Collective Memory and Political Identity in Northern Ireland: Recollections of the Future

ISBN-13: 9783031476747 / Angielski

James W. McAuley

Spis treści

Preface.- Introduction Collective remembering and the power of commemoration.- Chapter 1. Engaging the present through the past.- Chapter 2. Identity, commemoration, remembering and forgetting.- Chapter 3.The active use of narratives in collective memory.- Chapter 4. Imagined communities and community imaginations.- Chapter 5. Localised narratives the construction of community myths.- Chapter 6. Popular cultures, memory performance and using memory.- Chapter 7. Transnational memories and generational change.- Chapter 8. Legacy, victimhood and the possibility of change.- Conclusion. Collective memory, narrative, politics and identity in Northern Ireland: some conclusions.

O autorze

Jim McAuley is Professor Emeritus of Political Sociology and Irish Studies at the University of Huddersfield, and an Honorary Research Fellow in Political Psychology at Liverpool Hope University, UK. His research deals with a number of topics, mainly focusing on the consequences of conflict, post-conflict and peace processes and more broadly, identity construction, ethnic and political and collective memory, and concepts of radicalisation and terrorism. He has written widely on the situation surrounding Northern Ireland for many years.

 

Blurb

This book covers the notion of collective memory, understood broadly as how differing pasts are created, understood and reproduced, and how this is perpetuated in Northern Ireland by a wide set of social actors, including, nations, religious and political groupings, down to local communities. Such collective memories are, of course, not a preservative for historically accurate recall of bygone events, but rather they are readings of the past subject to contemporary interpretations and political pressures and the political symbolism adopted remains central to subsequent events. Indeed, it is clear that in Northern Ireland, both communities hold their conflicting ‘memories’ dear and importantly, that rival political organizations have invested much in their own reading of the causes for the outbreak and continuation of the conflict. Set alongside constant exposure to other forms of discourse, texts, songs, prose, as well as more visible physical manifestations, such as murals or commemorative gardens, personal tattoos, or even gravestones, there are a multitude of ways of reminding people of particular memories, community histories and interpretations of events and providing the background within which attitudes are formed.

Jim McAuley is Professor Emeritus of Political Sociology and Irish Studies at the University of Huddersfield, and an Honorary Research Fellow in Political Psychology at Liverpool Hope University, UK. His research deals with a number of topics, mainly focusing on the consequences of conflict, post-conflict and peace processes and more broadly, identity construction, ethnic and political and collective memory, and concepts of radicalisation and terrorism. He has written widely on the situation surrounding Northern Ireland for many years.