Download or read book Unionist Voices and the Politics of Remembering the Past in Northern Ireland written by Kirk Simpson and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having maintained a cultural wall of silence for over 30 years, unionists in Northern Ireland are now ready to speak about the dreadful wrongs that were done to them and their community during the Troubles. Using an extensive and original collection of oral histories, often from people who suffered from paramilitary violence first-hand, this book analyses unionists' recollections of the past. The stories contained in this book are both potent and full of pathos, but despite the sadness and despair they convey, they also offer the reader a chance to hear, for the first time, an alternative history of Northern Ireland's conflict. The book concentrates on the testimony of 'ordinary' unionist civilians - those unconnected to the security forces who were simply innocent victims of a ruthless and lengthy campaign of violence by Irish republican paramilitaries. In the 'new' Northern Ireland, as the political process moves towards truth recovery, it is crucial that these unionist stories are both told and acknowledged, in an attempt to add much needed balance to the historical debate about the Troubles. This book offers hitherto unknown perspectives on the conflict from those people who suffered from the effects of systematic terror.
Download or read book Unionist Voices and the Politics of Remembering the Past in Northern Ireland written by Kirk Simpson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-11 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simpson offers a reflective and theoretical explanation of the ways in which unionists conceive of the past in the present post-conflict environment. He considers the ways in which scholarly literature has often painted an outdated and inaccurate portrait of a highly complex people.
Download or read book Transitional Justice and the Politics of Inscription written by Joseph Robinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-04 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking Northern Ireland as its primary case study, this book applies the burgeoning literature in memory studies to the primary question of transitional justice: how shall societies and individuals reckon with a traumatic past? Joseph Robinson argues that without understanding how memory shapes, moulds, and frames narratives of the past in the minds of communities and individuals, theorists and practitioners may not be able to fully appreciate the complex, emotive realities of transitional political landscapes. Drawing on interviews with what the author terms "memory curators," coupled with a robust analysis of secondary literature from a range of transitional cases, the book analyses how the bodies of the dead, the injured, and the traumatised are written into - or written out of - transitional justice. The author argues that scholars cannot appreciate the dynamism of transitional memory-space unless they first engage with the often silenced or marginalised voices whose memories remain trapped behind the antagonistic politics of fear and division. Ultimately challenging the imperative of national reconciliation, the author argues for a politics of public memory that incubates at multiple nodes of social production and can facilitate a vibrant, democratic debate over the ways in which a traumatic past can or should be remembered.
Download or read book Remembering the Troubles written by Jim Smyth and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2017-03-30 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historian A. T. Q. Stewart once remarked that in Ireland all history is applied history—that is, the study of the past prosecutes political conflict by other means. Indeed, nearly twenty years after the 1998 Belfast Agreement, "dealing with the past" remains near the top of the political agenda in Northern Ireland. The essays in this volume, by leading experts in the fields of Irish and British history, politics, and international studies, explore the ways in which competing "social" or "collective memories" of the Northern Ireland "Troubles" continue to shape the post-conflict political landscape. The contributors to this volume embrace a diversity of perspectives: the Provisional Republican version of events, as well as that of its Official Republican rival; Loyalist understandings of the recent past as well as the British Army's authorized for-the-record account; the importance of commemoration and memorialization to Irish Republican culture; and the individual memory of one of the noncombatants swept up in the conflict. Tightly specific, sharply focused, and rich in local detail, these essays make a significant contribution to the burgeoning literature of history and memory. The book will interest students and scholars of Irish studies, contemporary British history, memory studies, conflict resolution, and political science. Contributors: Jim Smyth, Ian McBride, Ruan O’Donnell, Aaron Edwards, James W. McAuley, Margaret O’Callaghan, John Mulqueen, and Cathal Goan.
Download or read book Very British Rebels written by James W. McAuley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging traditional narrow views, this unique work proposes to rethink and reinterpret Ulster loyalism from the beginning of the "Troubles" to the present day, by tracing its religious, paramilitary, political, and community influences. The work examines the core values of loyalist communities, the roots of violence, and the shift toward peaceful coexistence with former enemies. Also discussed are the DUP's claims that it represents loyalism's "true voice" along with the complex and varying degrees of commitment to the Crown, the Protestant Faith, and the British governance of Northern Ireland. Lastly, it looks at how cultural expressions of loyalist identity, such as poetry or cartoons, are being used in the (re)construction of a loyalist memory. Written by a leading expert on Ulster loyalism, the work is based on extensive interviews with loyalists and loyalist literature to provide an inside account of the processes of loyalist identity formation and transformation. Drawing on political science, sociology and cultural studies, it will appeal to anyone interested in Irish politics as well as conflict and peace processes.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Ireland Volume 4 1880 to the Present written by Thomas Bartlett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-28 with total page 1010 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This final volume in the Cambridge History of Ireland covers the period from the 1880s to the present. Based on the most recent and innovative scholarship and research, the many contributions from experts in their field offer detailed and fresh perspectives on key areas of Irish social, economic, religious, political, demographic, institutional and cultural history. By situating the Irish story, or stories - as for much of these decades two Irelands are in play - in a variety of contexts, Irish and Anglo-Irish, but also European, Atlantic and, latterly, global. The result is an insightful interpretation on the emergence and development of Ireland during these often turbulent decades. Copiously illustrated, with special features on images of the 'Troubles' and on Irish art and sculpture in the twentieth century, this volume will undoubtedly be hailed as a landmark publication by the most recent generation of historians of Ireland.
Download or read book Troubles of the past written by James W. McAuley and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection brings together academics and practitioners to consider the increasingly central role that memory and recalling the past plays in determining contemporary politics and the future direction of Northern Irish society. Using theoretical, comparative and case-study approaches, it considers not only how narratives of the past are constructed, reconstructed, understood and commemorated, but also the ways in which the key themes that emerge are harnessed and mobilised to political and social effect in the present. The book draws deeply on a wide range of expert opinion and viewpoints to add significantly to existing knowledge surrounding the debates over memory and the ways it is used in Northern Irish society.
Download or read book Violence Law and the Impossibility of Transitional Justice written by Catherine Turner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-07 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The field of transitional justice has expanded rapidly since the term first emerged in the late 1990s. Its intellectual development has, however, tended to follow practice rather than drive it. Addressing this gap, Violence, Law and the Impossibility of Transitional Justice pursues a comprehensive theoretical inquiry into the foundation and evolution of transitional justice. Presenting a detailed deconstruction of the role of law in transition, the book explores the reasons for resistance to transitional justice. It explores the ways in which law itself is complicit in perpetuating conflict, and asks whether a narrow vision of transitional justice – underpinned by a strictly normative or doctrinal concept of law – can undermine the promise of justice. Drawing on case material, as well as on perspectives from a range of disciplines, including law, political science, anthropology and philosophy, this book will be of considerable interest to those concerned with the theory and practice of transitional justice.
Download or read book Memory Politics and Identity written by C. McGrattan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-10-10 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of how to move beyond contentious pasts exercises societies across the globe. Focusing on Northern Ireland, this book examines how historical injustices continue to haunt contemporary lives, and how institutional and juridical approaches to 'dealing' with the past often give way to a silencing consensus or re-marginalising victims.
Download or read book Critical Engagement written by Kevin Hearty and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an original case study of how memory has driven and challenged the Irish republican transition from armed conflict to constitutional politics that culminated in the acceptance of policing in the Northern Ireland state.
Download or read book Forgetful Remembrance written by Guy Beiner and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2018 with total page 728 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forgetful Remembrance examines the paradoxes of what actually happens when communities persistently endeavour to forget inconvenient events. The question of how a society attempts to obscure problematic historical episodes is addressed through a detailed case study grounded in the north-eastern counties of the Irish province of Ulster, where loyalist and unionist Protestants -- and in particular Presbyterians -- repeatedly tried to repress over two centuries discomfiting recollections of participation, alongside Catholics, in a republican rebellion in 1798. By exploring a rich variety of sources, Beiner makes it possible to closely follow the dynamics of social forgetting. His particular focus on vernacular historiography, rarely noted in official histories, reveals the tensions between professed oblivion in public and more subtle rituals of remembrance that facilitated muted traditions of forgetful remembrance, which were masked by a local culture of reticence and silencing. Throughout Forgetful Remembrance, comparative references demonstrate the wider relevance of the study of social forgetting in Northern Ireland to numerous other cases where troublesome memories have been concealed behind a veil of supposed oblivion.
Download or read book The Politics of Trauma and Peace Building written by Cillian McGrattan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-23 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In marked contrast to literary, historical and cultural studies, there has been a limited engagement with the concepts and politics of trauma by political science and peacebuilding research. This book explores the debate on trauma and peacebuilding and presents the challenges for democratization that the politics of trauma present in transitional periods. It demonstrates how ideas about reconciliation are filtered through ideological lenses and become new ways of articulating communal and ethno-nationalist sentiments. Drawing on the work of Jacques Rancière and Iris Marion Young and with specific reference to the Northern Irish transition, it argues for a shift in focus from the representation of trauma towards its reception and calls for a more substantive approach to the study of democracy and post-conflict peacebuilding. This text will be of interest to scholars and students of peace and conflict studies, ethnic and nationalism studies, transitional justice studies, gender studies, Irish politics, nationalism and ethnicity.
Download or read book Truth Denial and Transition written by Cheryl Lawther and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Truth, Denial and Transition: Northern Ireland and the Contested Past makes a unique and timely contribution to the transitional justice field. In contrast to the focus on truth and those societies where truth recovery has been central to dealing with the aftermath of human rights violations, comparatively little scholarly attention has been paid to those jurisdictions whose transition from violent conflict has been marked by the absence or rejection of a formal truth process. This book draws upon the case study of Northern Ireland, where, despite a lengthy debate, the question of establishing a formal truth recovery process remains hotly contested. The strongest and most vocal opposition has been from unionist political elites, loyalist ex-combatants and members of the security forces. Based on empirical research, their opposition is unpicked and interrogated at length throughout this book. Critically exploring notions of national imagination and blamelessness, the politics of victimhood and the tension between traditions of sacrifice and the fear of betrayal, this book is the first substantive effort to concentrate on the opponents of truth recovery rather than its advocates. This book will interest those studying truth processes and transitional justice in the fields of Law, Politics, and Criminology.
Download or read book Identity Change after Conflict written by Jennifer Todd and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-23 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores everyday identity change and its role in transforming ethnic, national and religious divisions. It uses very extensive interviews in post-conflict Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the early 21st century to compare the extent and the micro-level cultural logics of identity change. It widens comparisons to the Gard in France, and uses multiple methods to reconstruct the impact of identity innovation on social and political outcomes in the 2010s. It shows the irreducible causal importance of identity change for wider compromise after conflict. It speaks to those interested in Cultural Sociology, Politics, Conflict and Peace Studies, Nationalism, Religion, International Relations and European and Irish Studies.
Download or read book Everyday life after the Irish conflict written by Cillian McGrattan and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyday life after the Irish conflict is the first book to address the specific topic of the intersection of the processes of conflict transformation and devolution with daily life in Northern Ireland in a rigorous and systematic fashion. Bringing together new research from established academics, new voices and civil society actors, this book documents the changes that have occurred in people’s everyday lives as the region moves away from a violent past. Supported with a wealth of new empirical material, the book charts the impact of devolution and conflict transformation in four parts: an overview of the changes is followed by chapters that explore the areas of space, place and human relations. The third part looks at economic and social life while a concluding chapter takes a comparative approach by addressing the differences and similarities between the Northern Irish and Scottish experiences of devolution.
Download or read book Research Handbook on Transitional Justice written by Cheryl Lawther and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2017-06-30 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing detailed and comprehensive coverage of the transitional justice field, this Research Handbook brings together leading scholars and practitioners to explore how societies deal with mass atrocities after periods of dictatorship or conflict. Situating the development of transitional justice in its historical context, social and political context, it analyses the legal instruments that have emerged.
Download or read book Human Rights as War by Other Means written by Jennifer Curtis and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2014-08-04 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the 1998 peace agreement in Northern Ireland, political violence has dramatically declined and the region has been promoted as a model for peacemaking. Human rights discourse has played an ongoing role in the process but not simply as the means to promote peace. The language can also become a weapon as it is appropriated and adapted by different interest groups to pursue social, economic, and political objectives. Indeed, as violence still periodically breaks out and some ethnocommunal and class-based divisions have deepened, it is clear that the progression from human rights violations to human rights protections is neither inevitable nor smooth. Human Rights as War by Other Means traces the use of rights discourse in Northern Ireland's politics from the local civil rights campaigns of the 1960s to present-day activism for truth recovery and LGBT equality. Combining firsthand ethnographic reportage with historical research, Jennifer Curtis analyzes how rights discourse came to permeate grassroots politics and activism, how it transformed those politics, and how rights discourse was in turn transformed. This ethnographic history foregrounds the stories of ordinary people in Northern Ireland who embraced different rights politics and laws to conduct, conclude, and, in some ways, continue the conflict—a complex portrait that challenges the dominant postconflict narrative of political and social abuses vanquished by a collective commitment to human rights. As Curtis demonstrates, failure to critique the appropriation of rights discourse in the peace process perpetuates perilous conditions for a fragile peace and generates flawed prescriptions for other conflicts.
