Full Description
This book explores everyday identity change and its role in transforming ethnic, national and religious divisions. It uses very extensive interviews in post-conflict Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the early 21st century to compare the extent and the micro-level cultural logics of identity change. It widens comparisons to the Gard in France, and uses multiple methods to reconstruct the impact of identity innovation on social and political outcomes in the 2010s. It shows the irreducible causal importance of identity change for wider compromise after conflict. It speaks to those interested in Cultural Sociology, Politics, Conflict and Peace Studies, Nationalism, Religion, International Relations and European and Irish Studies.
Contents
1. Reflexivity and group identity in divided societies.- 2. Understanding identity change: conditions, context, concepts.- 3. Ethnic divisions? Types of boundaries and the temporality of change in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.- 4. The grammar of nationality, the limits of variation and the practice of exclusion in the two Irelands.- 5. Distancing from division: The frequency and framing of individual identity innovation.- 6. How people change: cultural logics and social patterns of identity change.- 7. Situated cosmopolitans: mixed marriage individuals and the obstacles to identity change.- 8. Modes, mechanisms, types and traps of identity change: comparative and explanatory tools.- 9. Identity politics and social movements: flags, same sex marriage and Brexit.- 10: Conclusion.- Appendix: Methodological appendix.
