Critical Engagement

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Hearty
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Critical Criminology ◽  
Police Reform ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Communal Memory ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Community Activists ◽  
Irish Republicanism

This book is an in-depth case study of the role memory politics played in shaping the wider Irish republican debate on policing in Northern Ireland. Looking beyond sensationalist headlines and political sound bites that trumpeted of the historicity of Sinn Fein’s decision to formally endorse policing and the rule of law, it interrogates the fundamental questions that lie at the heart of Irish republican memory politics on policing. Locating itself within the interdisciplinary theoretical spheres of critical criminology, memory studies and transitional justice, this book evidences how the past frames internal tensions within the Irish republican constituency as those traditionally opposed to state policing structures opt to buy into these same structures as part of a wider transitional process. Based on interview data drawn from community activists, political activists and former combatants from across a broad spectrum within modern Irish republicanism, this book examines how individual and collective memories of policing shape ideological positions, interpretations of transitional processes, ‘moving on’ processes with former enemies and views of post-conflict police reform. Providing a timely insight into intra-communal memory contestation in Northern Ireland, the book establishes the intrinsic importance that collective memory and master narratives of struggle, injustice and sacrifice hold for competing hegemons who are struggling for supremacy within an increasingly fragmented Irish republican constituency today.

The PSNI and ‘Community Policing’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Hearty
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Community Policing ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Police Reform ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
The Core ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Irish Republicanism ◽  
Reform Processes ◽  
The Impact

This chapter critically evaluates how the interaction between memory politics and police reform processes shapes current views of community policing within Irish republican communities. Establishing the overarching context of post-conflict police reform within which opposing narratives on community policing are pieced together, the chapter critiques the impact that changes in police symbolism, police composition and the nature of the core policing function fulfilled by the PSNI has had on views of policing within working class republican communities. It examines how the Patten programme of police reform has interacted with individual and collective memory to fashion opposing narratives on community policing. The chapter suggests that there are currently two competing master narratives on community policing that prevail within modern Irish republicanism; the ‘critical engagement’ narrative proffered by those in favour of policing that uses the memory of past ‘suspect community’ policing by the RUC to frame itself with assertions of newness, change and of the primary policing function now being to provide a policing service to local communities and the ‘cosmetic reform’ narrative espoused by those who continue to reject post-Patten policing in Northern Ireland that uses memory in a more ideologised manner in order to dismiss police reform as an attempt to normalise ‘British’ policing in Ireland.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Hearty
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Political Transition ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Introductory Overview ◽  
Irish Republicanism ◽  
Research Questions

This chapter provides an introductory overview of the arguments made throughout the following chapters of the book. It brings together insights from the fields of memory studies and transitional justice to establish a theoretical framework for examining the construction, circulation and contestation of collective memories during periods of political violence and how these change during periods of political transition. Drawing on observations made in transitioning societies elsewhere, the chapter will highlight how the past becomes a highly contestable resource not only between but also within collectives during political transition. Cognisant of this, the chapter will proceed to outline the main research aims of the book and the research questions that it aims to provide answers to in ascertaining both how and why memory is/was moulded by various actors within modern Irish republicanism to either support or reject the endorsement of policing and criminal justice in Northern Ireland.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Hearty
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Political Resource ◽  
Irish Republicanism ◽  
Transitional Processes ◽  
Different Levels

The conclusion outlines how memory politics features in different ways and at different levels within the extended Irish republican debate on policing. It suggests that any understanding of the role memory politics plays within modern Irish republicanism must acknowledge that it operates on three different levels; the conventional level, an inter-communal level and an intra-communal level. In operating on the conventional level, memory politics is seen to feature in the Irish republican policing debate in ways that it has featured in other transitioning societies. In operating on an inter-communal level Irish republican policing memory can be seen to feed into the ‘metaconflict’ in a post-conflict society that has not yet systematically addressed its violent past. In operating on an intra-communal level memory is a useful political resource between competing groups who are seeking to either drive or spoil transitional processes in Northern Ireland.

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.

‘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.

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 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.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 3-31
Author(s):  
Richard Martin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Police Reform ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

This chapter introduces the reader to the book’s central endeavour: to make sense of, and critically examine, the social and cultural dynamics that animate human rights law in contemporary policing. The chapter introduces the reader to the general and specific context in which this project takes place. It begins by drawing attention to the emergence of human rights as a normative vision and regulatory basis for police reform across the world and considering the issues that arise from this phenomenon for scholars of human rights and criminal justice. The chapter proceeds to describe and explain the book’s case study of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, situating the study within the country’s post-conflict society, before summarizing how the book develops across its nine substantive chapters.

Memories of the 1999 NATO Bombing in Belgrade, Serbia

Südosteuropa ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Orli Fridman
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Western Balkans ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
International Intervention ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Yugoslav Wars ◽  
Nato Bombing ◽  
Transformation Processes

AbstractThis paper analyses the memories of Belgrade residents of the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia (then part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). By focusing on the memories of this event, yet placing them in a broader context of the conflicts of the 1990s—the breakup of Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav wars—this essay explores what international intervention has meant to respondents in Belgrade by documenting memories of international intervention among older and younger generations, as well as among active members of antiwar NGOs in Serbia and citizens who were not engaged in activism during the 1990s. The paper aims to expand the scope of the discussions on dealing with the past and on transitional justice in the Western Balkans and to place them in the context of social memory studies and the study of post-conflict transformation processes. Furthermore, by presenting the case study of Serbia, this text contributes to the analysis of local mnemonic batt les as part of the creation of collective memories of the 1990s in post-Milošević Serbia, and it sheds light on the memories of the bombing as related to the war in Kosovo and the subsequent effects on shaping postwar Serbia–Kosovo relations.

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.

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