonious relations. Although the schools have been regarded in the media as a ‘good news story’ the qualitative processes through which teachers within these schools foster reconciliation is not always clear. The purpose of this chapter is thus to explore this question by drawing on contact theory and interviews with teachers in Northern Ireland and Israel.