A shared future: territoriality,pluralism and public policy in Northern Ireland

This paper addresses the making of post-conflict public policy in Northern Ireland. In particular it considers an extended consultation process, A Shared Future: Improving Relations in Northern Ireland, initiated in January 2003 by the Community Relations Unit of the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, as a response to the statutory requirement to further ‘good relations’ as specified in the 1998 Belfast Agreement and the subsequent Northern Ireland Act (1998). This public consultation process invited responses to a set of core principles for a plural but socially cohesive society and a series of policy options for fostering ‘good relations’. In this paper we discuss the Shared Future process within the context of the consociational underpinnings of the 1998 Agreement and the ways in which it foregrounds ideas of cultural diversity and pluralism but fails to engage adequately with the temporal and spatial dimensions of identities in Northern Ireland. Secondly, we explore both the difficulties of making policy that will encourage a pluralist but cohesive polity in a context in which territoriality dominates identity at state, local and even individual scales, and the problems of the ways the Shared Future policy seeks to replace ethnocratic or ethno-nationalist markers with those of ‘normal’ identities in ‘normal’ capitalist material space. We conclude with reflections on the limitations of consociational democratic practices in a society that has democratically mandated political parties promoting territorially-based ethno-nationalist ideologies.     

Northern Ireland,employment and the law

Employment Equality in Northern Ireland, vols I‐III Eithne McLaughlin (series ed.), 1997 Belfast, Standing Advisory Committee on Human Rights ISBN 0.9527.5280.8

Vol. I. Fair Employment Law in Northern Ireland: Debates and Issues Denise Magill & Sarah Rose (eds) pp. 202

Vol. II. Policy Aspects of Employment Equality in Northern Ireland Eithne McLaughlin & Padraic Quirk (eds) pp.197

Vol. III. Public Views and Experiences of Fair Employment and Equality Issues in Northern Ireland John McVey & Nigel Hutson (eds) pp. 170     

Sexual citizenship in Belfast,Northern Ireland

In this article we examine the contours and construction of sexual citizenship in Belfast, Northern Ireland through in‐depth interviews with 30 members of the GLBT community and a discursive analysis of discourses of religion and nationalism. In the first half of the article we outline how sexual citizenship was constructed in the Irish context from the mid‐nineteenth century onwards, arguing that a moral conservatism developed as a result of religious reform and the interplay between Catholic and Protestant churches, and the redefining of masculinity and femininity with the rise of nationalism. In the second half of the article, we detail how the Peace Process has offered new opportunities to challenge and destabilise hegemonic discourses of sexual citizenship by transforming legislation and policing, and encouraging inward investment and gentrification.     

Equity, Diversity and Interdependence: Cultural Policy in Northern Ireland

This paper examines the new presence of "culture" within politics in Northern Ireland and attempts by cultural policymakers and community activists to constructively shift the meanings of "identity", "tradition" and "heritage". It focuses on the work of the Community Relations Council and the strategic development of its three principles of equity, diversity and interdependence, in relation to specific controversies about culture in Northern Ireland and wider debates about pluralism and multiculturalism. The distinctive configuration of questions of pluralism and culture in Northern Ireland highlights the ways in which multicultural theory is shaped by its geographies of development and circulation and how ideas of culture and multiculture work in different places and travel with sometimes ambiguous effects. At the same time, the pragmatic combination of optimism, realism, encouragement and critique in cultural policy in a context of continued division and political instability complicates familiar accounts of the geographies and politics of multiculture.     

Partition,consociation, border‐crossing: some lessons from the national conflict in Ireland/Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT. Outlining Ireland's long history of ethno‐national conflict, and the recent protracted ‘peace process’ in Northern Ireland, contextualises a critique of the problems underlying such conflicts, and the difficulties in transforming externally imposed conflict management into self‐sustaining conflict resolution. It is argued that the problems and difficulties are deeply rooted in a thoroughly modern complex of nationalism, ethnicity, sovereignty and representative democracy. These are knotted together in a common denominator of territoriality, and the nub of the problem is the ‘double paradox’ of democracy's undemocratic origins in the present. Territoriality, the use of bordered geographical space, is a powerful and ubiquitous mode of social organisation which simplifies social control. But it can grossly oversimplify and distort social realities, particularly at borders and especially where territory is contested, thereby reinforcing other distorting simplifications typically found in ethno‐national conflicts. In consequence, radical remedies are needed if the problems are to be overcome. Making ethno‐national peace paradoxically calls for more creative border‐crossing conflicts around other issues.     

Delivering Integrated Rural Development: Insights from Northern Ireland

This article explores progress being made in the sphere of integrated rural development in Northern Ireland, based on the experiences of 15 LEADER II local action groups. Research suggests that the local action groups experienced difficulties in developing integrative and multi-dimensional approaches to rural development during the initial stages of strategy formulation. In addition there appears to have been an emphasis on delivering the products of rural development with little importance attached to supporting processes such as capacity building and animation. However, as the programme progressed, this article examines the potential added value of LEADER II in Northern Ireland as demonstrated by the enhanced scope for cross-sector dialogue and local collaboration rooted in partnership based activity.     

Sectarian demography,territoriality and political development in Northern Ireland

"Here we discuss, firstly, the limits of Census-based empiricism [in Northern Ireland] and the usually unacknowledged problems of data and interpretation which have resulted in a seriously misleading ?conventional wisdom'. Secondly, we question its sectarian terms of reference, the over-identification of religion and politics, and misconceptions of ethnicity.... Thirdly, we focus on some of the flawed policy ?solutions' associated with empiricism and sectarianism, including ?internal' power-sharing and ?consociational' strategies for political development."