Partition, consociation, border‐crossing: some lessons from the national conflict in Ireland/Northern Ireland

Abstract

Outlining Ireland's long history of ethno-national conflict, and the recent protracted 'peace process' in Northern Ireland, contextualises a critique of the problems underlying such conflicts, and the difficulties in transforming externally imposed conflict management into self-sustaining conflict resolution. It is argued that the problems and difficulties are deeply rooted in a thoroughly modern complex of nationalism, ethnicity, sovereignty and representative democracy. These are knotted together in a common denominator of territoriality, and the nub of the problem is the 'double paradox' of democracy's undemocratic origins in the present. Territoriality, the use of bordered geographical space, is a powerful and ubiquitous mode of social organisation which simplifies social control. But it can grossly oversimplify and distort social realities, particularly at borders and especially where territory is contested, thereby reinforcing other distorting simplifications typically found in ethno-national conflicts. In consequence, radical remedies are needed if the problems are to be overcome. Making ethno-national peace paradoxically calls for more creative bordercrossing conflicts around other issues.

The right to space production and the right to necessity: Insurgent versus legal rights of Palestinians in Jerusalem

“…Ackleson (2000) and Passi (1999) persuasively argue that conflict in frontier cities is also over collective identity, narrative, social control, spatial division of labor, economics and control of resources, culture, and administration. Jerusalem is an "ethno-nationally divided city" that is also divided literally, by a border of physical partition (Anderson, 2008a(Anderson, , 2008b(Anderson, , 2010. It is a city that lies at the heart of an ethno-national conflict with roots that reach deep into the history of these two distinct national groups (Hasson, 2004).…”

The division of Ireland and its foes: The centenary of resistance to partition

“…At the other end, anti-partitionists highlight the weaknesses and inconsistencies of partition. One of the common critiques is that partitions do not end ethnically driven conflicts, but they merely transform them (Jenne, 2012, p. 255), or even worse, they perpetuate and exacerbate them (Anderson, 2008;Jenne, 2009;Kumar, 1997). In other words, what was an internal conflict in the past may become an interstate or a reinvigorated new internal conflict within the freshly designed boundaries.…”

“…In order to understand how we got there, we must take into account several considerations, namely, the Northern Ireland context in the 1960s as well as the nature-and changes-of the IRA itself. In terms of context, it must be noted that since partition, Northern Ireland had consolidated itself as a 'Protestant state for a Protestant people', wherein Protestant unionists exerted political dominance over the Catholic nationalist minority (Anderson, 2008;McKenna, 2016). This led, for example, to discrimination in the allocation of public sector housing, and in employment, as well as deprivation of political rights with practices such as gerrymandering to ensure unionist hegemony in city councils such as Derry/Londonderry that had an Irish nationalist majority (cf.…”

Ethno‐Territoriality and Ethnic Conflict

“…As noted above, attempts to impose ethno‐territorial control often generate social strife, especially when they engender rival ethno‐territorial claims by states or other communities. “Territoriality's very nature—symbol‐laden and generating rival territorialities in a competitive space‐filling process—actively encourages ethno‐national conflict” (Anderson , 93). When this occurs—when opposing, more or less mutually exclusive, ethno‐territorial projects are pursued—the result is, all too frequently, violent and seemingly intractable conflict.…”