Partitioned identities? Everyday national distinctions in Northern Ireland and the Irish state

How does political structure affect ethno‐national distinction? Partitioned societies are a good test case where we can see the effects of changed socio‐political circumstances on historically inherited distinction. This article takes nominally identical distinctions of nationality and religion with common historical roots and shows how they are differentially understood in two polities partitioned in 1920: Northern Ireland, a devolved region of the United Kingdom, and the Irish state. Using a data base of interviews with over 220 respondents, of which 75 in Northern Ireland, conducted between 2003 and 2006, it shows how complex, potentially totalising and exclusive ‘ethnic’ and ‘ethno‐national’ divisions are built up from simpler and more permeable distinctions. Respondents interrelate the same elements into a loosely‐knit symbolic structure – different in each jurisdiction – which frames expectations and discourse, and which is associated with different logics of national discourse, one focussing on personal orientation, the other on group belonging. The resultant ‘ethno‐national’ distinctions function differently North and South.     

Lest the Lowliest Be Forgotten: Locating the Impoverished in Early Medieval Ireland

In early medieval Ireland (ca. a.d. 400–850), every person's rank in society was codified in documents and visibly apparent by their material possessions. Early Irish literature is overwhelmingly concerned with the negotiation of status, but it is focused primarily on the rights and responsibilities of the nobility and wealthy farmers. Those of lower status are often ignored, and it has been difficult as archaeologists to agree on what constitutes a lower class site or artifactual assemblage. This paper addresses these arguments and challenges the belief that the lowest members of medieval Irish society are invisible to archaeology due to their impoverished existence.     

Piot,Personhood, Place and Mobility in Lihir,Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT This paper is an exploration of the nature of personhood through the medium of the concept of piot in the Lihir islands, Papua New Guinea. Piot is an embodied experience in response to the movement of others in space. When people leave or arrive at a place and spend the night, others in the area feel unwell. Piot is thus one aspect of the relations between persons. I suggest that ideas of relational personhood are inadequate to fully comprehend piot, and, following LiPuma (1998) and Clay (1986) rather than Strathern (1988), argue that persons in Lihir are more than just relational beings who always act with others in mind. Piot is predicated on the dual themes of fixed sociality and mobility that are important in Lihir as elsewhere in Melanesia (cf Eves 1998; Patterson 2002). Through piot, persons comment on and sanction the movement of others, yet this mobility still occurs.     

Style in New Ireland Art and Culture: Grasping the Native's Point of View

A review of definitions of style and studies of particular people suggest that while many studies of art discuss iconography, social relationships, structure, identity, form, function, and so on, few discuss style; and fewer discuss style as world view, ethos, values, or gestalt. In this paper, I report some findings of field work in the arts and cultures of New Ireland and New Hanover in support of research in cultural anthropology on style in this larger sense. I will provide some documentation for ‘the Native's point of view’ on this subject, which affirms its importance in any study of culture.     

‘Against the tide’: placing visual art in the Highlands and Islands,Scotland

Within a political context where Gaelic arts are recognised as integral to the configuration of a new Scotland, this paper focuses on the art and artistic practice of a community arts centre in North Uist, Outer Hebrides, and the art of internationally acclaimed Scots artist, Will Maclean, who has worked with this centre, with initiatives to commemorate the land struggle on the Isle of Lewis, and with Gaelic arts. Drawing, at the conceptual level, on ‘the idea of place as a political project’ (Gibson-Graham 2003 Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2003. An Ethics of the Local. Rethinking Marxism, 15(1): 53–78.  [Google Scholar]: 35) and a narrative of resistance that suggests a differential rather than oppositional optic (Braun 2002 Braun, B. 2002. The Intemperate Rainforest. Nature, Culture, and Power on Canada's West Coast, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.  [Google Scholar]), I examine how art and artistic practice contribute to an aesthetics that works ‘against the tide’ and how, as part of this process, place is re-constituted.     

Southern Irish Protestants: an example of de‐ethnicisation?

ABSTRACT. The study of minorities is central to research in ethnicity and nationalism. But there are cases where the precise nature of the minority is not easy to determine. One view of Southern Irish Protestants is that in the decades after independence they transformed themselves (or were transformed) from British nationals to Irish nationals or, alternatively, from a British ethnic to an Irish religious minority. This paper argues that treating the (past) British dimension of Irish Protestant identity as ethnic or national misconceives it and overlooks the historically deep Irish context of Protestant identity. One consequence of this is the neglect of the specifically Irish roots of residual tensions in Catholic–Protestant relationships. The themes of the paper are exemplified with case material drawn from research on Protestants and Catholics in rural West Cork.     

Localism,signification, imagination: de-stabilizing sectarian identities in two fictionalized accounts of ‘Troubles’ Belfast

This paper is a critical discussion and interpretation of literary representations of the city of Belfast with a particular concern with and focus on sectarian forms of nationalism and place-based identity. It identifies various constructs of place particular to the city as articulated by Eoin McNamee's Resurrection Man and Mary Costello's Titanic Town, two ‘fictionalized’ accounts of 1970s Belfast written and published in the 1990s. A ‘dialogical’ methodology is deployed in order to engage with these texts and to challenge and reinterpret various enduring and problematic narratives of sectarian spatiality. The social and geographical identity formations articulated, reflected and constructed therein are, I suggest, variously uncritical and disconnected. Sectarianism in particular can be seen as an empty discourse of signs. Its social and geographical consequences, however, are ‘real’ and measurable; the discursive and the material operating seamlessly as one socially effective and self-reproducing process. The paper argues then, that such forms of entrenched partisan localism are sterile, subjective and contingent, and that the resulting social division is simultaneously ‘real’ and ‘imagined’.

Le localisme, la signification, l'imagination: déstabiliser les identités sectaires dans deux récits fictifs des «Troubles» de Belfast

Irlande du Nord, représentation littéraire, sectarisme, lieu, identité

Cet article est une discussion critique et une interprétation de représentations littéraires de la ville de Belfast qui porte et met d'avantage l'accent sur les formes sectaires relatives au nationalisme et à l'identité propre au lieu. Un nombre de concepts relatifs au lieu urbain qui trouvent leur expression dans Resurrection Man de Eoin McNamee et Titanic Town de Mary Costello sont identifiées. Il s'agit de récits «fictifs» sur le Belfast des années 1970, rédigés et publiés dans les années 1990. La méthode «dialogique» est utilisée afin d'attirer l'attention sur ses textes et de mettre en cause et réinterpréter les divers récits immuables et problématiques entourant la spatialité sectaire. Je propose que les formations identitaires sociales et géographiques qui s'y manifestent, trouvent leur expression et qui sont élaborées manquent de discernement et sont coupées de la réalité. Le sectarisme peut en soi être perçu comme un discours creux sous forme de signes. Les effets d'ordre social et géographique sont toutefois «réels» et mesurables; les éléments discursifs et les matériaux interviennent uniformément dans un processus socialement efficace et se reproduisant par lui-même. Le présent article soutient par ailleurs que de telles formes de localisme à outrance et teinté de partisanerie sont stériles, subjectives et contingentes et que la division sociale qui en découle et à la fois «vraie» et «imaginée».

Localismo, significación, imaginación: la desestabilización de identidades sectarias en dos relatos ficcionalizados de los ‘Problemas’ en Belfast

Irlanda del Norte, representación literaria, sectarismo, lugar, identidad

Este papel es un discurso crítico e interpretación crítica de representaciones literarias de la ciudad de Belfast que se centra, en particular, en las formas sectarias de nacionalismo e identidad con base en un lugar. Identifica varios constructos de lugar que son particulares de la ciudad, articulados por Eoin McNamee en ‘Resurrection Man’ y Mary Costello en ‘Titanic Town’; dos relatos ‘ficcionalizados’ de la ciudad de Belfast en los años 70, escritos y publicados en los años 90. Usamos una metodología ‘dialógica’ para estudiar estos textos y para desafiar y reinterpretar varias narrativas duraderas y problemáticas de la espacialidad sectaria. Sugiero que las formaciones de identidad sociales y geográficas que se ve articuladas, reflejadas y construidas en ellas no son críticas y son desconectadas. El sectarismo, en particular, puede ser interpretado como un discurso de signos vacío. Sin embargo, sus consecuencias son ‘verdaderas’ y medibles; lo discursivo y la material funcionan perfectamente como un sólo proceso que resulta socialmente efectivo y que se reproduce a sí mismo. El papel entonces sugiere que estas formas de localismo partidista son estériles, subjetivas y contingentes, y que las divisiones sociales que resultan de ellas son simultaneamente ‘verdaderas’ e ‘imaginadas’.     

‘Samudayik Shakti’: Working-class feminism and social organisation in Subhash Camp,New Delhi

This article illustrates the intersections between architecture and agency in Subhash Camp, a squatter settlement in New Delhi, by ‘situating activism in place’. It highlights the significance of place in social action by examining the architecture of everyday places—the house, the street and the square—as the sites of both individual transformations and collective consciousness. Through observations of the activities of and interviews with members of Samudayik Shakti, a women's organisation and a men's panchayat, this article highlights a number of related processes in Subhash Camp: how different women experienced different places through everyday spatial practices; how the spatial practices in these places were shaped by different social structures at different scales, from the family to the state; how the architecture of these places was significant both as sites of control and of emancipation of women's bodies; and how this dynamic contributed to the making of social action in Subhash Camp.     

‘You Might All Be Speaking Swedish Today’: language change in 19th-century Finland and Ireland

In 1800, almost four times as many people spoke Irish as Finnish. That year the Act of Union joined Ireland to Great Britain; half of the population, over three million, were monoglot Irish speakers. Finland was then a part of the Kingdom of Sweden. An increasing number, perhaps 15%, spoke Swedish; the remainder, less than one million, spoke Finnish. A century later in 1900, however, as national agitation for independence grew in both countries, Ireland and Finland had become almost reverse mirror images linguistically. A tiny fraction of Irish people habitually spoke Irish, but Finnish had become the overwhelmingly dominant language in Finland. The present exploratory comparative study in language change points to three major conclusions: the importance of contingency, or chance, in such historical developments; the importance of individual agency; and the complexity and dynamic nature of the relationship between national identity and language.     

The transformative potential of migration: Polish migrants’ everyday life experiences in Belfast,Northern Ireland

In this article, we analyse the processes of migration from the perspective of agency-structure debate. In particular, we focus on the reflexive and emotional aspects of geographical movement and the complex relations between the settlement context, Belfast, Northern Ireland, and migrating people, with their biographies, gender positioning, resources and agency. The movement across space is biographically significant, as it is often meant to resolve economic, family or personal difficulties. However, the geographical movement in itself is not necessarily empowering. We bring the notion of migration as potentially transformative but only when it is accompanied by structural enablements and agential powers of reflexivity. The reflection on one’s life course and the relations between self and the changing context of action shapes the migration experiences profoundly, which may further lead to shifts in gender positioning. The dynamics of shaping and being shaped is constantly present between migrants and the new context: the place influences everyday practices and, at the same time, the place is influenced by everyday actions and their reflexive elaboration. This article sheds light on these reflexive processes through the lens of gender.     

'Hired Hands' or 'Local Voice': Understandings and Experience of Local Participation in Conservation

In recent years, the notion of local participation has emerged as a major force in both policy-making and political philosophy. This paper explores the role that participation is playing in mediating relations between local people, conservation organizations and the ideas and practices of nature conservation in England. Drawing upon empirical research in the county of Kent, the paper argues that there are systematic discrepancies between the motives, experiences and understandings of the various policy actors towards the theory and practice of a participatory conservation. It argues that these apparent discrepancies have serious implications for both the credibility and the effectiveness of present initiatives, whereby participatory practice serves to reshape existing conceptions of conservation and rural space.