Selling Conflict Heritage through Tourism in Peacetime Northern Ireland: Transforming Conflict or Exacerbating Difference?

The paramilitary ceasefires in 1994 and the ensuing peace negotiations brought to a close some three decades of ethno‐nationalist violence in Northern Ireland. The conflict, colloquially termed the Troubles, cost almost 3,700 lives, and bequeathed both a tangible and intangible heritage of division and hurt. This paper considers the commodification of physical conflict ‘heritage’ such as military installations, memorials and street murals through an examination of various tourism initiatives. Such initiatives have been employed by a number of agents ranging from local councils and tourist boards to small community groups and ex‐prisoner organisations. While ‘official’ agencies recognise the economic potential of this form of heritage, community‐based groups often view the sites and symbols of the conflict as vehicles through which to propagate political perspectives. Those sold by the latter, in particular, are often supported by government bodies that fund such forms of tourism under the auspices of ‘conflict transformation’, a strategy that is aimed at transforming the nature of the conflict through fostering self‐understanding within disputant communities. I participated in a number of these tours over the course of six months in 2005/2006.     

Domestic espionage: David Park's Swallowing the Sun as Troubles thriller

David Park's standing as an author of finely observed works, in which individual frailties are pitted against larger scenarios of conflict and trauma, was recently acknowledged through his winning of the American Ireland Literary Award. His most recent novel, The Truth Commissioner, projects a model of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission onto a Northern Ireland setting, and won the 2009 Christopher Ewart Biggs Memorial Award. The novel this essay examines, Swallowing the Sun (2005), can be read as a re-working of the conventional Troubles thriller. In this novel, the traumas of domestic violence feed into and interweave with state violence in Belfast. Poverty and class inequities are highlighted as causes for both private and public conflict. David Park revises the Troubles thriller to suggest that the pressure to be quiet in the face of suffering is the real enemy to both individual and state welfare. Swallowing the Sun is a powerful challenge to established ideas about genre and context in Northern Ireland, and a moving work from a Northern Ireland author who has, until recently, been relatively overlooked.     

Hard to miss,easy to blame? Peacelines,interfaces and political deaths in Belfast during the Troubles

As Northern Ireland moves further from the period of conflict known as the ‘Troubles’, attention has increasingly focussed on the social and material vestiges of that conflict; Northern Ireland is still a deeply-divided society in terms of residential segregation between Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists, and urban areas are still, indeed increasingly, characterised by large defensive walls, known as ‘peacelines’, which demark many of the dividing lines between the two communities. In recent years a body of literature has emerged which has highlighted the spatial association between patterns of conflict fatality and proximity to peacelines. This paper assesses that relationship, arguing that previous analyses have failed to fully take account of the ethnic complexity of inner-city Belfast in their calculations. When this is considered, patterns of fatality were more intense within the cores or ‘sanctuaries’ of highly segregated Catholic and Protestant communities rather than at the fracture zones or ‘interfaces’ between them where peacelines have always been constructed. Using census data at a high spatial resolution, this paper also provides the first attempt to provide a definition of the ‘interface’ in clear geographic terms, a spatial concept that has hitherto appeared amorphous in academic studies and media coverage of Belfast during and since the Troubles. In doing so it embodies both the material and demographic aspects of social division in Northern Ireland, and suggests an urgent need to reappraise the true role of these forms of social boundary in influencing patterns of violent conflict.     

‘Signs of the still recent war’: Medbh McGuckian and conflict

In a review of Medbh McGuckian's poetry, Christopher Benfey maintained that ‘[t]o scan her poems for allusions to sectarian violence would be as fruitless and naïve as to sift Emily Dickinson's poems for references to the Civil War’. McGuckian's work is not often read for its commentary on or critique of violence in Northern Ireland. Indeed, in an interview with John Brown, the poet revealed that ‘I never thought of myself as a “Troubles” poet; it was not part of my oeuvre and I couldn't do it simply as an exercise, so I didn't take it on’. This article tests the validity of her self-assessment by examining poems which borrow from sources focused on conflict, particularly the two world wars. The intertexts allow the poet to explore moments of crisis (due to violence, imprisonment and enforced deprivation) without having to deal explicitly with the more immediate conflict in Northern Ireland.     

Ulsterisation and the Troubles thriller: Eoin McNamee's Resurrection Man

Although the progression of peace is, in all likelihood, finally imperilling the ascendancy of the thriller as the literary venue for representing social and political life in contemporary Northern Ireland, the genre continues to provide important access points for understanding the Troubles. Eoin McNamee's grim and harrowing Resurrection Man, for example, may be the only contemporary Northern Irish novel to represent the British government's mid-1970s internal security strategy known as ‘Ulsterisation’. By suggesting the various ways in which violence and subterfuge were nourished by government interests and supported by covert operatives, McNamee's novel subtly depicts a London intent on managing the conflict while insulating it from British politics and international criticism. Even as it does so, though, Resurrection Man ultimately struggles to avoid the thriller's more regressive tropes and generic conventions.     

Dealing with the past: Museums and heritage in northern ireland and Cape Town,South Africa

The experiences of post‐apartheid South Africa have often been used to open dialogue about Northern Ireland and the possible approaches to dealing with the legacy of the conflict. People in Northern Ireland have, for example, looked towards the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and policing in South Africa for further insights. This comparison of South Africa and Northern Ireland has now moved beyond being concerned predominantly with conflict resolution and has come to bear in the consideration of how we should present the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland’s museums and the value of preserving the built heritage of the Troubles. This paper uses the example of the ‘transformation’ in the South African heritage sector that came with the end of apartheid as a means to raise areas of concern that have resonance for Northern Ireland. It shows that for both Northern Ireland and South Africa it is important to think further about the impact of display, the power dynamics embedded in the construction of heritage, and the complexity of building a shared narrative from a contested past.     

Commemorating dead ‘men’: gendering the past and present in post-conflict Northern Ireland

War is instrumental in shaping and negotiating gender identities. But what role does peace play in dispelling or affirming the gender order in post-conflict contexts? Building on a burgeoning international literature on representative landscapes and based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Northern Ireland between 2003 and 2006, this article explores the peacetime commemoration of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ in order to explore the nuances of gender. Tellingly, the memorial landscapes cultivated since the inception of the paramilitary ceasefires in 1994 privilege male interpretations of the past (and, therefore, present). Gender parity, despite being enshrined within the 1998 Belfast Agreement which sought to draw a line under almost three decades of ethno-nationalist violence, remains an elusive utopia, as memorials continue to propagate specific roles for men and women in the ‘national project’. As the masculine ideologies of Irish Nationalism/Republicanism and British Unionism/Loyalism inscribe their respective disputant pasts into the streetscape, the narratives of women have been blurred and disrupted, begging the question: what role can they play in the future?     

Political imprisonment and the sanctity of death: performing heritage in ‘Troubled’ Ireland

The ‘Troubles’ is a euphemism associated with sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s until the late 1990s. Similarly, that term also is used to depict turmoil in all of Ireland between 1916 through 1924. During both eras, political imprisonment coupled with various forms of political violence (e.g. bombings, executions, and prisoner abuse) marred Irish society in ways that invoke socio-religious meaning. In particular, the sanctity of death captures the intense semiotics of those events and points to further theorising along lines of the Durkheimian tradition. As we shall examine herein, violations of the sanctity of death compound social conflict and the resistance it creates. Fieldwork was undertaken in Dublin and Belfast where official landmarks were explored in-depth: Kilmainham Gaol and the Crumlin Road Prison, respectively. Additionally in Belfast, other – unofficial – cultural sites provide further evidence of socio-religious symbolism, most notably the Irish Republican History Museum, Roddy McCorley’s Club in West Belfast, and murals in both Loyalist and Republican communities. Whereas Durkeimian theory remains at the forefront of the analysis, insights also are informed by heritage studies, in particular notions of cultural performance in contested societies.     

Commemorative events at destination memorials – a dark (heritage) tourism context

In the past, sites and events related to war and atrocities were viewed in the wider context of heritage tourism. The term ‘dark’ was added with the aim of recognising heritage sites closely related to death and suffering. Given that commemorative events as part of dark heritage are not prevalent in heritage and tourism literature, there is a need to understand the behaviour of visitors involved in visiting these sites or attending this type of event, which presents a special challenge. Public commemorations, especially those that mark particularly disturbing occurrences, such as ‘The Great School Hour’ – an event which is presented in the artistic form of a ‘school class’ – are unique form of tourist activity that has not been thoroughly investigated previously. Thus, the aim of the study is to explore the influence of the main motivators on revisit intention and willingness to recommend for those who attended the commemorative event ‘The Great School Hour’ in Kragujevac, Serbia, with a particular focus on younger people. The results suggest that learning, emotional response and uniqueness have a significant positive effect on revisit intention, while emotional response and uniqueness have a significant positive effect on willingness to recommend.     

On the Side of Light: Performing Morality at Rwanda’s Genocide Memorials

Abstract

In Rwanda, numerous memorials have arisen to remember the 1994 genocide and its victims. This paper considers the effect of the national genocide memorials on Western tourist visitors, in the context of research on ‘dark tourism’ and Western attitudes toward death and the dead. It draws on the idea that, in a Western context, viewing the remains of violent death can be a kind of ‘soft murder’, and on the concept that the act of witnessing violence creates a community of witnesses implicated in that violence. Western visitors to Rwandan genocide memorials therefore form a community, and their responses are guided by a set of community rules regarding behaviour and experiences during and after the visit. These rules, this paper argues, are rooted in pressures to assert oneself as a properly moral individual through performing morality in a morally ambiguous setting.     

Passing as a tourist: Exploring the everyday urban geopolitics of tourism

This paper presents a case study of territorial boundary transgression and intergroup encounters mediated by tourism in a volatile and contested urban space. I present the notion of ‘passing as a tourist’ as a prism to investigate the nexus between performative tourism and everyday urban geopolitics. Situated in East Jerusalem's core geographies of colonization and political violence, this paper uses archival news material and a textual analysis of primary questionnaire data to critically examine how Jewish Israeli Jerusalemites visiting the Muslim Quarter in the Old City negotiate encounters in a conflicted space. The study reveals how the performative dimensions of ‘tourism’ in a context of polarized ethnonational division expose the role of embodied, everyday geopolitics in the production of urban spaces of tourism.     

Contested heritages and cultural tourism

The fascination with death and disaster has encouraged the development of distinctive tourism markets, the rediscovery of sites and places of past conflict and all accompanied with uneasy narratives about what they mean and how they should be consumed. The increasingly stratified tourist economy and the interplay between demand and supply has also stimulated a complex set of ontological, socio-political and indifferent responses as places and interests compete to project often selective or stylised claims for recognition. This paper reviews the experiences of tourists visiting Derry/Londonderry, the UK’s first City of Culture and how they make sense of the competing interpretations of the past in museums, rituals and artefacts. The 17thC walled city, the city of violence and the post-conflict renaissance city are spatially and socially reproduced but rarely connect with each other to help make sense of the past for the present and critically, for the future. The paper concludes that the discursive content promised by the City of Culture was a missed opportunity to debate these places and events and critically, the problematized and reified narratives they each project.     

Irish Republican Politics and Violence before the Peace Process, 1968–1994

Analyses of the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland tend to underplay the influence of political strategy in the 1970s, preferring to emphasise militarism. Similarly, the persistence of militarism in the 1980s is often obscured by the attention paid to a ‘new’ republican political orientation. This article seeks to draw attention to the IRA's evolving attitude to the ‘problem’ of Ulster unionism, and republicanism's various estimations of the likely efficacy of violence throughout the period. Republicanism is best understood as a deeply rooted working-class ethno-nationalist movement interacting closely with the other agents of the Northern Ireland conflict: constitutional nationalism, unionism and the British government. ‘Armed struggle’ became a declining asset for republicanism as it came to be seen less as a form of ‘popular guerrilla warfare’ and more as ‘terrorism’. 1 [1] For valuable advice, thanks to Prof. Roy Foster. Opinions expressed are my own. View all notes     

‘Don't mention the war!’ Debating Notion of a ‘Stalemate’ in Northern Ireland (and a Response to Dr Paul Dixon)

The Northern Ireland peace process is often celebrated as a model for conflict resolution, yet our understanding of exactly what occurred is still only at a formative stage. Many details, particularly concerning the counter-terrorist operations of the British government, remain buried within official archives, available only up until 1981. Some aspects of that campaign—variously called an ‘intelligence’, ‘secret’ or ‘dirty’ war—may never be uncovered because of a lack of official documentation. Nonetheless, attempts can be made to analyse the use of ‘harder’ forms of state power. Scholars should not be shy to offer reasoned historical judgements on the basis of available evidence. In seeking to understand why the conflict followed the path it did and ultimately came to an end, ‘hard power’ cannot be written out of the story. However, some seem more inclined to a position best characterised by Basil Fawlty's famous mantra: ‘Don't mention the war!’ An exaggerated example of this was provided by Dr Paul Dixon of Kingston University in an article in a previous issue of this journal, which made a number of criticisms of our book, Talking to Terrorists; Making Peace in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country. In this article, we respond to Dixon's criticisms and offer broader reflections on what transpired in Northern Ireland. In some instances, the deployment of ‘hard power’ by the British state exacerbated the conflict and proved counter-productive. Ultimately, however, we conclude that intelligence-led counter-terrorism operations did make a significant contribution to ending the situation. This is not to advocate the use of such methods or to play down the ‘soft power’ successes which are undoubtedly part of the Northern Ireland story; it is simply to acknowledge that such tactics were deployed in the past and form part of a complex historical picture.     

From the Past to the Future: Integrating Archaeology and Conflict Resolution in Northern Ireland

Abstract

Contested understandings about the past continue to reify the divided character of post-Troubles Northern Ireland. In particular, the unresolved legacies of the extension of English control over Ireland in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries through warfare and plantation continue to structure daily lives in the province. Yet the archaeological record of this period complicates the accepted dichotomous narratives through highlighting complexity. These nuances, however, have been lost in recent decades as an overly simplistic model of colonizer versus colonized has emerged as the dominant political paradigm. The management and presentation of sites associated with the process of plantation can arguably create the space necessary to bridge the divide, and to challenge accepted understandings. Cross-community engagement in the process of archaeological discovery and interpretation on plantation-period sites in Northern Ireland highlights the critical role archaeology can play in peace and reconciliation in post-conflict societies.     

Beyond the everyday? Rethinking place meanings in tourism

ABSTRACT

Existing tourism scholarship on place meanings seems to retain an underlying assumption of a contradiction between tourist places and the mundane world. In contrast, this paper contends that the production of the meanings of tourist places is also closely related to everyday life. To make its case, it interrogates the creation of meanings of two scenic sites of Tianya Haijiao and Nanshan in Sanya, a famous coastal destination in southern China. Although both scenic sites have been recently developed, their significance stems from historical and cultural meanings in traditional Chinese culture, which are frequently communicated in people's daily conversations and practices. Besides, the meanings of the tourist sites are neither fixed by legitimate discourses nor dominated by tourism publicity; they are continuously shaped by wider socio-spatial events in mundane societies and re-interpreted through tourism mobilities in accordance with tourists’ everyday concerns. This paper echoes the ‘new mobilities turn’ in tourism studies and contributes to the discussions of the mundaneness of tourist places.     

If you are not one of them you feel out of place: understanding divisions in a Northern Irish town

This paper examines and reflects on the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking devices as a method to understand and analyse young people’s everyday movement in Northern Ireland, a divided society emerging from conflict. The paper also seeks to contribute to the extensive body of literature which already exists on young people’s geographies and movements within the Northern Ireland context. We highlight how the use of GPS together with more traditional methods gives us considerable insights of movements of young people in Northern Ireland and sheds light on the communal divisions in one town in Northern Ireland, Coleraine. We argue that the use of a GPS methodology significantly adds to the understanding of young people’s movements and geographies, particularly in a post-conflict context where notions of place and territory have particular significance.     

Patrick O’Farrell and the Irish History Wars, 1971–1993

While Patrick O’Farrell's achievements as an historian of the Irish and of Catholicism in Australia are well recognised, little attention has been paid to his significance as an historian of Ireland. This article takes his two major Irish monographs, published in 1971 and 1975, and considers how they influenced leading Irish political historians of the 1970s and 1980s. In doing so, the article examines the crisis created for historians by the Northern Ireland Troubles. It demonstrates that the work of O’Farrell, which called into question the primacy of politics and of the nation state, helped open up new avenues for the analysis of Irish culture and identity. Yet, at the same time, such an approach challenged the republican reading of Irish history as a struggle against colonialism, and thus O’Farrell's work attracted severe criticism.     

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.     

The Irish question and the concept ‘identity’ in the 1980s1

ABSTRACT. This article critically investigates the social construction of ‘identity talk’ in relation to the Irish Question in the 1980s. Our contention is that the utilisation of ‘identity’ imagined people as bounded groups in a particular way – as the two traditions or communities in Northern Ireland – and that this way of imagining people was deployed against ‘will’‐based conceptions of politics. The first part of the article places the emergence of ‘identity’ as a concept in its historical context and suggests four phases in the use of ‘identity’. The second part focuses on ‘identity’ as a concept and locates its emergence within the meta‐conflict regarding Northern Ireland. The article concludes by reflecting on Brubaker and Cooper's (2000) analysis of ‘identity’ as a category of analysis in light of our case study of ‘identity’ as a category of practice regarding the Irish Question.