Introduction

This chapter establishes the main questions to be addressed in the book and situates Northern Ireland’s parades in debates about contentious politics and ethnic conflict. It argues that prevailing theories do not fully explain participation in loyalist parades because they miss a crucial element of the parades themselves: they are rituals. The chapter presents the analytic advantages of viewing parades as rituals and introduces a central concept in the book: contentious rituals. Contentious rituals are repeated, symbolic actions that make contested claims and that are actively challenged by others in society. It then reviews the book’s data and methods and foreshadows the results of the analysis. Finally, the chapter summarizes the remaining chapters.

Identity on Parade in Northern Ireland

This chapter introduces the history and political context of loyalist parades in Northern Ireland. It traces how parades have changed over the past two centuries in response to shifting political conditions. The chapter then shows how parades influence and are influenced by politics in the post–Good Friday/Belfast Agreement era. In the discussion of contemporary parading, the chapter presents data on the number of parades, paraders, and spectators, which demonstrate the prominence of the movement in Protestant society. It also describes the major parading organizations, including the Orange Order, the other loyal orders, and marching bands, and explains the main sources of disputes between Protestants and Catholics over parades.

Culture, Politics, and the Paradox of Anti-Politics

This chapter explores a paradox at the heart of Protestant discourse about loyalist parades in Northern Ireland: the claim that parades are anti-political. Most outside observers understand parades to be highly political because they make political claims and have significant political consequences. But the people who participate in the parades say they have nothing to do with politics. Using interview data, this chapter first describes the paradox. It shows that for participants, parades are cultural events, not political—categories they see as mutually exclusive. Next, it argues that the paradox of anti-politics does two things for paraders: it helps preserve their positive self-image and it provides a rhetorical tool for dismissing criticism of parades. It then explains how the ritual characteristics of parades help maintain the paradox and discusses other mechanisms for creating a politics of anti-politics.

Conclusion

This chapter summarizes the main arguments and findings of the book and presents brief comparative case studies of contentious rituals in Jerusalem and India. In reviewing the book, the chapter reiterates that explaining participation in loyalist parades in Northern Ireland requires understanding their ritual nature. Theories that do not account for this cannot fully explain why people choose to take part in contentious rituals. The chapter then examines comparative contentious rituals. Scholars who have closely studied why people participate in these contested events in Jerusalem and India come to conclusions similar to the ones in this book: that participants are drawn by the benefits intrinsic to the very experience of participation in symbol-laden public rituals tied to their collective identities. The chapter concludes by suggesting that contentious rituals are the purview of majority groups, not minorities, and that they require intimate knowledge about the rival community.

Parading Mainly for Fun and Process

This chapter examines the main reasons people participate in loyalist parades in Northern Ireland: identity expression, tradition, the pleasures of participation, and communication. It argues that the first three of these reasons are process-oriented and intrinsic to participation itself, while the fourth reason is outcome-oriented and instrumental. The chapter demonstrates that the intrinsic and instrumental reasons coexist and can sometimes seem to overlap, but that participants discuss intrinsic reasons more often and with more passion. Using evidence from interviews, a survey, and ethnographic observation, this chapter explores how participants use parades to express their collective identities; connect with the past via tradition; receive emotional rewards, especially pride; and send messages of unity to the Protestant in-group and opposition to the Catholic out-group. While the three process-oriented reasons are nearly ubiquitous, the instrumental reason (sending a message) is less commonly articulated.

For God and Ulster, Self-Interest, or Social Networks?

Using survey and interview data, this chapter shows that the well-established idealist, rationalist, and structuralist explanations for participation in contentious political action do not fully explain loyalist parading. The chapter presents data from participants and comparable nonparticipants to assess the strength of the three models. It demonstrates that parade participants’ attitudes toward the Protestant in-group and Catholic out-group are not notably different from those of nonparticipants, that participants do not receive selective material incentives, and that pre-existing social networks do not differentiate participants and nonparticipants. The data do show that participation might be spurred by social sanctioning and that participants are more likely than nonparticipants to have a history of past parading. Overall, none of the three important existing theoretical approaches explain patterns of parade participation.