'Ancient Enmities' and Modern Conflict: History and Politics in Northern Ireland

This article investigates the role of history and historical consciousness in deeply divided societies. It looks at the case of Northern Ireland. It argues that, while the conflict here is caused by contemporary divisions, perceptions of the past have had considerable influence. Recent years have seen efforts to change historical attitudes and this has aided political accommodation. An important lesson from the conflict in Northern Ireland points to the need to challenge such historical perceptions.

Confusing Culture and Politics: Ulster Scots Culture and Music

In Northern Ireland of the mid-1990s, many were caught off-guard by the comet-like arrival of a previously unarticulated Ulster Scots identity, replete with its own folk traditions. The article exploits the author’s position as Traditional Arts Officer of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland from 1998 until 2003 to offer an auto-ethnographic reflection on the literature on cultural politics in Northern Ireland since the outbreak of the Troubles, informed by extensive fieldwork with arts administrators and with contemporary Ulster Scots musicians. The article gives a close reading and historical contextualisation of the Ulster-Scots musical revue On Eagle's Wing, which was developed during this period. The article uses the concept of "suture" articulated by Lacan and developed by Laclau, Mouffe, and Žižek to explain both the potential for Ulster Scots culture to enter political discourse out of a seeming vacuum and its subsequent difficulties, offering an original interpretation of the role of culture in the contemporary trajectory of Northern Ireland politics.

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.

The push and pull between religion and ethnicity: The case of loyalists in Northern Ireland

This paper uses a case study of a largely religiously non-practising group, working class loyalists in Northern Ireland, to explore the relationship between religion and ethnicity in divided societies. It finds that loyalists often turn to religion habitually in times of insecurity to provide justification for conflict. But religion does not just prop up deeper ethnic identities. Religion has meaning and content itself that is sometimes tension with oppositional ethnic identities and, in some cases, can transform them totally. This produces a complex set of relationships in which religion and ethnicity push and pull against one another in the lives of individuals, neither dominating fully over the other.