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Abstract
In this article I explore some of the interrelations of individual reflexivity, personalized memory and national boundaries through an empirical and inductive analysis of the ways ordinary citizens remember their personal national past. I show how these personalized narratives stretch the conventional boundaries of nation and group. Of a sample of over 220 ordinary citizens in each part of Ireland, over half, and two-thirds in the still conflict-ridden region of Northern Ireland, narrated memories that could not be brought under conventional oppositional categories, and that produced in the respondents further reflection and rethinking. What is significant is how many of them did so. Since identities and traditions are said to be persistent and long-lasting in each part of Ireland, and in particular in Northern Ireland, the findings are unexpected. The article concludes that there is everyday potential for quite radical revision of conventional constructions of the nation.
Notes
1 Bourdieu Citation1977; Jenkins Citation2008a; Todd Citation2005.
2 In identity process theory, self-esteem, continuity, efficacy and differentiation are seen as psychological constants which need to be fulfilled even in processes of identity change (Jaspal Citation2014, 4).
3 The official name of the Republic of Ireland is (currently) Ireland. Because this appears to conflate state, island and nation, I follow common usage in speaking of the “Republic of Ireland”, alternating this with the politically neutral term “Irish state”, to describe the twenty-six-county society and the state that governs it. I use the official name, Northern Ireland, for the north-eastern six counties of the island. For stylistic variation, and as is common in Northern Ireland, I also distinguish “the South” (the Republic) from “the North”.
4 The data were generated in two research projects, on which the author was respectively co-PI and PI:, Identity, Diversity, Citizenship (IDC), funded by the Irish Government Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions, 3, 2003–2006, and Intergenerational Transmission and Ethnonational Identity in the (Irish) Border Area (ITENIBA), funded by the European Programme for Peace and Reconciliation through the Higher Education Authority, North–South programme, strand 2, 2004–2006. Co-PIs in IDC were John Coakley, Alice Feldman and Tom Inglis. Drs Theresa O’Keefe(IDC), Lorenzo Cañás Bottos and Nathalie Rougier (ITENIBA) were research fellows. The Institute for British Irish Studies, UCD, funded the followup study in 2014. In what follows respondents are coded such that TF2SPA1 signifies the first respondent interviewed by Theresa with the following characteristics: female, second generation, student, Protestant, from A-town.
5 Some clusters were underrepresented – working class men, and in particular Protestant working class men, and people living in homogenously Protestant areas These are well covered in other research, see for example Smithey Citation2011; Nolan et al. Citation2014; Mitchell and Ganiel Citation2011; McAuley Citation2016.
6 Later analysis showed that the results – importance of nationality, identity innovation, type of identity change – did not differ by interviewer.
7 About 12 middle class middle aged Southern respondents – a majority of the professional middle class respondents who were teenagers in the late 1950s - fell into this category of gradual, incremental innovators, whose children changed more radically and their change reflected back on their parents.
8 LM1TCC1.
9 Generational change became evident in voting behaviour and attitudes in the 2010s, (see Elkink et al. Citation2017).
10 LM2NPH1.
11 Wright (Citation1987, 11–20) sees such a logic in “representative violence”, where violence against a member of one group is attributed to the other group and produces a group response.
12 LM2EPY1. This respondent was attacked by members of his own group.
13 TF2SPA1.
14 This might also be called change to a position of “agonism” (see Rumelili Citation2015).
15 TM2BCA11.
16 “Conor” is thought of as a Catholic name in Northern Ireland, “Kenneth” as a Protestant one. Dungannon has a significant Protestant population, the towns and villages farther into the mountains are republican.
17 JF2CD01.
18 TF1WPA2.
19 See variously Wodak Citation2015; Borzel and Risse, Citation2018; Flemmen and Savage Citation2017; Bonikowski Citation2017.
20 Immense resources were expended by the British and Irish governments over the succession of Northern Ireland negotiations and initiatives up to the present, (Coakley and Todd Citation2014) and little on cultural interventions.
21 Almost two thirds in the Republic are in boxes G and I, and some move from G to I as change progresses.