‘We have long memories in this area’: Ulster Defence Regiment place-memory along the Irish border

2020 ◽  
pp. 175069802092145
Author(s):  
Joseph S Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Political Space ◽  
The Past ◽  
Place Memory ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Time Away

A large body of literature assumes post-conflict societies can and should mediate public memory towards frames conducive to a reconciled future. However, this article argues that such a drive marginalises survivors of political violence who narrate the past as still-present wounds. The linear temporality of transitional justice presumes an idealised trajectory through time, away from violence and towards reconciliation. However, this idealised temporality renders anachronistic survivors who depend on the prolongation of traumatic pasts for the possibility of political change. Using the case of former Ulster Defence Regiment in Northern Ireland, this article examines this prolongation through the lens of Ulster Defence Regiment survivors’ resistant place-memory along the Southwest run of the Irish border. Through the performative retemporalisation of everyday places and landscapes, survivors demand that their resistant memories and narrative frames of past violence still belong and still have active political resonance in transitional political space.

scholarly journals Justice, truth and oral history: legislating the past ‘from below’ in Northern Ireland

2018 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-90
Author(s):  
Kieran McEvoy ◽  
Anna Bryson
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Political Background ◽  
To Come ◽  
Technical Capacity

Drawing on the ‘from below’ perspective which has emerged in transitional justice scholarship and practice over the past two decades, this article critically examines the dealing with the past debate in Northern Ireland. The paper begins by offering an outline of the from below perspective in the context of post-conflict or post-authoritarian societies which are struggling to come to terms with past violence and human rights abuses. Having provided some of the legal and political background to the most recent efforts to deal with the past in Northern Ireland, it then critically examines the relevant past-related provisions of the Stormont House Agreement, namely the institutions which are designed to facilitate ‘justice’, truth recovery and the establishment of an Oral History Archive. Drawing from the political science and social movement literature on lobbying and the ways in which interests groups may seek to influence policy, the paper then explores the efforts of the authors and others to contribute to the broader public debate, including through drafting and circulating a ‘Model Bill’ on dealing with the past (reproduced elsewhere in this issue) as a counterweight to the legislation which is required from the British government to implement the Stormont House Agreement. The authors argue that the combination of technical capacity, grass-roots credibility and ‘international-savvy’ local solutions offers a framework for praxis from below in other contexts where activists are struggling to extend ownership of transitional justice beyond political elites.

Introduction: The Northern Ireland Troubles in Britain: impacts, engagements, legacies and memories

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Dawson ◽  
Stephen Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Northern Ireland Conflict ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opening Up

The introduction, and the book more generally, addresses a paradox: that the Northern Ireland conflict, commonly known as ‘the Troubles’, has had profound and shaping impacts upon politics, culture and the lives of many thousands of people in Great Britain, producing lasting legacies that continue to resonate nearly half a century after the eruption of political violence in 1968-9; but that engagements with the conflict, and with its ‘post-conflict’ transformation, from within Britain have been limited, lacking, frequently problematic, often troubled, in ways that are not fully grasped or considered. The book, then, has four main aims: to investigate the history of responses to, engagements with, and memories of the Northern Irish conflict in Britain; to explore absences and weaknesses or silences in this history; to promote a wider academic and public debate in Britain concerning the significance of this history, and the lessons to be learned from the post-conflict efforts to ‘deal with the past’ in Northern Ireland; and to provoke reflection on the significance of opening up hitherto unexamined histories and memories of the Troubles, and the ways in which ongoing conflicts between competing understandings of the past might be addressed and negotiated.

Transition, ‘Never Again’ and ‘Moving On’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Hearty
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Irish Republicanism ◽  
Difficult Issue ◽  
Subsequent Replacement

Viewing Irish republican policing memory primarily through a transitional justice lens, this chapter critically examines how Irish republicans, as a principal party to the conflict, approach the difficult issue of ‘dealing with the past’ as both collective victims and perpetrators of human rights violations during the conflict. It will interrogate the range of divergent views within modern Irish republicanism on issues such as victimhood, truth recovery, ‘moving on’ and ‘dealing with the past’. In particular, it looks at how the memory of human rights violations framed the wider policing debate and led to a master narrative of ‘never again’ whereby the value of ‘remembering’ past abuses lay in helping to prevent future repetition. This is placed against a more general backdrop of the stop-start ‘dealing with the past’ process in the North of Ireland that has included the establishment, operation and subsequent replacement of the Historical Enquiries Team (HET), the passage of the Civil Service (Special Advisers) Act (Northern Ireland), and proposals like the Haass/O’Sullivan document and the Stormont House Agreement.

scholarly journals A context-based model for framing political victimhood: Experiences from Northern Ireland and the Basque Country

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amaia Álvarez Berastegi ◽  
Kevin Hearty
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Basque Country ◽  
Divided Societies ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Primary Contribution ◽  
Controversial Concept

All societies moving towards peace must establish reparation measures for victims of political violence. This is not an easy task, however; political victimhood is a controversial concept by itself and all victims of this type are mixed up with general politics from both the past and the present. In divided societies, such as Northern Ireland and the Basque Country, controversies about the definition of political victimhood reproduce old divisions from the past. Drawing on these two case studies, this research project gathers together some initial thoughts on the conceptualisation of political victimhood with regard to three different models: the harm-, blame- and context-based models. The primary contribution of the article lies in the formulation of the third model, the context-based framework.

scholarly journals ‘Confession’ and ‘Forgiveness’ as a strategy for development in post-genocide Rwanda

2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Kubai
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
State Level ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Social Challenges ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Interpretative Analysis ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Individual

The government of Rwanda has pursued reconciliation with great determination in the belief that it is the only moral alternative to post-genocide social challenges. In Rwanda, communities must be mobilised and reshaped for social, political and economic reconstruction. This creates a rather delicate situation. Among other strategies, the state has turned to the concepts of confession and forgiveness which have deep religious roots, and systematised them both at the individual and community or state level in order to bring about reconciliation, justice, social cohesion and ultimately economic development. In view of these strategies and challenges, some of the important questions are: Does forgiveness restore victims and empower them to heal their communities? What empirical evidence exists that religiously inspired justice and reconciliation processes after mass political violence make a difference? In what areas might the understanding of religious thought and activity towards transitional justice be deepened? These questions provide the backdrop against which I examine the case of post-genocide Rwanda in this article. A hermeneutic interpretative analysis is used to situate the phenomena of forgiveness, confession and social transformation within the specific context of post-conflict societies.

Haunting and transitional justice: On lives, landscapes and unresolved pasts

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22
Author(s):  
Cheryl Lawther
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Transmission Of Trauma

This article explores practices of haunting and ghosting after conflict-related loss. This is not to suggest a focus on the occult or the paranormal, but to use these phenomena as a prism through which to understand the intersection between unresolved pasts and the transmission of trauma post-conflict. As Michael Levan notes, trauma lingers ‘unexorcisably in the places of its perpetration, in the bodies of those affected, in the eyes of the witnesses, and in the politics of memory’. The ghost, according to Avery Gordon ‘is the principal form by which something lost or invisible or seemingly not there makes itself known or apparent to us’. In this article I argue for three conceptualisations of haunting when past traumas remain unaddressed: the haunting of lost lives, the haunting of landscape, and the haunting presence of the unresolved past. The article focuses on Northern Ireland, a post-conflict jurisdiction described as being haunted by a ‘conflict calendar in which every day is an anniversary’ and extensive fieldwork with victims and survivors of the conflict. The article concludes by arguing that the presence of ghosts and the experience of haunting represent a ‘call to action’ in the quest to deal with a legacy of violent conflict and human rights abuses.

scholarly journals Collective violence and the culture of peace: researching the social psychology of memory and social reconciliation

2021 ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
Nekane Basabe ◽  
Darío Páez
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Community Intervention ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Collective Violence ◽  
Psychosocial Effects ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Culture Of Peace

This monograph aims to disseminate the results of various research studies carried out in the field of social and community psychology. The studies focus on efforts to build a culture of peace in post-conflict contexts and societies that have suffered collective and socio-political violence, with multiple and persistent human rights violations. Six studies on the psychosocial effects of transitional justice rituals from Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Basque country, Chile, and Ecuador compose this issue. This issue presents a series of results regarding the effects of reparation rituals and Truth Commissions, combining different methods and analysis strategies, including general population surveys, newspaper and social media content analysis, community intervention assessments and qualitative documentary analysis. Finally, two review books were included. First, a Peace Psychology Book that explores the implications and difficulties faced by societies that have experienced large-scale collective violence. Second, the problem of human rights violations and how to confront them, socio-political conflicts and the building of a culture of democracy and peace in Latin America are transversal axes of the chapters of this second book.

scholarly journals Medijska konstrukcija kolektivnih sjećanja: Tretman prošlosti u polju novinarstva, s osvrtom na postdejtonsku Bosnu i Hercegovinu

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (2 2013) ◽  
pp. 39-65
Author(s):  
Mirza Mahmutović
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Media

In this work we critically consider the practice of treating history in the area of journalism respectively media as an distinctive institutional arena of contemporary communities for establishment, maintenance and transformation of common frameworks of understanding and commemorating of certain episodes from the past. We intent to offer plausible explanations regarding the relations between ''culture of remembrances'' and ''culture of reporting''. Article suggests how to approach the often misunderstood history in informative activitiy, which in its field of action and by definition does not have the dimension of history but the dimension of social situation of contemporariness. We also form the key operations and strategies used in shaping the repertoire of journalistic reports on the past. Described practices we study on the example of post-Dayton BiH, analysing media treatment of conflict areas during the recent war history. Legitimisation of ethnic-national visions of the past through the discourse of reporting has been recognised as the dominant way of working in the ''media memory filed''. Two key paradoxes of these practices are highlighted: coexistence of opposite discourses of commemoration and codification of abjection experiences by the same group of significations which have initially inducted the war traumas. We point out at least two conditions which facilitate these paradoxes: ambiguity of the past, concpetion of time which is assumed by post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina as an inherently uncompleted/imperfect country and technologies of culturised steering of trauma, which is being used by regimes of therapeutic/transitional justice'' to cope with disturbing history in post-conflict communities.

scholarly journals Lost in transition? Sexuality and justice in post-conflict Northern Ireland

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-180
Author(s):  
Marian Duggan
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Sexual Minority ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Legal Requirements ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Divided Society ◽  
Bisexual And Transgender ◽  
The Impact

Northern Ireland has pioneered the delivery of transitional justice, largely as a result of its troubled past. Efforts to guide this long-divided society towards greater inclusion have been facilitated by a range of processes (judicial and otherwise) designed to deliver truth, justice and accountability. Legal requirements to consider a broader demographical representation in consultations means that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender voices are increasingly evident in this transition. Yet continued political resistance to sexual minority equality, set against a backdrop of wider social integration, indicates the piecemeal approach to progress which is being adopted. This article critically analyses the socio-legal positioning of sexual minorities in Northern Ireland's ongoing processes of transitional justice. In addressing how sexual orientation fits with the driving factors underpinning a move towards a 'post-conflict' society, the analysis queries the heteronormative cultural dynamics informing this utopian future and the impact this may have on exacerbating rather than eradicating homophobic victimisation.

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