Civic identity and public space , focussing on Belfast, and
bringing together the work of a historian and two social
scientists, offers a new perspective on the sometimes lethal
conflicts over ...parades, flags and other issues that continue to
disrupt political life in Northern Ireland. It examines the
emergence during the nineteenth century of the concept of public
space and the development of new strategies for its regulation, the
establishment, the new conditions created by the emergence in 1920
of a Northern Ireland state, of a near monopoly of public space
enjoyed by Protestants and unionists, and the break down of that
monopoly in more recent decades. Today policy makers and
politicians struggle to devise a strategy for the management of
public space in a divided city, while endeavouring to promote a new
sense of civic identity that will transcend long-standing sectarian
and political divisions.
The 60s and 70s saw a strong role of planning, social engineering, etc., but there has since been a move towards a more decentralised 'community planning' approach. This text examines urban planning ...and policy in the context of deeply contested space, where place identity and cultural affinities are reshaping cities.
A distinctive feature of the conflict in Northern Ireland over the past forty years has been the way Catholic and Protestant paramilitaries have policed their own communities. This has mainly ...involved the violent punishment of petty criminals involved in joyriding and other types of antisocial behavior. Between 1973 and 2007, more than 5,000 nonmilitary shootings and assaults were attributed to paramilitaries punishing their own people. But despite the risk of severe punishment, young petty offenders--known locally as "hoods"--continue to offend, creating a puzzle for the rational theory of criminal deterrence. Why do hoods behave in ways that invite violent punishment?
InThe Hoods, Heather Hamill explains why this informal system of policing and punishment developed and endured and why such harsh punishments as beatings, "kneecappings," and exile have not stopped hoods from offending. Drawing on a variety of sources, including interviews with perpetrators and victims of this violence, the book argues that the hoods' risky offending may amount to a game in which hoods gain prestige by displaying hard-to-fake signals of toughness to each other. Violent physical punishment feeds into this signaling game, increasing the hoods' status by proving that they have committed serious offenses and can "manfully" take punishment yet remained undeterred. A rare combination of frontline research and pioneering ideas,The Hoodshas important implications for our fundamental understanding of crime and punishment.
This book, the first feminist ethnography of the violence in Northern Ireland, is an analysis of a political conflict through the lens of gender. The case in point is the working-class Catholic ...resistance to British rule in Northern Ireland. During the 1970s women in Catholic/nationalist districts of Belfast organized themselves into street committees and led popular forms of resistance against the policies of the government of Northern Ireland and, after its demise, against those of the British. In the abundant literature on the conflict, however, the political tactics of nationalist women have passed virtually unnoticed. Begoña Aretxaga argues here that these hitherto invisible practices were an integral part of the social dynamic of the conflict and had important implications for the broader organization of nationalist forms of resistance and gender relationships. Combining interpretative anthropology and poststructuralist feminist theory, Aretxaga contributes not only to anthropology and feminist studies but also to research on ethnic and social conflict by showing the gendered constitution of political violence. She goes further than asserting that violence affects men and women differently by arguing that the manners in which violence is gendered are not fixed but constantly shifting, depending on the contingencies of history, social class, and ethnic identity. Thus any attempt at subverting gender inequality is necessarily colored by other dimensions of political experience.
The Scottish diasporic communities closest to home—those which are part of what we sometimes term the ‘near Diaspora’—are those we know least about. Whilst an interest in the overseas Scottish ...diaspora has grown in recent years, Scots who chose to settle in other parts of the United Kingdom have been largely neglected. This book addresses this imbalance. Scots travelled freely around the industrial centres of northern Britain throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and Belfast was one of the most important ports of call for thousands of Scots. The Scots played key roles in shaping Belfast society in the modern period: they were essential to its industrial development; they were at the centre of many cultural, philanthropic and religious initiatives and were welcomed by the host community accordingly. Yet despite their obvious significance, in staunchly Protestant, Unionist, and at times insular and ill at ease Belfast, individual Scots could be viewed with suspicion by their hosts, dismissed as ‘strangers’ and cast in the role of interfering outsiders. Key Features The only book-length scholarly study of the Scots in modern Ireland. Brings to light the fundamental importance of Scottish migration to Belfast society during the nineteenth century. Advances our knowledge and understanding of Scotland’s ‘near diaspora.’ Highlights areas of tension in Ulster-Scottish relations during the Home Rule era. Puts forward a new agenda for a better understanding of British in-migration to Ireland in the modern period.
In 1613, the small settlement of Belfast, with a population of about 1,000, was granted its Royal Charter as a borough. Three hundred years later, Belfast emerged as a city of international ...importance. With one of the world's largest ports, it enjoyed a brief spell as Ireland's largest urban center and was a major player in the British industrial scene. Unique in being an Irish city with a self-consciously British identity, the city reveled in, and in many ways depended upon, its central role within the British Empire. This book celebrates and explores an exciting period in the city's history: 1850-1914, which was Belfast's own Belle Epoque. By focusing on the people of the city - those who built it, lived in it, visited it, worked in it, and governed it - the book presents a kaleidoscope of snapshots which combine to reveal the rich and varied experiences of life, both temporal and spiritual, in the emerging city. It is a remarkable picture of the role Belfast played in the urban history of Victorian Britain and Ireland.
Divided Cities Jon Calame, Esther Charlesworth
11/2011
eBook
In Jerusalem, Israeli and Jordanian militias patrolled a fortified, impassable Green Line from 1948 until 1967. In Nicosia, two walls and a buffer zone have segregated Turkish and Greek Cypriots ...since 1963. In Belfast, "peaceline" barricades have separated working-class Catholics and Protestants since 1969. In Beirut, civil war from 1974 until 1990 turned a cosmopolitan city into a lethal patchwork of ethnic enclaves. In Mostar, the Croatian and Bosniak communities have occupied two autonomous sectors since 1993. These cities were not destined for partition by their social or political histories. They were partitioned by politicians, citizens, and engineers according to limited information, short-range plans, and often dubious motives. How did it happen? How can it be avoided?
Divided Citiesexplores the logic of violent urban partition along ethnic lines-when it occurs, who supports it, what it costs, and why seemingly healthy cities succumb to it. Planning and conservation experts Jon Calame and Esther Charlesworth offer a warning beacon to a growing class of cities torn apart by ethnic rivals. Field-based investigations in Beirut, Belfast, Jerusalem, Mostar, and Nicosia are coupled with scholarly research to illuminate the history of urban dividing lines, the social impacts of physical partition, and the assorted professional responses to "self-imposed apartheid." Through interviews with people on both sides of a divide-residents, politicians, taxi drivers, built-environment professionals, cultural critics, and journalists-they compare the evolution of each urban partition along with its social impacts. The patterns that emerge support an assertion that division is a gradual, predictable, and avoidable occurrence that ultimately impedes intercommunal cooperation. With the voices of divided-city residents, updated partition maps, and previously unpublished photographs,Divided Citiesilluminates the enormous costs of physical segregation.
Belfast Peter Shirlow, Brendan Murtagh
2006, 2006-05-20
eBook
Paris, Jerusalem and Belfast are cities that are shaped by political violence, death and the injustices caused by segregated living. But divided cities are becoming places within which policy makers ...and politicians project an image of normality despite the facts of social injustice, victimhood and harm. It is a commonly held view that the city of Belfast is emerging out of conflict and into a new era of tolerance and transformation. This book challenges this viewpoint. The authors pinpoint how international peace accords, such as the Belfast Agreement, are gradually eroded as conflict shifts into a stale and repetitive pattern of ethnically-divided competition over resources. This book is a vivid portrait of how segregation, lived experience and fear are linked in a manner that undermines democratic accountability. It argues that the control of place remains the most important weapon in the politicisation of communities and the reproduction of political violence. Segregation provides the laboratory within which sectarianism continues to grow.
