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From Paramilitaries to Peacemakers: The Gender Dynamics of Community‐Based Restorative Justice in Northern Ireland
Abstract
Community-based restorative justice (CBRJ) schemes emerged in Northern Ireland during the ‘peace process’ to provide an alternative to paramilitary systems of justice. These initiatives have received considerable academic attention. A complex and critical literature has now emerged in this area; however, extant explorations of CBRJ have tended to sideline issues of gender power. Feminists and international bodies, such as the United Nations, have highlighted the importance of addressing historical gendered inequities in terms of the design and evaluation of conflict transformation initiatives. Drawing on contemporary feminist frameworks this article exposes the importance of the category of gender in evaluations of CBRJ in Northern Ireland. Moreover, it scrutinises the theoretical processes through which issues of gender power have been filtered out of evaluations of community-based restorative justice schemes in the region.
... Male excombatants are implicitly posited as especially qualified as "community leaders" due-somewhat paradoxically-to their histories of collective political violence and the militarized, ethnocultural masculinities which have underscored such histories. At the least, the promotion of excombatant community leadership is accepted as a "realistic" or practical approach to local peacekeeping and peacebuilding initiatives (Ashe 2009;Edwards and McGrattan 2011). ...
... The perceived (and real) social exclusion of excombatants by elected officials and their more general "limits of legitimacy" (Mitchell 2008) help sustain the former's political disaffection and underscore the importance of cultures of paramilitarism in male excombatants' efforts in maintaining power and control on neighborhood levels. The research identifies structural forces which constitute male excombatant alienation and help shape their social agencies of "resistance," which are underscored by desires for autonomy and recognition and channeled by cultural, gendered scripts rooted in both violent and "nonviolent reconstituted" or "peacebuilding masculinities" (Ashe 2009;Ashe and Harland 2014). Accordingly, the study traces the forms and limited extent of transition in excombatant masculinities, linking them to broader problems of exploitation by ethnopolitical elite. ...
... The power-sharing framework of governance established since the 1998 Belfast/ Good Friday Agreement brought an impressive cessation of violence in Northern Ireland but also recentered politics around issues of ethnonational identity, "reinforc[ing] the marginal location of gender politics in the political realm" (Ashe and Harland 2014, 749) while legitimizing normative, ethnomasculinities with which such a politics has been historically constructed (Ashe 2009). After approximately 30 years of conflict, paramilitaries' acquiescence to the peace process was eventually "bought," so to speak. ...
This study critically examines how masculinities and intersecting ethnonational and social class identities underscore the social and political agencies of excombatants in Northern Ireland and in the specific context of community-based peacebuilding. The authors draw on interviews with female and male leaders in grassroots and governmental organizations, which illustrate how state-led practices of exclusion reshape such intersectional identities and increase the instrumentality of hypermasculinist, pseudo-paramilitary practices in maintaining excombatants’ status and control on neighborhood levels. The research documents how structural dynamics of excombatants’ social class locations and political disaffection help shape their social agencies of “resistance,” underscored by desires for autonomy and recognition, and channeled by ethnogendered scripts rooted in both violent cultures of paramilitarism and nonviolent peacebuilding masculinities. The implications on women of male excombatants’ takeover of leadership roles in the community sector are also discussed.
... Similarly in Timor-Leste, the resistance narrative that lauds militarised masculine figures and roles continue to have ramifications in the society today (Kent 2014). Similar arguments have also been made in Northern Ireland (Ashe 2009(Ashe , 2015. ...
... The everyday becomes a set of structures that influence all aspects of our lives and are part of the (masculine) landscape. We need therefore to consider not only how masculinity is linked to violence post-agreement, but also how it also shapes the peacebuilding environment (both at governmental and community levels) beyond the direct violence framework (Ashe 2009(Ashe , 2015. ...
The study of masculinity, particularly in peacebuilding and transitional justice contexts, is gradually emerging. The article outlines three fissures evident in the embryonic scholarship, that is the privileging of direct violence and its limited focus, the continuities and discontinuities in militarised violence into peace time, and the tensions between new (less violent) masculinities and wider inclusive social change. The article argues for the importance of making visible the tensions between different masculinities and how masculinities are deeply entangled with systems of power and post-conflict social, political and economic outcomes. An analysis of masculine power within and between the structures aimed at building the peace in societies moving out of violence is considered essential. The article argues for an analysis that moves beyond a preoccupation with preventing violent masculinities from manifesting through the actions of individuals to considering how hidden masculine cultures operate within a variety of hierarchies and social spaces.
... Indeed, the apparent success of the schemes has led to calls for the 'Northern Ireland model' to be rolled out across England and Wales (Lyon 2009;Prison Reform Trust 2009). 4 This article does not advocate the disbandment of the schemes, but rather seeks to highlight how the academic representation of the schemes often serves to propagate a Provisional republican discourse (see Ashe 2009 for a notable exception to that tendency). While I outline the moral problems involved in having ex-terrorists involved in the schemes in Northern Ireland, I also acknowledge the fact that the schemes along with those individuals are embedded in republican communities. ...
... The use of traditionalist source material and the failure to contextualise republicans' actions and policies leads CBRJ advocates inevitably to the eulogising of the ex-prisoners who are involved with the schemes. These prisoners, we are told, now demonstrate considerable leadership skills McEvoy and Shirlow 2009)-these having been honed during their imprisonment where they spent their time reading Paolo Freire and 'negotiating' with the prison authorities (see Ashe 2009). What specific relevance Freire might have to post-conflict Northern Ireland is never explained. ...
This article critically assesses the scholarly representation of community-based restorative justice (CBRJ) schemes in Northern Ireland. These schemes, which emerged in working-class areas following the republican and loyalist ceasefires of the 1990s, have been the subject of intense political debate and a growing body of academic literature. I argue that the academic depiction of the schemes in republican areas ignores the substantial progress made by revisionist political scientists and historians in understanding Provisional republicanism. By failing to take that research into account, CBRJ scholars are in danger of not simply promoting vague, de-contextualised policy prescriptions, but of actively reproducing republican understandings of political developments.
... Peace, like conflict, is all too often a masculinised process, in which the 'men who understand war' are given preferential access to negotiating peace and setting the parameters for the 'post-conflict order.' In societies largely at peace, men with military backgrounds are assumed to be more knowledgeable about issues of security than others, while non-combatant men in positions of societal power can leverage their status to manage conflicts (Ashe, 2009;Krause, 2019, Wright, 2020Kunz et al., 2018;Rigual et al., 2022;Yousaf, 2021). Women and openly gender-diverse persons, on the other hand, even if they lived through a conflict or were combatants, are often required to justify why their experiences and insights matter or why they should participate in negotiations, though some women are able to also leverage relative positions of power (Rigual et al., 2022). ...
... In other words, 'conventional' vigilantism is amplified by 'digital' vigilantism in which conventional justice-seeking will be accompanied by a digital presence, with the ultimate objective of shaming the subject of vigilantism, i.e., the petty thief (Plesničar, Šarf, 2020;Durani et al., 2024). The hope is that paramilitaries that used violence-based punishment systems, even those that have strong community support, might adopt a restorative justice system instead, as was observed in Northern Ireland, although readers should also be aware of this strategy's shortfalls (Ashe, 2009), also taking into consideration the national breadth of that particular example (relative to the very localized cases in Table 1). ...
Objectives
The aim of the article is to present the results of research and observations related to the phenomenon of vigilantism in the context of military operations in Ukraine.
Methods
Theoretical research methods were used, such as desk research and literature study. Additionally, monitoring particular causes in Worldwide media has been carried out.
Results
In the first months of 2022, during the ongoing Russo–Ukrainian war, an “unusual” phenomenon was observed on social media, namely the wrapping of suspected lawbreakers (e.g., marauders and petty thieves) with plastic wrap to structures, such as utility poles. In some cases, such individuals were whipped, chastised, sometimes even left naked and exposed to the elements, and open to mistreatment by passers-by. This raw form of wartime justice is loosely referred to in this article as “plastic wrap civil justice”, and is interpreted as a form of vigilantism. Several examples are provided in the context of the wider literature on vigilantism in times of war.
Conclusions
It is concluded that neither the specific phenomenon of “plastic wrap civil justice”, nor vigilantism more broadly, can provide a sustainable path to peace, civil security and a law-abiding society. In times of war, especially where social equilibrium is at risk and where conventional justice infrastructure, like policing, has broken down, some may take it upon themselves to implement their own form of justice, or vigilantism, in order to restore it. Although not a legally recognized form of justice, vigilantism may reduce crime. However, it introduces a parallel form of justice that may leave fellow citizens vulnerable.
... Some authors have argued that these non-prisoner practitioners, and specifically women practitioners, have been overlooked in favor of ex-prisoner practitioners within the literature (see for exampleAshe, 2009Ashe, , 2015. It is therefore important for me to acknowledge that women have been, and are currently, a huge part of CRJI's success and are an integral part of the organization and this research. ...
Common to many post-conflict societies, former political prisoners and combatants in Northern Ireland are often portrayed as security threats rather than as potential contributors to societal peacebuilding processes. This distrust limits their ability to contribute to the transitional landscape and additionally hinders desistance processes during their reentry from prison. Drawing from the work of Maruna, LeBel, and others on “wounded healers,” this article critically examines the restorative justice work of ex-prisoners who have become involved in leadership roles within community based restorative justice. It is argued that such practitioner work can help former combatants overcome many of the challenges typically associated with reentry, contributing to a “strength-based” approach to desistance, impacting factors such as employment, social bonds, internal narratives, and agency. This work also enables individuals to showcase their desistance to others, highlighting their “earned redemption” and encouraging society to acknowledge that reentry is a two-way street.
... There are significant gendered outcomes of this approach in terms of reinstating hierarchies of masculinity and of concentrating power and decision making at community levels in the hands of formerly violent men, reinforcing a public/private divide in which women are assumed to be subject to, rather than agents of, such power. 94 This intersection of political and gendered hierarchies entitles particular men to control particular women, where men's authority over women's positioning in social relations is the rule, not the exception. 95 This has significant implications for women, gender minorities, and other so-called 'new' communities such as immigrants, whose very presence challenges the traditional sectarian power structures and can lead to intimidation and violence. ...
Violence, and the threat of violence, is a pervasive feature of women's lives. From high‐profile threats in politics to everyday harms such as domestic abuse, violence, threat, and intimidation control women's behaviour and silence their voices. Yet in many cases the pernicious and harmful effect of threat is not captured by the law. Drawing on the work of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and empirical research undertaken in Northern Ireland, this article analyses the ways in which both objective and ‘incorporated’ social structures generate invisible forces of fear and threat that the law does not see, but that women feel and structure their lives around. The article develops the novel conceptual tool of ‘invisible threats’ to capture threat as harm, to show the relation between threat and gendered (in)securities, and to challenge institutions of the law to respond better to invisible threats as perceived and articulated by women.
... At the same time there are issues, identified by research, that are unique to the researched country. An example of this would be the gender imbalance of community-based restorative justice in Northern Ireland as noted by authors such as Ashe (2009;. Comparatively, in Sierra Leone, academics like Park (2010) and Friedman (2015) have acknowledged that an important drawback in the efficacy of community-based restorative justice is the prevalence of foreign non-governmental organisations such as the 'Community Peace Consolidation Committees'. ...
Contested collective memory can be regarded as the root cause of division in Northern Ireland
– a country, which is still recovering from a violent conflict, based on politico-religious
differences. The community-based restorative justice programmes that have been established
there as peacebuilding practices, have garnered international attention. Although these
projects have had significant impact on the population, paramilitary violence and division
among the two largest groups – Nationalists and Unionists, still exist. Factors such as
politicised murals, annual parades, transgenerational trauma, and history teaching about the
conflict, reinforce the two communities’ polarising interpretations of the historical past.
Contrary to previous scholarly claims that there is a need to formulate a new shared by both
groups collective memory, this dissertation argues that each community can retain their own
narrative, while acknowledging and respecting the other’s. It also argues that there is a
potential for peacebuilding if Nationalists and Unionists engage in dialogue and exchange
their opposite perspectives on the past, and that community-based restorative justice is a
suitable method for doing this. Cross-community projects such as Healing Through
Remembering have previously tried to address this. Nonetheless, this dissertation argues that
if state accredited community-based restorative justice programmes are given more
opportunity to directly deal with paramilitary crimes, and if a wider policy framework for
dealing with the past in Northern Ireland is created, this will increase the opportunity and
resources for these projects to engage more people in such dialogues and sustain their
involvement.
... Weaponry, it's a part of the armed struggle, it's a tactic, and you make more advances using your weapons this way, and I think that's what it was about. (Interview, Former Provisional IRA Member 3, Belfast, 3rd September 2013) While the reframing of armed struggle as a means to achieving political ends was pursued to address the tensions between mutually pursuing armed struggle and the political approach, armed struggle throughout the second cycle still held an important role and therefore both were contingent on the other, especially insofar as the credibility of the movement largely derived from its prior adherence and application of the armed struggle (Ashe 2009). Consequently, conditionality was introduced into the Provisional IRA's legitimisation of armed struggle, which allowed the Provisional IRA to maintain support for its use of violence in the past while justifying (and opposing) violence in the present. ...
The concepts of radicalisation and de-radicalisation are primarily defined by the assumption they make that there is a causal relationship between ideas and action. However, the causal role of ideas in informing behaviour has been strongly contested and has thus far eluded and undermined radicalisation and de-radicalisation conceptually and practically. The following article provides a theoretical basis for identifying the causal relationship between ideas and action through Margaret Archer’s critical realist ontology. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Northern Ireland, the article identifies processes of ideational causal reproduction and morphogenesis in the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s thinking on armed struggle during its transition away from armed violence. It argues that the adoption of the Armalite and Ballot Box strategy in the 1980s introduced a contradiction in the movement’s ideology and that the movement was pressured to address this contradiction through three corrective cycles throughout the peace-process, subsequently softening its position on armed struggle.
... Peacebuilding efforts which also take into account the unique impacts on post-conflict communities of particular sociostructural conditions, shaped along various dimensions of power and identity, will have greater likelihoods of promoting a more transformational type of peace. For example, there has been increasing attention to the significant, limiting impact of unequal relations of political power across gendered lines on the scope of peacebuilding (Cockburn 2004;Zuckerman and Greenberg 2004;Ashe 2009). Yet other sociostructural conditions which undermine post-conflict reconstruction have received less attention, including issues of social class and economic inequality. ...
Through analysis of interviews with community leaders and newspaper reports and police data on sectarian violence, this study identifies dynamics and conditions which underscore fluctuations in ethno-political tensions and violence in Northern Ireland. Findings suggest that political provocations which promote such tensions are facilitated by the economic marginalization of communities historically susceptible to violence, ongoing community influence of paramilitary factions and disjuncture between the political priorities of upper- and lower-classes within each ethno-political community. More generally, the research highlights how a lack of investment in social and economic modes of reconstruction undermines the development of new political forms of cross-community cooperation and contributes to the reconstitution of intergroup division.
... Hence, rather than promoting radically new forms of social relationships for which the family is no longer envisaged as the ultimate horizon, it aims Like Margaret Ward, therefore, Lehner is critical of the fact that the peace process has been an ' all-male process' (Ward, 2006). Similarly, Fidelma Ashe (2009) andSara McDowell (2008) both argue that the focus has been almost exclusively on men's needs, experiences, trauma and interpretations of the past, while Lorraine Dowler (2001: 68-9) asks, '…if women are truly the peacemakers of the world, then why in 1998 were only fourteen women elected to the 108 seats of the Northern Ireland Assembly'. She concludes that, 'Stereotypical understanding of women as peacemakers does not give them greater access to the public debates of peace' (Dowler, 2001: 69). ...
One of the intertitles from Knocknagow (1918), Ireland’s first feature-length indigenous film directed by Fred O’Donovan, features the following excerpt from a poem by Thomas Davis:
You meet him in his cabin rude
Or dancing with his dark haired Mary
This quote highlights the significance of two major, related cornerstones of an emergent postcolonial manhood; namely the reclamation of property and the marriageable status which this afforded the Irishman. Ireland’s new patriots were considerably more domesticated and community-oriented than the rugged, individual heroes of the American frontier or the ‘model sons’ of Soviet cinema. Indeed, for a film that is overtly propagandist at times, what is particularly striking about Knocknagow is its self-conscious disavowal of spectacular heroics. In one of the opening intertitles, the audience is warned:
As this old tale unfolds there are waiting you neither soul stirring thrills nor sensational climaxes
This conscious rejection of pomposity and theatrics in favour of a grounded, self-effacing male heroism was arguably the crux of post-Independence Irish manhood, and it has been remarkably resilient, despite seismic changes in gender relations and representations over the past century.
... Hence, rather than promoting radically new forms of social relationships for which the family is no longer envisaged as the ultimate horizon, it aims Like Margaret Ward, therefore, Lehner is critical of the fact that the peace process has been an ' all-male process' (Ward, 2006). Similarly, Fidelma Ashe (2009) andSara McDowell (2008) both argue that the focus has been almost exclusively on men's needs, experiences, trauma and interpretations of the past, while Lorraine Dowler (2001: 68-9) asks, '…if women are truly the peacemakers of the world, then why in 1998 were only fourteen women elected to the 108 seats of the Northern Ireland Assembly'. She concludes that, 'Stereotypical understanding of women as peacemakers does not give them greater access to the public debates of peace' (Dowler, 2001: 69). ...
In a key scene in Paul Tickell’s film Crush Proof (1999), protagonist Neal and his friend Liam lead a piebald horse through a Dublin housing estate. In a moment of dramatic reflection, reminiscent of the signature soliloquies delivered by anti-heroes Renton in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (1996) and Tyler Durden in David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), the young men exchange the following words:
Neal: There’s nothing waiting for you when you grow up, just the dole, then a hole for your knob, then another one in the nut and then another fucking hole in the ground for your corpse.
Liam: So, until the inevitable, smashing and shagging.
In 2004, sociologist Anne Cleary and a number of colleagues produced a report entitled Young Men on the Margins, in which they stated that social inequality, unemployment, the decline of organised religion, the re-conceptualisation of community and the family and rising levels of crime had had a particularly negative impact on young, working-class men. It is tempting to assume that the cinematic preoccupation with male social exclusion that emerged in the late 1990s/early 2000s was in direct response to the social reality documented by Cleary et al. However, closer analysis of this cycle suggests that more complex cultural and gender-political factors need to be taken into account in order to explain the genesis and popularity of these images and discourses.
... Hence, rather than promoting radically new forms of social relationships for which the family is no longer envisaged as the ultimate horizon, it aims Like Margaret Ward, therefore, Lehner is critical of the fact that the peace process has been an ' all-male process' (Ward, 2006). Similarly, Fidelma Ashe (2009) andSara McDowell (2008) both argue that the focus has been almost exclusively on men's needs, experiences, trauma and interpretations of the past, while Lorraine Dowler (2001: 68-9) asks, '…if women are truly the peacemakers of the world, then why in 1998 were only fourteen women elected to the 108 seats of the Northern Ireland Assembly'. She concludes that, 'Stereotypical understanding of women as peacemakers does not give them greater access to the public debates of peace' (Dowler, 2001: 69). ...
In July 2011, the Cloyne Report was published. It examines how both the Catholic Church and the state handled allegations of abuse against 19 clerics in the County Cork diocese up until 2009. Shortly after its publication, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny delivered an impassioned speech to Dáil Eireann, the Irish Parliament, condemning the Vatican and the institutional church in Ireland. Kenny accused the Vatican of downplaying the rape and torture of children to protect its power and reputation and of refusing to cooperate in investigations as recently as three years ago. His speech marked a watershed moment in the state’s deteriorating relationship with the Catholic Church, not least because in it he made clear that Canon Law may never be exempt from the laws of the state:
This is not Rome. Nor is it industrial-school or Magdalene Ireland, where the swish of a soutane smothered conscience and humanity, and the swing of a thurible ruled the Irish Catholic world. This is the Republic of Ireland, 2011. A republic of laws, of rights and responsibilities, of proper civic order, where the delinquency and arrogance of a particular version of a particular kind of morality will no longer be tolerated or ignored.1
... This approach has not succeeded in transforming the deep sectarian division in NI society (Bryne, 2001) and has led to communities working in isolation or under sectarian conditions that are contradictory to the interests of the larger collective (Campbell et al. 2010). In addition, many community-led practices such as Community-Based Restorative Justice (CBRJ), as an alternative to paramilitary justice (judgements and decisions made by paramilitary groups in the community) that have been championed by former combatants or former prisoners have resulted in the transfer of responsibility for tackling community crime from the paramilitaries to the community itself (Ashe, 2009). Ashe (2009) also critiques these initiatives in terms of their exclusion of women's participation and not addressing gender-based inequalities. ...
This article investigates community work as a method in social work in Northern Ireland. It traces the processes that have led to the marginalisation of community work within social work practices and the complex relationship between community development and social work. Nonetheless, the welfare state is undergoing change, wherein new agendas of personalisation, service user involvement, community engagement and partnership are emerging, which are changing the occupational space of social work. We argue that this change can be an opportunity through which social work can and must re-engage with community development, particularly within the existing political arrangements and sectarian context of Northern Ireland. However, social work’s engagement in the community presents risks given its current relationship with the state and loss of trust within the Northern Irish community. We discuss these risks and further possibilities.
Findings
The article draws from contemporary literature on the current context of community development and service provision in Northern Ireland social work’s involvement. The possibilities for community social work are explored through recent policy initiatives and the current situation of the community sector. Risks that stem from social work’s relationship with the state, and with community organisations as well as the contradiction between discourses of partnership in service delivery and the ground reality are considered.
Applications
Our analysis suggests the need for (a) collective action by social workers through collective representation, (b) a new conceptualisation of professionalism that incorporates partnerships with other workers in the care sector and (c) education that has contemporary resonance.
... 11 Yet it is notable that the majority of literature on Northern Ireland and transitional justice mechanisms has remained remarkably gender-blind; but these performances must always, at the same time, be understood as gender performances. 12 There has been increasing international recognition of the importance to consider the gender politics of conflict transformation processes, and, in particular, to deal with the culture of violent masculinity. 13 This is especially the case as the conflict transformation period often works to reinstall the hegemonic positioning of the masculine by failing to engage with or, more importantly, fundamentally change historical conditions of gender inequality. ...
... have resulted in the transfer of responsibility for tackling community crime from the paramilitaries to the community itself (Ashe, 2009). Ashe (2009) also critiques these initiatives in terms of their exclusion of women's participation and not addressing gender-based inequalities. ...
• Summary: This article investigates community work as a method in social work in Northern Ireland (NI). It traces the processes that have led to the marginalisation of community work within social work practices and the complex relationship between community development and social work. Nonetheless, the welfare state is undergoing change wherein new agendas of personalisation, service user involvement, community engagement and partnership are emerging, which are changing the occupational space of social work. We argue that this change can be an opportunity through which social work can and must re-engage with community development, particularly within the existing political arrangements and sectarian context of NI. However, social work’s engagement in the community presents risks given its current relationship with the state and loss of trust within the Northern Irish community. We discuss these risks and further possibilities.
• Findings: The article draws from contemporary literature on the current context of community development and service provision in NI social work’s involvement. The possibilities for community social work are explored through recent policy initiatives and the current situation of the community sector. Risks that stem from social work's relationship with the state, and with community organisations as well as the contradiction between discourses of partnership in service delivery and the ground reality are considered.
• Applications: Our analysis suggests the need for: a) collective action by social workers through collective representation, b) a new conceptualisation of professionalism that incorporates partnerships with other workers in the care sector, and c) education that has contemporary resonance.
... Feminist critiques into spatial constructions of identity opened up a discussion about the gendered nature of the conflict. This work was not solely driven by geographers (such as Dowler 1998, 2001a,b, 2002and Reid 2004 but by also by interdisciplinary scholars such as Aretxaga (1995), Ashe (2009) and Sharoni (2001) who offered significant insights into the experiences of women and the fluidity of identity across community lines. Evidently, conflict shapes gender relationships but as Dowler confirms that shaping can also confirm gendered divisions. ...
The violent conflict in Northern Ireland that led to some 3700 deaths was tied to opposing ethno-sectarian groups and the state and the disputation between them over that country’s constitutional future. Republicans such as the Irish Republican Army used violence in order to ‘gain’ a united Ireland. Whereas loyalists such as the Ulster Volunteer Force and the British state utilised violence in order to maintain Northern Ireland’s constitutional link with the United Kingdom. Geographers writing on this conflict have, via various forms of spatial analysis studied the consequences of that violence with regard to territoriality, the construction of ideological space and the perpetuation of ethno-sectarian boundaries. In more recent times, the analysis of conflict and post-conflict Northern Ireland has evaluated the governance of a divided society, the role paramilitaries have played in embedding peace and also the paradoxical role of reproducing conflict by other non-violent means. Northern Ireland remains as a divided society but there is a prominent role for geographers who study such a complex place to add to wider international scholarship regarding resistance and domination, revanchism, discourse construction, post-conflict and the impact upon place and also the role of agency in both perpetuating and removing violence.
... Linked with this is the fact that Brown airbrushes the political implications of the intervention of those criminologists and legal theorists. Campbell, for example, has chaired the Committee on the Administration of Justice, which, as I pointed out, has traditionally been pro-nationalist and anti-state in orientation; Brown's allusion to Gormally and McEvoy's work is apposite given the fact that they have been instrumental in promoting the controversial and highly politicised Provisional republican variation of community-based restorative justice (Ashe, 2009;McGrattan, forthcoming). ...
I should at the outset declare an interest – I have known Kris Brown for a numberof years and respect and admire his work. In saying that, I found Brown’s (2010)reply to my article on transitional justice (TJ) (McGrattan, 2009) both welcome andtroubling. I welcome it because it is emblematic of the literature and the scholarlyapproach that I attempted to critique in the first instance. It is troubling for exactlythe same reason: that the normative import of TJ scholarship – as represented byBrown and the authors he cites – continues to (re)produce politically loaded andmorally troubling prognoses simply by evading any form of self-analysis. Brownasks for ‘deeper engagement’ between political science and TJ scholarship;however, it is difficult to see where this can come from given his demonstrabletendency to disregard or subsume queries surrounding the political implications ofthe TJ paradigm within the framework of that paradigm.
... By failing to take cognisance of the prevailing institutional structures and their historical rationale, the TJ approach in fact serves to reproduce the dominant ethno-nationalist explanations that inspired and maintained the Troubles in the first place. Eschewing historical context, in Northern Ireland these proposals have created a profound moral and historical vacuity: elite politicians' and academic narratives are preferred to alternative and marginal experiences of conflict based on gender, class and locale (Ashe, 2009;McGrattan, forthcoming); terrorist 'stories' are placed alongside those of individuals tasked with securing law and order; and the burden of reconciliation is imposed on the vast majority of individuals who rejected violence (Grandin, 2005;Patterson, 2009). ...
This article critically assesses the application of the ‘transitional justice’ model of conflict ransformation in Northern Ireland. The model addresses a number of important issues for societies emerging from violent conflict, including victims’ rights and dealing with the past. This article claims that the model is founded upon highly contentious political assumptions that give rise to a problematic framing of the issues involved. The underlying implication is that by eschewing basic political analysis in favour of unexamined ideals concerning conflict transformation, the TJ approach belies its commitment to truth recovery, victims’ rights and democratic accountability.
A kötet a Nemzeti Közszolgálati Egyetem Európa Stratégia Kutatóintézetének kiadványa, amelynek célja helyzetjelentést adni a magyar szempontból kiemelkedő fontosságú szakpolitikai kérdésekről, a 2024. évi magyar uniós elnökség előtt várhatóan felmerülő lehetőségekről és kihívásokról mintegy egy évvel a magyar elnökség kezdete előtt. A kötet 12 tanulmányt tartalmaz, amelyek érintik a területi kohézió politikáját, az orosz–ukrán háború hatásait, a magyar családpolitikát, a nemzeti kisebbségek védelmét, az Oroszországgal szemben alkalmazott szankciókat, az Európa jövőjéről szóló konferenciát, a Magyarországgal szemben folyó jogállamisági eljárásokat, a digitális szuverenitást, az uniós védelempolitikát, az európai zöld átállást és a resztoratív igazságszolgáltatást. A tudományos igényű, ám közérthetően fogalmazó kötet érthetőbbé teszi a soros elnökség intézményének szerepét az Európai Unió működésében, és betekintést nyújt az egyes szakpolitikai területeken végbemenő folyamatokba, segítve ezzel a magyar elnökség várható prioritásainak és feladatainak megértését.
Elérhető: https://tudasportal.uni-nke.hu/xmlui/handle/20.500.12944/21596?key=tárnok%20balázs
The volume is a publication of the Europe Strategy Research Institute of the Ludovika University of Public Service, the purpose of which is to provide an insight into the most important policy issues in relation to the opportunities and challenges expected to arise in the course of the Hungarian EU presidency in the second half of 2024.
The book contains 12 studies that touch on cohesion policy, the effects of the Russian–Ukrainian war, the Hungarian family policy, the protection of national minorities, the EU sanctions applied against Russia, the conference on the future of Europe, the rule of law proceedings against Hungary, the digital sovereignty, the EU defence policy, the European green transition and
restorative justice.
The volume aims to make the role of the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union more understandable and to provide insight into the processes taking place in different policy areas, thus helping to understand the expected priorities and tasks of the Hungarian presidency.
Available: https://tudasportal.uni-nke.hu/xmlui/handle/20.500.12944/21594?key=tárnok%20balázs
This chapter explores how transversal politics in women’s cross-community activities in contemporary Northern Ireland can be utilised to inform a multi-tier citizenship that promotes gender-equal citizen participation. It discusses ways of moving forward—both in terms of channelling women’s voices and political grassroots work into formal politics, and by bridging the gap between the region’s feminist and women’s sectors. The impact of Brexit on women’s rights and funding for grassroots organising is problematised, together with the shrinking community space for women. The potential for legacy-based activities, constitutional conversations and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda to inspire shared learning and activism among the feminist and women’s sectors is also discussed. Different party-political and civic routes to bridging the formal/informal political divide are evaluated in terms of their potential to promote a transversal gender-just citizenship that can (a) recognise and accommodate multi-tier intersectional identities, (b) encourage multi-sited citizen participation and (c) facilitate coalitions across (ethno-national) difference.
This chapter revisits the ways in which memories are constructed but also considers similarities and differences as to how these are represented and reproduced in both national and international settings. Because of widespread interest in Irish affairs and the Irish conflict, partly motivated by the story of long-term diaspora, these competing interpretations of the past reverberate across generations far beyond the island itself.
The involvement of former extremists in preventing and countering violent extremism has attracted many advocates. Interventions in school settings by or with former extremists have been commonplace for a long time, and in some countries even for decades, which is reason enough to focus on the current research state. We did this through a synoptic examination of the empirical literature on the subject. Hence, we took an in-depth look at four experimental studies with robust samples. These studies investigated projects from Ireland, the Basque Country, Denmark, and Germany. The findings demonstrated two main points: (1) the empirical evidence showed a contrast to the anecdotal evidence, which mostly provided a positive assessment of former extremists in school settings, and (2) thus far, students’ perspectives on these initiatives have not been considered in a sufficiently differentiated way.
Despite a growth in analysis of women and conflict, this has tended to overlook the specific experiences of young women. Likewise, in research on youth, conflict and peace, the term ‘youth’ is often short-hand for young men. Young women’s experiences are regularly absent from research and policy discourse, and as a consequence, also absent from public understanding and practice responses. In this paper, we prioritise the views of and on young women to forefront their experiences of one specific form of conflict-related violence – paramilitary violence. We demonstrate that forefronting young women’s experiences, and adopting an understanding of violence beyond that which privileges physical violence, unearths the multiple ways in which conflict-related violence is experienced. We further demonstrate how adopting an intersectional lens that prioritises age and gender can surface the specific experiences of young women, and the various ways in which these become silenced by cultures that omit, coerce, reduce and minimise.
This chapter draws together the arguments of the separate chapters. It offers a summary of the main themes of the contributions and then draws out their general implications. These themes constitute the claims to originality made by the volume. The three case countries covered here enable us to reflect on ex-combatant issues in the Global North (Northern Ireland) and Global South (South Africa and Sri Lanka), showing their differences and parallels. The different types of ex-combatant addressed in this volume enable us also to show their similarities and differences. This chapter also explains what it means to have a Global North/South perspective on ex-combatant issues.
En Colombia, el proceso de reintegración a la vida civil tiene como fin apoyar los proyectos de vida en la legalidad de personas que han pertenecido a grupos armados organizados al margen de la ley. Dicho proceso es liderado desde el año 2011 por la Agencia para la Reincorporación y la Normalización a través de la Ruta de Reintegración. El objetivo de este artículo derivado de una investigación participativa es analizar, desde una perspectiva de género, los obstáculos experimentados por las personas en proceso de reintegración (PPR), especialmente en torno a la seguridad, las relaciones familiares y comunitarias, así como los afectos y subjetividades. La metodología utilizada es cualitativa y tiene dos vertientes: (1) revisión de la literatura científica sobre género y reintegración y; (2) 24 entrevistas semiestructuradas realizadas a las personas en proceso de reintegración y sus parejas en el departamento de Santander. El análisis de las categorías planteadas permitió identificar tres elementos para mejorar el acompañamiento de las PPR: la transversalidad del enfoque de género, la integración de la familia en todo el proceso, y la sensibilización de la sociedad receptora.
This policy brief examines the role former extremists and former combatants have in countering violent extremism (CVE). ‘The former’ as a special category of actor in CVE activities, including in peacebuilding settings, has gained significant attention in recent years. Various organisations and governments have utilised formers in CVE activities yet it remains unclear if and when formers can make a positive contribution to these efforts. The following brief brings together research on the subject to provide contexts in which formers do and do not play a positive role in CVE activities. Formers can often contribute to CVE work due to individual characteristics, such as charisma. However, the purpose of this brief is to identify characteristics attributable to the role of former extremists and former combatant. In doing so, it is possible to discuss the different contexts in which formers may contribute to CVE in a more general sense. Thus, the aim is not to evaluate the effectiveness of programmes involving formers but to provide a conceptual tool for identifying which activities may be appropriate for formers in various CVE settings. We argue that former combatants can play an active and productive role in CVE in contexts where formers have relatively more influence in communities than states, although these contexts are rare and have negative consequences, particularly for victims. Where formers do not fill a gap left by the state, formers have limited capacity to contribute to CVE beyond providing an important but short-term contribution to intelligence and counter-narratives.
Feminist institutionalism has highlighted the ways in which gendered concerns and issues might be more readily incorporated into new, as opposed to already existing, institutions. Yet gendered concerns played a limited role in the negotiations which led to the Good Friday Agreement and the (re-)establishment of devolved institutions in Northern Ireland. This chapter considers how gendered issues, and abortion specifically, were addressed in the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and the institutional design of the new Northern Irish Assembly
Despite the relatively unusual (by global standards) involvement of women in negotiations to the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), it is generally recognised that gender has been marginalised both in the descriptive and substantive representation of women in conflict transformation. Twenty years after the Agreement, this article discusses and reflects on the implications of the exclusion of gender policy issues both for women and wider society. Within the agreement itself women are only briefly mentioned with regard to political participation, and the institutional structures created from the GFA through their very design deprioritise any identity cleavage which is not ethno-national. In addition to impacting on the representation of women in formal politics, gendered issues such as gender-based violence either become sectarianised or marginalised, but ultimately remain unresolved. The article addresses the potential for developing and creating gender-sensitive policy concluding that processes of civic engagement and mobilisation offer increasing potential to disrupt the limitations of the overarching macro-political institutional structures. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society; all rights reserved.
This research brings to light the Polish context of a post-socialist, post-transformation society of peasant roots and high religiosity which greatly contributes to the comparative criminological scholarship. The purpose of this doctoral research is to explore how a small number of Polish people understand punishment and justice, and how their narratives inform the viability of restorative approaches to justice. In so doing, this research recognises the value of lay opinion in the discussion of punishment and justice, and approaches punishment and justice as social activities, which echoes the argument that stories about crime and punishment are entangled with people’s daily routines, and as a result are lodged in their cultural imagination (see Garland & Sparks, 2000). The socialist past, hasty transition from socialism to democracy and from a centrally-planned to free market economy has influenced participants’ perceptions of the justice administration and the institutions involved in these processes. Lay Polish people shall be seen as Homo post-Sovieticus, whose perceptions of punishment and justice need to be analysed along with the legacy of the previous socialist system as well as post-1989 changes. Participants’ perceptions of the Polish criminal justice system, the Polish police and unpaid work assist to understand a number of factors that might influence the development of restorative justice in the Polish context. The findings of this study also encourage broadening the scope of the restorative justice discussion and examining its preconditions against wider sociological and criminological discourses on punishment and justice. Although the relationship might be defined as ‘uneasy’, restorative justice, since its conception, is interwoven with the two. One of restorative justice’s central hopes was to establish an alternative system of crime resolution that would eliminate the infliction of pain. However, the trajectory of restorative practices and demonstrates that the functioning of a majority of them is dependent on the criminal justice agencies and that there is a need to address better the notion of punishment in restorative encounters.
Feminist international relations theory argues that male consolidation of power in the aftermath of armed conflict often occurs as men gain the status of heroes in the post-war appraisals. Explorations of republican commemoration in the North of Ireland have uncovered the dominance of the male protagonist with a notable relative absence of militant republican women. Militarized masculine narratives and patriarchal understandings of what is deemed a combatant role, and therefore deemed worthy of commemorating, consistently fail to value or recognize women’s multiple and vital wartime contributions. This article argues that conventional definitions of military contributions and combatant roles are imprecise, highly gendered and ultimately function as a mechanism to denigrate and exclude women’s wartime labor. Based on in-depth interviews with former combatants, the article critically explores the ways in which republican women themselves conceptualize their contributions to armed struggle. Emerging from this is a theoretically rich narrative of women’s multiple and diverse military roles which firmly challenge the limited definition of “a person with a weapon.” It is suggested that by paying careful attention to the lives of combatant women, feminist scholars can use their experiences, narratives and meanings to challenge existing frameworks and discourses, and redefine combatant roles and wartime contributions.
Trauma demands a melancholic orientation to the past, a wish to recover what is lost. In conflicts located in long histories of political difference, a focus on the traumas acquired through the violences of the past is crucial, but this focus may do more than inform the politics of the present. The risk is that the symptoms of the trauma become the symptoms of policy. The political environment that emerges lacks the maturity to understand the ordinary emotions of politics and this further limits the possibility of creative political horizons. In short, in the interests of placating trauma survivors and sometimes in the interests of ensuring no issue gets left behind, politics can be trumped by trauma. Here, we discuss how this has occurred in Northern Ireland and how the ‘trauma’ of non-indigenous Australians has trumped the possibility of addressing the ‘unfinished business of justice’ for Indigenous Australians.
In this chapter, the focus shifts to the peace process in Northern Ireland and, in particular, the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998 (otherwise known as the Belfast Agreement). The intention is not to describe in detail the provisions of the Agreement, or the twists and turns of the peace process, as these have been well-documented elsewhere (McEvoy 2007; Shirlow et al. 2005; Vaughan and Kilcommins 2008). Rather, the chapter explores the attitudes towards the peace process of the women ex-combatants in the study, providing insights into the subjective legacy of the Conflict and setting the scene for exploring the women’s subsequent experiences. The women’s reflections are set alongside a discussion of some of the principles underpinning the Good Friday agreement, in the context of broader debate about the nature of transitional justice and the role of penal reform, and of attention to social justice in the transition from Conflict to peace.
Although, much has been written about the recent political struggles in Northern Ireland, the experiences of women combatants have too often been silenced and under-explored (Aretxaga 1997; McWilliams 1995). The aim of this book is to address these lacunae and question why women should be so marginalised when they played such a pivotal role in the Conflict and in the transition to peace. The experiences of women combatants demonstrate that their relative invisibility (and, indeed, the lower numbers of women taking up arms as compared with the numbers of men) is a result of ideological constructions of womanhood and manhood in society, rather than a reflection of considered decisions based on objective difficulties in incorporating women in combat roles. In addition, in the last ten years leading women activists in Northern Ireland have died leaving little of the written material which has, in other struggles, so often been of use to the next generation of activists. It is difficult to determine the reason for this gap in the literature; partly, it is due to the fact that these women were so completely engaged in pragmatic politics that they had little time for writing reflectively about their activities (Haug 1989).
Explorations of Protestant, unionist and loyalist (PUL) women’s identities during the conflict suggested that they were less politically active than their Irish nationalist and republican counterparts. Throughout the conflict, they appeared to be suspicious of feminism and content to ‘do their bit’ to defend the Union within the regulatory gender structures of male dominated unionist politics and culture. Generally, unionism has been viewed as providing limited space for feminist reconstructions of PUL women’s identities. Certainly, in comparison to Irish nationalist and republican women, PUL women were less visible during the conflict. However, recent feminist research has illustrated that their political agency and gendered transgressions are diverse and shifting. This chapter employs a radical constructionist framework to explore the complex processes through which PUL gendered identities are constituted, disciplined and transgressed. This volume’s division of pro-unionist identities into the categories of Protestant, unionist and loyalist already recognises the necessity of mapping the effects of intra-communal differences on seemingly homogeneous groups. This chapter explores the concept of difference in the unionist community further by foregrounding the intersection of Protestantism, unionism and loyalism with gender. Throughout, it illustrates how extant feminist research exposes the challenges for PUL women in a context not only marked by contested political histories and processes of conflict transformation/management, but also the historical relationships of gender that have impacted women in both ethno-nationalist communities.
The Northern Ireland conflict is often described in terms of the presence of two rival ethnic communities, two competing ideas about identity and belonging, and two antagonistic visions of political aspiration. As such, it is portrayed as a quintessential example of what can happen when two ethnic groups live close together in a territory.1 This fundamental lesson underpins many others — in particular, the need to keep ethnic groups apart and the importance of viewing all aspects of the conflict through the prism of group rights and group demands. Since the signing of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement in April 1998 and the gradual and uneasy movement away from violence an entire peace process industry has emerged, in which academics and political commentators, together with community sector leaders, ex-politicians and former paramilitaries, share these lessons with other troubled spots across the globe.2
Based on in-depth interviews, this article critically assesses the current roles that Republican women occupy as the North of Ireland continues to emerge from conflict. In doing so, it argues that women's political mobilization during the conflict period can be carried forward into post-war scenarios; however, it is the nature of that activism that proves problematic. The conflict transformation period witnessed a more highly formalized role for Republicans that contrasts sharply with radical spaces opened up during the conflict; in particular, the re-emergence of rigid state institutions coupled with formal political parties appears to severely restrict women's sense of political mobility. As Republicans move away from ‘revolutionary agitation’ into more formalized politics, many Republican women are encountering cultural and structural barriers to their involvement within that realm. This research finds that while some women are participating within the sphere of formal politics, many are continuing their political activities within the community and voluntary sector, which they view as a far more effective mechanism for exerting political agency.
Research Highlights and Abstract
This article:
Exposes how masculinised accounts of conflict transformational processes in Northern Ireland have distorted the historical record of the region's on-going transition from violent conflict. Assesses the theoretical and practical effects of de-gendering the analysis of conflict transformational processes in the region. Provides an empirical study of women's hidden contribution to the reduction of levels of paramilitary violence in ethnically divided, working-class communities in the region. Utilises focus group data to develop a gender-sensitive reading of community justice, security and peace.
The 1998 Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland provoked local-level processes of demilitarisation that focused on developing community-based restorative justice practices to replace paramilitary forms of justice. These schemes were viewed as important aspects of the broader process of conflict transformation in the region. The dominant narrative surrounding the development of these new justice forms framed them as an outcome of the efforts of ex-combatant men. This article contests this narrative and examines women's contribution to the development of CBRJ in Northern Ireland. Using data from focus groups, the article exposes the consequences of displacing women in conflict transformational analysis. Additionally, it explores how women's articulation of their conflict transformational practices engenders a critical reframing of key terms in conflict transformational narratives including peace, security, and justice. This exploration reinforces wider feminist claims that any analysis of conflict transformational processes that displaces gender is both conceptually and politically problematic.
Men's dominance of the political and military dimensions of the Northern Ireland conflict has meant that the story of the conflict has generally been a story about men. Ethno-nationalist antagonism reinforced men's roles as protectors and defenders of ethno-national groups and shaped violent expressions of masculinities. Due to the primacy of ethno-nationalist frameworks of analysis in research on the conflict, the relationships between gender and men's violence have been under-theorized. This article employs the framework of Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities to examine these relationships and also explores the changing patterns of men's violence in Northern Ireland.
Justice for rape victims has become synonymous with punitive state punishment. Taking rape seriously is equated with increasing convictions and prison sentences and consequently most feminist activism has been focused on reforming the conventional criminal justice system to secure these aims. While important reforms have been made, justice continues to elude many victims. Many feel re-victimized by a system which marginalizes their interests and denies them a voice. Restorative justice offers the potential to secure justice for rape victims, but feminist resistance has resulted in few programmes tackling such crimes. In After the Crime, Susan Miller evidences the positive outcomes of a restorative justice programme tackling serious offences including rape and recommends their development. However, her vision is ultimately limited by her recommendation of only post-conviction restorative processes and the implicit endorsement of the conventional criminal justice system. I argue that feminist strategy and activism must rethink its approach to what constitutes justice for rape victims, going beyond punitive state outcomes to encompass broader notions of justice, including an expansive approach to restorative justice.
This paper examines Ulster unionism's responses to and its increased disaffection from political developments in Northern Ireland since the 1990s. I suggest that Ulster unionist politics - and, by way of extrapolation, Northern Irish politics - cannot be understood without taking into account the 'soft' or 'hidden' face of political power. I argue that this aspect of political dynamics has been under-researched and under-appreciated in Northern Ireland and outline an alternative narrative of the 'peace process' as the product of resistance and agenda-setting activities. This changed perspective requires a re- conceptualisation of the role played by unionist politics, which are seen to embody a paradox of alienation and powerlessness operating alongside the effective prevention of specific British government and Irish nationalist policy proposals. I conclude with the suggestion that the 'peace process' occurred largely despite rather than because of elite intervention.
In the summer of 2008, the Westminster MP and Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, Iris Robinson, made homophobic statements during interviews with the media. Robinson's anti-gay remarks highlight the continuing challenges for sexual politics in Northern Ireland. However, conflict transformation literature in the region has elided issues of sexuality. This article, drawing on elements of Judith Butler's analysis of injurious speech, assesses the issues that Robinson's homophobic speech highlights in relation to sexual equality in Northern Ireland. It concludes by assessing the role of conflict transformation literature in charting sexual politics in the region.
This article addresses the relationship of women's studies, gender research and men. In particular I ask the question: What are the implications of recent critical studies on men, for women's studies and gender research? I first outline some of the ways in which the social category of “men” has been taken for granted in the social sciences, and some of the broad features of critical studies on men. The implications of these studies are then examined, first in terms of the different political positions and discursive practices that may be adopted in studying men; second, the problematicizing and rethinking of research methods and methodologies; third, the kind of “results” of empirical research, and particularly the complexity of power relations; and fourth, the construction and possible transformation of academic disciplines ‐ including women's studies, traditional malestream disciplines, and interdisciplinary work. The article concludes with a brief discussion of issues that need future attention: the close monitoring of critical studies on men; the naming of men as men and the deconstruction of men; the transformation of the relationship of men's subjectivity and objectivity; and the specific areas of study that have been neglected. Examples from research on men's violence to women, and research on men in organizations and management are used throughout.
This article is based upon a survey of partners of politically motivated prisoners in Northern Ireland. It examines issues related to the visiting experience, the maintenance of contact through letters, home leave and release, and the provision of support from extended family, civil society and professional agencies. The authors argue that while the political ideology of prisoners and families is important, it does not insulate them from the practical and emotional difficulties of coping with imprisonment. It i also argued that despite a system of relatively well resourced support offered to prisoners' families in Northern Ireland, the failure of the families of politicals to avail themselves of these services offers important lessons for the process of prisoner release and reintegration as part of the Northern Ireland peace process.
Using Northern Ireland as a case study, this article explores the relationship between human rights and criminological discourses concerning paramilitary abuses. The article begins with a critical introduction to peacemaking criminology. It then explores four overlapping styles of interventions designed to mitigate paramilitary violence. These include, attempts to hold paramilitaries accountable through humanitarian law; the use of human rights as a rhetorical base for claimsmaking; attempts to encourage the internalization of human rights discourses through a process of political osmosis; and interventions which have been guided primarily by criminological concerns. The article concludes by suggesting a schema for a `new' version of peacemaking criminology that intersects with and builds upon the human rights paradigm in transforming political or ethnic conflicts.
During the most recent three decades of conflict in Northern Ireland, the limitations of the Royal Ulster Constabulary's (RUC) policing of local working class communities has seen the parallel evolution of violent paramilitary systems of ‘punishment attacks’ and banishments. This paper explores the factors which underpin such punishments. It considers their relationship to the formal justice system and offers a critical analysis of the potential for Restorative Justice theory and practice to provide non‐violent community based alternatives to such violent punishments.
Most of the research on paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland has concentrated on either the historical origins of paramilitary organizations or the background characteristics of individuals who engage in this activity. Less attention has been given to analyzing public attitudes in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland toward the use of paramilitary violence as a political tool within this society. In this paper we argue that one of the reasons for the intractability of the conflict and the current impasse over the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons is the widespread latent support for paramilitary activity among the civilian population in both these societies. Overall, the results suggest that only a lengthy period without political violence in Northern Ireland will undermine support for paramilitarism and result in the decommissioning of weapons.
The process of militarization has permeated Northern Ireland society both overtly and in more subtle and pervasive ways. Since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, reductions in state military personnel and infrastructure have been made and several acts of paramilitary decommissioning of weapons carried out. However, the political culture and discourse remains combative and bifurcated as the democratic institutions and processes struggle to achieve viability. Support for the Agreement has faltered as the raised expectations of improvements in quality of life, particularly in communities worst affected by the Troubles, have not been met. Vacuums such as the rolelessness amongst former combatants and gaps in policing have contributed to internecine conflict. As in South Africa, there has been a transition from political to criminal violence in local communities. A formal process of demobilization, demilitarization and reintegration of former paramilitary actors, combined with training in political skills would resolve some of these issues and ensure the irreversibility of the peace process itself.
Paramilitary vigilantism in Northern Ireland has increased dramatically in the wake of the 1994 cease-fires, and is increasingly threatening to destabilise the peace process. Yet despite the long history of vigilantism in Northern Ireland and the unprecedented attention the activity is now attracting, virtually no empirical research has been carried out on the topic. This article reports findings from a study made of 213 IRA and 132 loyalist vigilante incidents which occurred between 1994 and 1996. The aim of the study was to provide hitherto unavailable demographic information on the vigilantism. Results also show that there are clear differences between IRA and loyalist vigilantism and that the nature of vigilantism is changing over time. The main conclusion is that there is a worrying lack of even basic knowledge about the vigilantism at a time when its importance is increasing dramatically. The findings are discussed in relation to the current situation in Northern Ireland.
This article examines the development of community‐based restorative justice in the context of the Northern Ireland peace process. In tandem with the political changes introduced as a result of the Good Friday Agreement, and the reforms of policing and the criminal justice system which occurred as a result of that accord, this article charts the parallel attempts to use community‐based restorative justice programmes as alternatives to paramilitary punishment violence. In analysing the controversy surrounding such projects, the authors argue that the traditional critiques of informal justice have been revisited and revitalized in the ongoing political struggles involving restorative justice in the jurisdiction. These critiques are: the supposedly sinister nature of community‐based restorative justice, the idealization of ‘community’ in such projects as essentially consensual and harmonious, the critique of such projects as a technical and evaluative failure and finally the claim that such projects are impossible. The authors argue that the Northern Ireland experience suggests grounds for a rejection of the cynicism of ‘nothing works’ and argue that the transition to peace lays down moral imperatives including the search for justice practice that ameliorates the violence of the past.
The field of masculinities research continues to expand, and has become increasingly complex. Much of the contemporary analysis of men, masculinity and power has been influenced by the work of a number of profeminist writers who have been leading figures in developing new political interventions around men's identities and power. These men have been at the forefront of interrogations of the concept of masculinity and have attempted to develop new forms of radical gender-conscious politics for men who seek to extend gender justice. The New Politics of Masculinity is the first single-authored feminist text to engage critically with the theoretical frameworks which leading profeminist writers have developed in the field of masculinity studies. Drawing on new social movement and contemporary theory, the book examines the different models of politics that such writers have evolved for men who want to challenge dominant forms of masculinities and inequitable gender relationships. It also assesses the broader effects - on the field of men and masculinities research - of these writers' diverse theorisations of key political concepts such as masculinity, subjectivity, power and resistance.
This article revisits the issue of male experience and its possible relationship to gender politics. Traditionally, feminism has viewed male experience as representing a bar to the development of feminist knowledge and consciousness. This conceptualization of male experience continues to inform the contemporary debate on male feminism. The article argues that this experiential bar emerges from a theorization of male experience as singular, fixed, and organic. Challenging this conceptualization, the article retheorizes male experience as a diverse, shifting, and contested category that produces different political outcomes. Through an analysis of men’s group discourse, the article illustrates how particular interpretations of male experience produce both feminist and antifeminist effects. It concludes that feminism needs to examine male experience as a multifaceted category that can act as the material upon which male feminist resistance operates.
This article focuses on how ideas about gender function in academic analyses of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Part of the reason for doing this is to explore the paradox afflicting contemporary feminism, namely that in the midst of apparent success feminism still seems largely irrelevant to matters of political significance. A second reason involves a demonstration of the political value of poststructural feminism. To achieve these aims, I first consider the use and political aims of poststructuralist analyses, partly through an analysis of the use of poetry in social scientific analyses. The main site used to demonstrate the functions of gender and the political possibilities of poststructural feminism is John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary's book Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images. The sub-title of this book refers to a Robert Graves’ poem, ‘In Broken Images’, a poem the authors use to explain their desire to ‘break images’ when explaining the conflict in Northern Ireland. I next reflect on and illustrate how ideas about gender function by focusing primarily on Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images. The final section re-considers the paradox of contemporary feminism, suggesting that feminism's own methodologies contribute towards its persistent marginalisation.
The British government has a fraught relationship with former combatants in Northern Ireland. It simultaneously benefits from former combatants’ peace‐building efforts, whilst being reluctant to grant them statutory recognition and funding. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with politically motivated former loyalist combatants and statutory representatives in Belfast, this paper explores the complex and sometimes contradictory relationship between them. It argues that a lack of legitimacy is the biggest obstacle to good working relationships, and that positive engagement may be crucial in order to promote the implementation of peace in the most difficult to reach and volatile constituencies in Northern Ireland.
This article reviews the changing patterns of violence in Northern Ireland from the period just before the paramilitary ceasefires in 1994 through the duration of the years of the peace process. It provides an overview of data on activities including paramilitary activities, ‘punishment’ attacks, racist, homophobic and domestic violence, public disorder and rioting as well as serious and violent crime. The article then analyzes the changes, and offers some reasons accounting for them. This includes a review of the role of young people, paramilitary organizations and the police reform program in the ongoing violence, as well as an acknowledgment of a wider culture of violence that helps to sustain such activities.
This article focuses on Schegloff's (1997) comments on critical discourse analysis and evaluates their force in relation to the analysis of a segment of a group discussion with three young white middle-class men concerning an episode in one of the participant's recent sexual history. The post-structuralist-influenced writings of Laclau and Mouffe (1985, 1987) are presented as an alternative analytic frame for the same data. The analysis examines the contextualization of the event which is the topic of the conversation and the positioning taken up and offered to the young man involved, drawing on the analytic concepts of interpretative repertoire and ideological dilemma. A critique of the post-structuralist concept of subject positions is developed and also of the methodological prescriptions Schegloff proposes for critical discourse analysis. The implications for critical discursive research in social psychology are discussed.
The author is a former Loyalist prisoner who recently carried out a piece of research in the Loyalist community of the Greater
Shankill District of Belfast. That research was designed to explore with a range of community activists (including Loyalist
paramilitaries) the potential for an alternative strategy to the current system of punishment beatings and shootings. The
author argues that this can only be achieved by distinguishing between the types of activities that attract the attention
of Loyalist paramilitaries and focusing intervention only upon those areas where it may readistically have an effect, i.e.
that matter relating to the internal discipline of Loyalist paramilitary members and disputes between groupings relating to
drugs will by necessity fall outside any potential intervention. He goes on to offer the outline of a programme designed as
an alternative to punishment beatings which could prove to be effective within those parameters despite the acknowledged difficulties.
Academic feminists have turned to feminist theory to develop ways of managing or solving ethnic antagonisms, especially among feminists/women in Northern Ireland. This essay troubles the application of feminist theory to conflict resolution/management in Northern Ireland. It examines the impact of this type of deployment of theory on key feminist categories such as identity and difference. It also considers what becomes marginalised from the analysis of gender politics in Northern Ireland when feminist theory is harnessed to solving/managing the Northern Ireland problem. The essay concludes by arguing for the development of alternative feminist frameworks that are not contained within the boundaries of a search for solutions.
This article explores the intimate historical and modern connection between manhood and nationhood: through the construction of patriotic manhood and exalted motherhood as icons of nationalist ideology; through the designation of gendered 'places' for men and women in national politics; through the domination of masculine interests and ideology in nationalist movements; through the interplay between masculine microcultures and nationalist ideology; through sexualized militarism including the construction of simultaneously over-sexed and under-sexed 'enemy' men (rapists and wimps) and promiscuous 'enemy' women (sluts and whores). Three 'puzzles' are partially solved by exposing the connection between masculinity and nationalism: why are many men so desperate to defend masculine, monoracial, and heterosexual institutional preserves, such as military organizations and academies; why do men go to war; and the 'gender gap', that is, why do men and women appear to have very different goals and agendas for the 'nation?'
Northern Ireland has been variously described as having an 'imperfect peace' in which 'acceptable levels of violence' persist. Despite the endorsement of the main political parties to the principles of 'democracy and non-violence' enshrined in the Belfast Agreement, an insidious and brutalizing form of paramilitary violence continues within communities. The government has opted to 'see no evil, hear no evil' given what is at stake in the wider political process. According to this approach, one must accept certain violent excesses in the interest of moving forward politically. This, however, creates both conceptual and practical problems around the issue of violence in Northern Ireland. By conceding that paramilitaries 'police' the informal criminal justice system in their areas with political and, in most cases, legal impunity, the government, de facto, defines what is 'an acceptable level of violence'. This paper considers the nature and extent of ongoing paramilitary violence, how it has become enmeshed in the negotiated settlement and the consequences of this politicization of violence.
There are ‘‘good reasons,’’ albeit di¡erent ones, why both women and men may interpret the question of the relationship of gender and social theory, and speci¢cally the gendering of social theory, as being largely a matter of increasing the presence of women in social theory. Increasing the presence of women may mean both increasing the theorizing of women and increasing the presence of feminists and feminism in social and political theory. 1 This article takes, however, a rather di¡erent approach to the question ‘‘Is theory gendered?’’ For gendering social theory also means considering the relationship of men and social theory. It is now widely recognized that conventional social theory has frequently ignored gender relations and has instead through its own practices reproduced patriarchal social relations. Changing this certainly means increasing women’s presence within social theory; it also means problematizing the silence that has persisted on both the category of men in social theory and men’s practices of theorizing. Instead of maintaining this silence about men, men need to be analyzed as gendered actors, both in theory and as theorists. To do this, it is necessary to examine the various ways in which men have been, and are now being, theorized. Some of this theorizing comes from outside the social standpoint of men, and the article begins with a brief discussion of feminist theorizing. However, it is also politically and conceptually important to consider how men theorize men, and this is the focus of this article. By examining the fundamental relationships between author and topic, six discursive practices are distinguished. After examining each of these, I conclude with some re£ections on how men’s critical theorizing on men can be further developed, and the implications of this discussion for the constitution of social theory.
This article explores the Holy Cross school dispute in Northern Ireland from a feminist perspective. This ethnic quarrel produced a situation whereby women and young schoolgirls became the focal point of a sectarian protest from September 2001 to early 2002. Throughout the conflict, issues of gender were sidelined from the analysis of the dispute. The article attempts to remedy this omission by moving the category of gender to the forefront of the analysis. It examines the relationship between nationalist discourses of gender identity and representations of the nationalist women's agency during the dispute. While exposing these dimensions of the conflict, the article also considers the impact of women's ethno-nationalist agency on their role and positioning within nationalist cultures. It concludes that the Holy Cross conflict exposes the potentially disruptive aspects of women's ethno-nationalist agency and highlights the political significance of that agency for nationalist cultures pursuing ideals of gender equality.
This article focuses on how ideas about gender function in academic analyses of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Part of the reason for doing this is to explore the paradox afflicting contemporary feminism, namely that in the midst of apparent success feminism still seems largely irrelevant to matters of political significance. A second reason involves a demonstration of the political value of poststructural feminism. To achieve these aims, I first consider the use and political aims of poststructuralist analyses, partly through an analysis of the use of poetry in social scientific analyses. The main site used to demonstrate the functions of gender and the political possibilities of poststructural feminism is John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary's book Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images. The sub-title of this book refers to a Robert Graves' poem, 'In Broken Images', a poem the authors use to explain their desire to 'break images' when explaining the conflict in Northern Ireland. I next reflect on and illustrate how ideas about gender function by focusing primarily on Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images. The final section re-considers the paradox of contemporary feminism, suggesting that feminism's own methodologies contribute towards its persistent marginalisation.
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