This paper looks at urban regeneration in Belfast as a stage on which the interaction between different structural dynamics (political, economic and cultural) is manifested in the city. It discusses how contested ideas of ‘space’, ‘place’ and ‘territory’ frame the ways in which Belfast has changed over recent years and asks if regeneration itself has the potential to transform the dynamic of deep-rooted ethno-national divisions. The research question is explored through a case study of proposed urban regeneration in north Belfast. It is found that, while there is evidence of transition to less exclusivistic attitudes in leisure and work spaces, asymmetrical conflict over residential space persists in ways which reproduce deep-rooted political and cultural patterns of territorial fixity and division.

No abstract

No abstract

This article focuses on our observations of two contentious Orange Order parades and nationalist protests that took place in an interface area in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in June 2011 and 2012. We apply a perspective of visual ethnography as place-making ( Pink 2009 ) to our research experience in order to add to understandings of how a place of conflict is experienced, (re)produced or challenged through the use of photography and video by marchers, protesters and researchers alike. In doing so, we discuss not only the strengths of visual methods, (how they enable a greater understanding of adversarial perspectives, allow researchers to experience contestation emotionally and compel reflexivity), but also more controversial aspects of their use (the extent to which they limit what researchers notice or omit and legitimate particular versions of conflict). Last, but not least, we suggest that the ubiquitous use of ‘the digital eye’ in the contentious events we observed has a democratising influence over elements in the performance of conflict: challenging the presumed roles of performers and audiences; of researchers and researched; opening contentious events to a wider audience and facilitating the communication of competing narratives.

This paper examines the difficulties of finding local solutions to the problem of contentious events in contemporary Northern Ireland. In so doing, it offers a sociological perspective on fundamental divisions in Northern Ireland: between classes and between communities. It shows how its chosen case study -parades and associated protests in north Belfastexemplifies the most fundamental problem that endures in post-Agreement Northern Ireland, namely that political authority is not derived from a common civic culture (as is the norm in western liberal democracy) but rather that legitimacy is still founded on the basis of the culture of either one or the other community. Haugaard's reflections upon authority and legitimacy are used to explore Northern Ireland's atypical experience of political conflict visa-vis the Western liberal democratic model. And the Bourdieusian concepts of field illusio and doxa help to explain why it is that parading remains such an important political and symbolic touchstone in this society.