final march 2010

8/8/2019 Final March 2010

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/final-march-2010 1/37

1

Can civil society succeed where elites have failed in the war on sectarianism?

Towards an infinitely demanding politics for Northern Ireland

Abstract

Caught between the well armed imaginations of paramilitary organisations

competing for the hearts and minds of a divided population, and State engineering of a

liberal peace, civil society‟s impact on Northern Ireland‟s identity politics was limited

during the thirty-year conflict. Specifically, the community and voluntary sector itself

has tended to replicate as much as it challenged patterns of segregation in many of its

own structures. With plans set out in the Northern Ireland Executive‟s Programme for

Government (2008-2011) to engage civil society in opening a new era of „good

relations‟ work to counter sectarianism and racism, civil society organisations will

face a complex terrain, facing scepticism about their contribution to peace making

before the Good Friday Agreement, and working in a post-Agreement environment

marked by continuing elite and communal antagonism demonstrated by the crisis at

the turn of 2009 over devolution of justice and policing powers to the Northern

Ireland Executive. A significant aspect of the resolution was a belated agreement by

Sinn Fein and the DUP on a new community relation strategy, Cohesion, Sharing and

Integration.

In this article, I want to suggest that civil society has a significant role to play

in encouraging communities to confront the contradictions and tensions that continue

to haunt the political architects of the Good Friday Agreement by affirming a radical

and contingent vision of democracy as democratisation at a distance from the identity-

saturated politics of the state-region of Northern Ireland. I will draw on the work of

Simon Critchley, Emmanuel Lévinas and Wendy Brown, to offer an approach to



2

identity politics in post-conflict Northern Ireland, focusing on the future orientation of

civil society.

Keywords: sectarianism, identity, tolerance, good relations, Northern Ireland.

Introduction

Civil society has struggled with the divisions in Northern Ireland and has reflected as

much as it has challenged the ethno-nationalist divide in much of its own

organisational structures. In the process civil society organisations have helped to

reproduce the duplication of infrastructural and social provision in the region to

accommodate segregated communities. While actors in the dominant political parties

will, for some time, remain locked into an ambivalent politics vis a vis sectarianism

and conflict, there may be greater scope in the post-conflict phase for civil society to

play an extended and more autonomous role in supporting a new democratic vision

where they can offer a compelling reading of identity politics attuned to the

problematisation of nation-state-centric politics that are implicit in the Good Friday

Agreement. To undertake such a role, civil society organisations will be obliged to

establish a clear interstitial space between the identity-saturated-institutions of the

Northern Ireland Executive and the Assembly and an enlivened space of civil society

actors, identities and transformation, where organisations engaged in community

relations and peace building activity can reclaim some of the autonomy they have

sacrificed to the demands of the „peace process‟.

Historically, civil society has been caught between conflicting ethno-

nationalist identity politics and far-reaching geopolitical claims that have called the



3

State-region into question, and the spectrum of State-sanctioned responses, ranging

from military engagement to pacification strategies. At the outset of conflict in the

mid- to late 1960s, civil society actors included micro-social movements (e.g. the

Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, Peoples Democracy) responded to

structural inequalities and popular demands for political reform. As the State began to

respond, however, these organisations receded in prominence and paramilitary

organisations, sometimes associated with political parties, came to the fore. Later,

civic organisations, notably within the voluntary and community sector, became

increasingly drawn into bureaucratic forms and dependent on State and EU funding.

These conditions impacted on the way in which organisations saw themselves and

saw their role in the conflict. In conditions of heightened conflict, interventions in

identity politics have been bounded by sensitivities to the views of the dominant

ethno-nationalist actors and limited community relations strategies sponsored by State

bodies such as the Northern Ireland Office.

In this article, I will show that that civil society – insofar as it can reclaim a level

of autonomy from the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) – is uniquely

positioned to explore the implications for identity politics in Northern Ireland,

including those possibilities opened up by the GFA itself. There are several steps in

the argument, as follows: representatives of the dominant parties who signed up to the

Good Friday Agreement and successor arrangements are locked into a form of ethno-

nationalist (geo)politics; the Agreement itself is an attempt to provide an architecture

for a transversal politics that suspends, if not, transcends the ethno-spatial politics of

the dominant parties; in the course of the violent conflict leading up to the GFA, civil

society actors, notably those engaged in „community relations‟ settled for a largely

ineffective politics of „accommodation‟ and „tolerance‟, in line with the demands of



4

the State; in the post-GFA era, there is an opportunity for civil society actors to help

define a new era of pluralisation and anarchic democratization that is not

compromised by the contradictions at the heart of the operation of the GFA by ethno-

nationalist parties; this new role will be contingent on civil society reclaiming a

degree of autonomy from the State-region‟s politics of bi-nationalism and contested

geopolitical claims that threaten to reproduce communities and their identities as

„arguments‟.

Underlying the GFA is an attempt to delink – at least for some time – identity

politics and geopolitical claims on the territory of the State-region. Unlike the ethno-

nationalist parties who agreed the GFA and seek to implement it, civil society

organisations are not locked into the spatial and identity politics that over-determine

the self-serving rhetoric of Irish Nationalist-Republican and British Unionist-Loyalist

political actors.

The Good Friday Agreement1

(GFA) and the Northern Ireland Act (NIA) 1998

which enshrines that agreement in law2, has provided the basis for a formal peace,

including the establishment of new democratic institutions, notably the Northern

Ireland Assembly and Executive. Institutions have also been established to reflect the

North-South, East-West geopolitical dimensions of the historic conflict that consumed

the region for over thirty years. These institutions attempt to contain the „inside‟ and

the „outside‟ dimensions of the contested identities of British Unionism -Loyalism and

Irish Nationalism-Republicanism. Ten years after the Agreement, however, the parties

to the conflict continue to struggle with a legacy of communal antagonism and

sectarianism, with some trends indicating a deterioration in relations between the

communities.



5

The contested constitutional and territorial status of Northern Ireland has been

fundamental to community relations and identity politics in the region. The conflict

has inevitably shaped civil society and its responses. Give the continuing patterns of

sectarianism3, segregation and racism in the wake of the GFA (ARK Surveys Online,

1989-2005; Equality Commission 2009) there is a popular desire for a new sensibility

in the form of a response that would place ethics and responsibility at the centre of a

new identity politics. If lessons can be learned from the past and civil society can

restore some of the autonomy it has sacrificed during the „peace process‟, the natural

champions of a new agenda of Coherence, Sharing and Integration (October 2008)

will come from civil society, notably the dedicated community and voluntary sector.

Critical to any new approach will be our understanding of the impact of liberal peace

building and consociationalism (or institutionalized power sharing) on civil society,

and the prospects for its future positioning at an interstitial distance (Critchley, 2008)

from the State, implying a recovery of autonomy and capacity to promote what

William Connolly has described as an active pluralisation (Connolly, 1995), which

sets its face against the totalizing impulses of the dominant ethnic claims

institutionalized by the main political parties, and champions a culture of contingency

and indeterminacy.

The risk for elements of civil society engaged in anti-sectarian work after the

Good Friday Agreement – as the dominant Unionist-Loyalist and Republican-

Nationalist parties seek a greater input into „good relations‟ policy, funding and

implementation - is that they will be drawn into a role that legitimizes the totalizing

claims on identity issued through the new political institutions. It is the reproduction

of these affiliations at the elite political level across the two communities that has

contributed to frequent crises and deadlock within the Executive since the signing of



6

the GFA and St Andrews Agreement. Critchley (2007) offers an orientation for civil

society that would avoid a reversion to its pre-GFA attempts to accommodate

absolutist ontological claims on „behalf‟ of both communities, and inform a shift

towards the establishment of a critical distance between civil society and the political

elites of both Irish Nationalism/Republicanism and British Unionism/Loyalism.

Politics for Critchley is a disruption – rather than an affirmation – of the ontological

domain. Moreover, he asserts that politics should be conceived at a distance from the

State. Politics is the praxis of taking up distance with regard to the State:

Politics is praxis in a situation and the labour of politics is the construction of new political subjectivities, new political aggregations in specific localities, a

new dissensual habitus rooted in common sense and the consent of those who

dissent. (Critchley 2007:112)

This distance from the State is within the State, an interstitial or internal distance that

has to be opened from the inside. Democracy, as conceived here, is a movement of

democratization that is – dialectically expressed – the truth of the State, a truth that no

State incarnates. Self-determination here implies fidelity to democracy. True

democracy is not incarnated in the State, but rather enacted – practically, locally,

situationally – at a distance from the State (Critchley 2007:117). In what would

amount to a critical and democratizing moment within the consociationalist

arrangements in state-region of Northern Ireland, a transformative role for civil

society would embrace and advocate democracy as democratization, a movement of

disincarnation, a dissensual praxis that works against the consensual horizon(s) of the

State, forcing open a gap between the exclusive, but contested, ontological claims of

the parties operating Northern Ireland‟s new consociational governance arrangements

and the realm of lived experience and plurality. Critchley‟s anarchic vision of

democracy offers a compelling departure point for civil society in a region where the



7

State-region and its institutions are inseparable from the contested ontological claims

of Irish Republicanism-Nationalism and British Unionism-Loyalism and where a

legacy of sectarian exclusion lingers in the competing ethno-nationalist bids for

exclusive rights to enclose the future. There is no area of social life in Northern

Ireland that escapes sectarianism or is not structured in some way by sectarianism.

The Ends of Tolerance

It was a mark of the deep divisions that continued to linger at the heart of the

Northern Ireland Executive and polity at the end of 2009, when the two parties

occupying the senior positions of First and deputy First Minister (OFMdFM) in the

devolved Northern Ireland Executive, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn

Fein (SF), released different versions of a proposed „good relations‟1

(addressing both

community relations and race relations)4

strategy on Cohesion, Sharing and

Integration (CSI). The differences between Sinn Fein and the DUP over the content of

the proposed strategy signal new challenges for civil society organisations engaged in

„good relations work‟, as they will be forced once again to navigate a highly contested

terrain that will carry unresolved aspects of the historic conflict into the future, albeit

within the architecture of the Good Friday Agreement. The CSI strategy had been

flagged as a new departure, with a planned shift in good relations policy, and an

expanded leadership role for civil society (e.g. business, church, trade unions) in

integrating measures to address both sectarianism and racism.

Instead, since 2007, acrimonious debates on the CSI strategy echoed earlier

differences over the strategy‟s abortive predecessor, A Shared Future: policy and

strategic framework for good relations in Northern Ireland (OFMDFM 2003), which

1 “Community relations” refers specifically to division between the Protestant and Catholic

communities in Northern Ireland. “Good relations” refers to Section 75 (2) of the Northern Ireland Act

1998 which includes persons of different religious belief, political opinion or racial group (OFMDFM,2004: 5).

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VG2-4J62491-1&_user=126523&_coverDate=03%2F31%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=full&_orig=search&_cdi=6026&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000010358&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=126523&md5=80288eeacc2764c713f1b9d3b3595e54#bib37








8

was drafted to address some of the weaknesses of earlier community relations

interventions carried on through the funding, policy-making and the advisory

functions of the Central Community Relations Unit (CCRU), Community Relations

Council (CRC) and District Councils Community Relations Programme. As Graham

and Nash (2006) have outlined, the nature of the Shared Future document and the

responses to it, pointed to the particular difficulties of establishing democratic forms

of governance in post-conflict contexts, and wider debates about adjudicating between

competing claims within and about the nature of a pluralist „shared society‟ and

„shared space‟. Civil servants tasked with drafting documents such as A Shared Future

(2003) and the CSI (2008) strategy face a near impossible task insofar as they are

being invited to do something that the parties to the Good Friday Agreement failed to

do: to avoid constructive ambiguity. Constructive ambiguity has played a functional

role in allowing parties to incrementally present aspects of the Agreement (and its

consequences) in ways that would appeal to constituencies holding mutually exclusive

positions on the future constitutional status of the Northern Ireland region. McVeigh

and Rolston (2007) are correct up to a point when they observe that for pro-

Agreement unionists and anti-Agreement republicans, the GFA is viewed as a final

stabilisation of the State-region; and for anti-Agreement unionists and pro-Agreement

republicans, it is a stepping-stone to dismantling the State and reunification. More to

the point, however, is the need to recognise that these interpretations are live „works

in progress‟ inviting vindication via active attempts to change the political facts on the

ground. The uncertainty and ambiguity that are constitutive of the Good Friday

Agreement prompt the pro- and anti-Agreement factions to continue to vindicate their

respective interpretations and identifications.



9

While the dispute over the CSI was perhaps exacerbated by a political crisis

over arrangements for Executive power sharing between the DUP and Sinn Fein in

2009, the underlying CSI issues were also the culmination of a long-running set of

political differences over the role of the „community relations‟ and „good relations‟

discourse and the past failure of its champions in the British Government, the

Northern Ireland Office and sections of the unionist political establishment to

recognise inequality and the denial of basic rights as a fundamental dimension of the

conflict. Unionists have difficulty with the focus on equality because it can be viewed

as an attempt to steer the State towards a neutral position on identity rather than one

of mutual respect, within a spirit of pluralism (UUP 2003). In the OFMDFM

consensus draft CSI (OFMDFM 2008), Sinn Fein had detected a renewed attempt to

promote good relations with prejudice to the priority also attached to equality in

Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act (NIA 1998). With the introduction of Section

75 of the NIA, the terms of the debate about the OFMDFM‟s prioritisation of equality

were supposed to have shifted. The Act imposes statutory obligations on OFMDFM

in relation to the discharge of all Departmental functions. The first two paragraphs of

Section 75 set out the responsibilities of the OFMDFM with regard to „equality‟

(subsection one) and „promoting good relations‟ (subsection two).



10

(Fig.1)

Fig. 1 Section 75 Northern Ireland Act 1998

(1) A public authority shall, in carrying out its functions relating to Northern

Ireland, have due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity.

(a) between persons of different religious belief, political opinion,

racial group, age, marital status or sexual orientation;

(b) between men and women generally;

(c) between persons with a disability and persons without;

(d) between persons with dependents and persons without.

(2) Without prejudice to its obligation under subsection (1), a public authority

shall, in carrying out its functions relating to Northern Ireland, have regard to

the desirability of promoting good relations between persons of different

religious belief, political opinion or racial group.

Identification and Space

A key characteristic of the social geography of key urban settlements in the

region, such as Belfast and Derry, is the spatialization of identity, linked to locality

and its defence (Neill 2005). Figures from Belfast City Council, for example,

indicate that more than half of that city‟s population now lives in wards that are

either of 90% Protestant or 90% Catholic community background (Belfast City

Council 2007). The built environment is marked by secured boundaries that reflect

histories of communal insecurity. So called „Peacelines‟ or „Peace Walls‟ border

neighbourhoods in Belfast and take the form of brick walls, steel fences or other

physical barriers (Komarova 2008). This spatialistion of the domestic conflict within

the territory of Northern Ireland, and the accompanying belief systems, mirror (in a



11

domesticated fashion) the spatial (geo)politics that the Good Friday Agreement was

designed to contain and transform, and represents one of the most tangible

demonstrations that old divisions remain a fact of daily life for many citizens who

continue to negotiate identity and geography. In the words of Michael Shapiro,

geography is inextricably linked to the architecture of enmity and is a primary part of

the ontology of the collective (or collectives).(Shapiro 1997:xi).

Identity and space have been implicated throughout the modern period. There

are two dimensions to the subjectivity of the imagined autonomous and rational

Cartesian subject. First, the modern subject‟s coherence and autonomy have been

managed and maintained through repeated attempts (e.g. by the State) to define,

categorize and classify a range of deviant „others‟. Modern notions of autonomy and

agency, in this way, have been dependent upon the specification and control of

difference (ethnic, racial, gender, class, etc.) against which the positive identity and

self-image of the Enlightenment subject could be maintained (Popke 2003:301-302).

The second and related dimension is the role of space. The ways in which various

axes of identity/difference have been mobilized are fundamentally spatial. Popke

(2003:302):

Modern subjectivity is not only inscribed through a dualism between self and

other, but also between here and there, via the spatialization of inclusion and

exclusion, presence and absence, and the specification of what s „in- place‟ and „out -of- place‟ ...

Derrida (1994:82) referred to this metaphysics as ontopology, „an axiomatics

linking indisociably the ontological value of present-bring to its situation, to the stable

and presentable determination of a locality, the topos of territory, native soil, city,

body in general.‟ So the sub ject of modern ethics is a subject fundamentally

constituted through the maintenance of boundaries, both social and spatial (Popke



12

2003:302). The typical response to the located subject-as-citizen has been to endow

her with a set of rights, which can be legally enforced within the boundaries of a

political jurisdiction. International relations and political theory have recently set

about problematizing this conception linking sovereignty, politics and space. Shapiro

(1999:60) offers a characteristically insightful observation, pointing out that our

understandings:

Tend to be constructed within a Statecentric, geostrategic cartography, which

organizes the interpretation of enmities on the basis of an individual and

collective national subject and cross-boundary antagonisms. Ethical

approaches aimed at a normative inhibition of these antagonisms continue to

presume this same geopolitical cartography.

It is within this problematization that a rethinking of the constitution of the „other‟ and

our responsibility to/for „otherness‟ has taken place. As O‟Leary and McGarry (1995)

have argued Northern Ireland represents:

…the territorial line of the retreat of the British State in Ireland, and was

testament to the failure to build a British identity which would have enabled

the descendants of Catholic natives and Protestant settlers to transcend their

differences. It was also proof of an Irish failure: Nationalists lacked the

coercive and ideological resources to achieve a popularly supported

revolution throughout the whole island between 1916 and 1925. (1993:107)

The unfinished business of boundaries in Northern Ireland (there is provision

in the GFA for occasional referenda on the removal of the border between Northern

Ireland and the Republic of Ireland) explains the continuing contestation over identity

and the continuing failure to inhibit antagonisms. Critical geopolitics engages with a

horizon or analytical perspective that is neither fully inside nor fully outside the realm

of the State, a perspective that throws some light on the politics of Northern Ireland. It

is a helpful perspective that bears witness to the irredeemable plurality of space and

the multiplicity of possible political constructions of space, exposing the everyday

practices of boundary-drawing and performance. This perspective focuses neither on



13

the „inside‟ nor the „outside‟ of the State, but on both; on the continuous construction

of „inside‟ and „outside‟, the „here‟ and the „there‟, the „domestic‟ and the „foreign‟

(Walker 1993), and it is these practices that the Good Friday Agreement has been

designed to contain and renegotiate within the three Strands. Critical geopolitics

reflects on the transversal space that the ethno-nationalist parties of British

Unionism/Loyalism and Irish Nationalism/Republicanism operating the

consociational institutions established by the Good Friday Agreement cannot fully

acknowledge in the realm of identity politics; despite the transversal nature of the

Agreement itself. In other words, while the Good Friday institutions have a distinctly

geopolitical dimension that transcends the boundaries (the „inside‟ and „outside‟) of

the Northern Ireland region to include the active participation of actors from the

Dublin and London Governments (and beyond) via Strands Two and Three; the

ethno-nationalist form of identity politics (notably the exclusive identification of the

dominant parties with one nation-State based identity or another (i.e.

British/Unionism/Loyalism or Irish/Nationalism/Republicanism) at work in the party

political operation of the Agreement within the region (Strand One) does not yet fully

capture or reflect the nuanced problematisation of the nation-State per se that

underpins the Agreement2. There is a gap between the practices of intelligibility at

work within the dominant ethno-nationalist parties and those that informed the design

of the Good Friday Agreement.

It follows, to paraphrase Foucault, that if civil society is to produce an ethics

responsive to contestations over identity claims and their related spatial stories, it will

be necessary that they intervene in – rather than accommodate – the dominant

practices of intelligibility. For Foucault (Foucault, 1989) the purpose of critical

2 The Northern Ireland Assembly‟s system of designation, which obliges all elected representatives to identify themselves as„Unionist‟, „Nationalist‟ or „Other‟ means that the contradiction is also institutionalised in the formation of the elected body.



14

analysis is to question, not deepen, existing structures of intelligibility. They must

make the intelligible appear against a backdrop of emptiness, and deny its

necessity….and enable citizens to think that what exists is far from filling all possible

spaces.

Part Two: Civil Society

In 2006, the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA)3, the

biggest umbrella group for community and voluntary groups in the region, completed

a profile of civil society as part of the international CIVICUS Civil Society Index

(CSI) project (CIVICUS 2006). In summary:

There are between 4,500 and 5,000 voluntary organisations in Northern

Ireland;

There are a total of 72,908 formal volunteers actively engaged in the

voluntary and community sector.

The NICVA/CIVICUS (2006) report concedes that despite the growth of civil

society, in particular the voluntary and community sector, „the situation on the

ground has not changed‟ (2006:19). Effectively there are still two parallel systems of

social provision in place in the region, one for each main religious community. This

is increasingly presented as an inefficient and uneconomic approach to provision in a

divided society, alongside admissions that it does little to promote good relations on

a non-segregated basis. According to NICVA (2005) some 129 organisations

describe their primary activity as primarily cross-community activity. Many provide

occasions for inter-group mixing in a controlled safe space. Belloni (2008) describes

how this mixing is skilfully directed towards constructed interaction in cooperative

endeavours, whereby participants learn conflict management and transformation

3 Founded in 1938



15

skills, are encouraged to question divisive stereotypes, „deal with the past‟, and

discuss ways forward and the related organisational and political skills for getting

there. However, he concludes that although many organisations provide such

opportunities, several problems have complicated civil society‟s work in this areas,

including the segregated nature of life in Northern Ireland (a trend that has increased

since the Good Friday Agreement) combined with the fact that many groups were

created as single-identity formations, lapses in donor criteria resulting in the

omission of incentives to pursue cross-community work, and lingering suspicion in

both communities about the controversial nature of community relations work,

which is suspected of harbouring a „hidden agenda‟ (Belloni 2008:8-9).

Belloni (2008) concludes that service delivery organisations engage in an

avoidance strategy that ignores issues of community relations, and provide assistance

in principle to all. Segregation in service provision is a practical matter aimed at

avoiding political sensitivities while helping citizens meet basic needs, rather than

the expression of an antagonistic ideology. Contacts across the communities are

incidental, with service delivery serving economic and social goals, not political

ones. He notes that the majority of civil society leaders remained on the fence

through the period preceding the referendum on the „Agreement‟ and attributes this

to fears among the leaders that taking a political stand might have had negative

repercussions among their constituencies, clients or funders.

In contrast with the impulses of the grassroots community-based organisations

that sprang up in response to the structural inequalities and exclusions of the Northern

Ireland state-region at the end of the 1960s, a more timid tier of community and

voluntary sector actors has emerged in the role of „community relations‟ and „g ood

relations‟ advocates. Many have sought out a middle ground, embracing an ethos of



16

„tolerance‟, in pursuit of objectives often steered by EU funding programmes and the

Northern Ireland Office. The underlying drivers have been identified by Mitchell

(2008) who makes a number of critical observations about the impact of the Northern

Ireland peace process on civil society. She views the cultivation of civil society as part

of a wider project of development as promoted by the liberalizing peace, drawing on a

predominant concept of civil society as a democratizing one; a view that holds that

civil society has instrumental effects upon the daily functioning of transformative

liberal-democratic institutions (Putnam 2000; Warren 2001). In a liberalizing peace

agenda, civil society is one of the phenomena into which threats (plurality, complexity

and conflict) are to be transformed. At the same time, civil society is regarded as one

of the key processes used to transform them (Mitchell 2009:13). The dominant,

democratizing version of civil society is conceptualized in two contrasting ways:

a. As a realm of plurality or complexity (Young 2001; Walzer 2003; Giddens 1998);

and

b. As a field of relatively stable, democratic organisations: predominantly non-

governmental organisations (NGOs), civic groups or voluntary organisations (Peters

2004; Rhodes 1997; Mitchell 2009b).

As we have begun to note, in Northern Ireland there has been a process of

transformation in which traditional forms of collective action have given way to a

significant bureaucratization of collective action. Traditional forms of collective

action and protest were prevalent at the outset of the recent phase of the conflict, and

closely identified with the triggers for the collapse of the ancien regime in Northern

Ireland. Mitchell (2009, p.13) holds that the transformation reflects the status of civil

society organisations as an interface between the two realms (a and b) or the point at

which one is transformed into the other. The realm of plurality, complexity, risk and



17

conflict has been transformed into processes, structures and ethics associated with

relatively stable, democratic non-governmental organisations.

In summary, Mitchell (2009b) believes that the development of governance in

Northern Ireland has been closely intertwined with peace-building policies, in

particular conflict transformation. Moreover, the policies derived from this approach

aimed to transform social movements that were thought to generate conflict into a set

of stable, community-based NGOs, integrated firmly within governing structures and

supportive of the formal peace process (Mitchell 2009b:1). She adds that the

cultivation of these new, fused organisations was based on a specific model of the

non-governmental organisation (NGO). This model attributes NGOs with the „heart

and mind‟ of a social movement (a voluntary base, a dynamic and flexible attitude

and a civic ethos) and a bureaucratic „body‟ (a defined structure, mechanisms for

accountability, and the ability to interface with appropriate statutory agencies and

representatives). Drawing on two case studies – the women‟s movement and

organisations for former combatants – Mitchell observes that the manner in which

social movements were transformed into NGOs was intended to infuse bureaucracy

with the qualities of social action, creating a new forum that could address

governmental aims – including the creation of a lasting peace – whilst acknowledging

the unique needs and grievances that these movements expressed. In reality, she finds:

…the civil society approach to peace building may have helped to consolidate

attitudes towards peace and to create the institutional basis needed to support

the formal pace process, but it did so by fundamentally changing the nature of

public participation in Northern Ireland. Specifically, it created an imbalance

within the model of the NGO by overemphasizing bureaucratic structures and

all but eliminating more „traditional‟ social movements as a form of political

expression. (Mitchell 2009b:2)

Mitchell reflects on the conversion of radical, populist, confrontational forms

of expression into professionalized lobbying and service delivery functions in



18

Northern Ireland and argues that while the social is given a central role in this model

of the NGO – as a representative source of values, ideas and beliefs – “it is

overpowered by a strong bureaucratic ethos and structure”. (2009b:2) Bureaucracy,

she contrasts, provides the institutional basis for the NGO. Most importantly, it

provided a set of structures that could be made subject to design and alteration on the

part of political actors and a corporative ethos to lend unity and stability to these

structures.

It is this move which rendered civil society organisations vulnerable to elite

discourses privileging parallel demands for „tolerance‟ and a stable reproduction of

antagonistic ethno-nationalist sources of identifications associated with their core

geopolitical demands.

Tolerance and Governmentality

We have noted that over one hundred civil society organisations describe their

primary activity as primarily cross-community activity. With some exceptions, such

as the ecumenical Corrymeela Community with its origins in 1964-65, most of these

organisations were formed during the latter stages of the conflict and have benefited

from EU funding, often channelled through the Community Relations Council. They

conform with the „processes, structures and ethics‟ associated with relatively stable,

democratic non-governmental organisations (Mitchell 2009) who – in the pursuit of a

liberal peace – steer a path between addressing sectarianism and prejudice and

avoidance of any perception that they are attempting to delegitimize the dominant

cultural and political projects espoused by the political leaderships of British

Unionism-Loyalism and Irish Nationalism-Republicanism. Actors working on identity

politics and community relations have been operating in a highly sensitive



20

relations networks‟ unproblematic focus on concepts such as „tolerance‟, for example,

demands scrutiny. The discourse of tolerance (a concept at the heart of the Shared

Future and CSI documents) – in the contested space of Northern Ireland – permits and

encourages a set of historical and political interpretations to accrete around settled

identity claims. Wendy Brown (2006) has demonstrated that tolerance itself functions

as a form of political rationality, a strand of governmentality, as a discourse that

circulates between State and populace, that produces and organizes subjects, and with

which subjects govern themselves. Her genealogy of the operation of tolerance

parallels Mitchell‟s (2009) observations on the fate of civil society – echoing a

trajectory that goes from open-ended social movement agitation to one of enclosure

within an instrumentalized rationality (qua pacification). For Brown, tolerance casts

instances of social injury as „rooted in ontologically natural hostility toward

essentialized religious, ethnic, or cultural difference‟. Tolerance is not the cause of

this naturalization, but it facilitates and abets these processes of ontologization of

politically produced identity in liberal democracies. In the process, a form of

depoliticization can be encouraged, „removing a political phenomenon from

comprehension of its historical emergence and from a recognition of the powers that

produce and contour it.‟ (Brown 2006:15). She adds:

When the ideal or practice of tolerance is substituted for justice or equality,

when sensitivity to or even respect for the other is substituted for justice for the other, when historically induced suffering is reduced to “difference” or to

a medium of “offence”, when suffering as such is reduced to a problem of

personal feeling, then the field of political battle and political transformation

is replaced with an agenda of behavioural, attitudinal, and emotional

practices. (Brown 2006: 16)

This shift from an activist role in agenda setting to accommodation and deference is

one that closely corresponds to the picture painted by critics of Northern Ireland‟s

community relations networks. Tolerance carries within it an antagonism toward



21

alterity as well as the capacity for normalization. Tolerance implies the simultaneous

incorporation and maintenance of the otherness of the tolerated element. Brown

believes that the popular agitation for tolerance appears to be part of a generalized

retreat from far-reaching and transformative visions of political change, a retreat that

is itself the result of dashed hopes for the possibility and efficacy of such change, and

hence lost faith in the worth of justice projects bound to the elimination or radical

reduction of social, political and/or economic inequality. The cost may be the prospect

of cultivating shared citizen power and of a substantive public sphere devoted to the

fashioning of democratic political culture and community. The challenge in Northern

Ireland is to embrace tolerance and move beyond it; a journey that tracks the

movement from a mere political „settlement‟ to a felt democracy. Moreover, this

retreat from a political encounter with difference exacerbates the problem that it

imagines to occasion it. Certainly, this would appear to be the prospect in store for

citizens (and politicians) locked into a model of consociationalism that promises to

reward and subsequently reproduce political investments in cultural and identity

claims (aligned to antagonistic geopolitical aspirations). On occasion, civil society

organisations have demonstrated an ability to move beyond the dominant essentialist

narratives of identity formation. During a consultation on the A Shared Future

document the identity narratives put forward by civil society organisations were

based on a contingent understanding of identity formation and reproduction, explicitly

acknowledging the role of power, and were open to the prospect of evolution. The

inputs by large voluntary sector organisations were attuned to a communicative

democratic view of the public sphere (Komarova 2008) and implicitly accepted that

power should be conceptualized not as an issue, or a quality, external to identities but



22

rather as constituting identities that should, therefore, be available for scrutiny and

problematisation in the public sphere.

A retreat from an authentic encounter with difference – in favour of shoring up

pre-constituted identities and reproducing these through the new democratic structures

– exacerbates the problem that it imagines to occasion it. Where difference per se is

taken, for the most part, to be the irreducible problem the prospects for a deep

political deconstruction of the conflict and identity claims disappears and politics in

the public sphere is reduced to „loyalty schemes‟ as spectacle. Komarova (2008) cites

a number of party political participants in the ASF consultation exercise who

demonstrated essentialist identity repertoires, with individuals conflating their

identities with pre-fixed, singular categories such as „Protestant‟ or „Catholic‟, and

„community‟ with „single identity‟. She notes that the consequences of this categorical

or essentialist approach to narrating identity for a view of peace-building are that

changes in particular identities are interpreted as an absolute loss. DUP contributors to

the consultation, for example, seemed to lack recognition that the democratization of

relationships between communities requires of necessity an examination of the

traditions (e.g. the Orange Order) implicated in them.

Conclusion: Beyond Tolerance

With agreement between the DUP and Sinn Fein now achieved on a common

approach to the CSI, a moment of decision is looming for those who would articulate

an ethos that is compatible with a culture of rights, equality and a vision of identity

that can is at home with a level of indeterminacy (Doran 2009). It is likely that the

dominant party elites – while publicly espousing familiar and congealed positions

with a view to reproducing their constituent electoral bases – will, simultaneously,



23

require (and benefit from) a critical voice that keeps the future open and

indeterminate. Connolly (1995), for example, has proposed the cultivation of an ethos

of critical responsiveness that might challenge the self-confidence and congealed

judgements of dominant constituencies, translating the pluralist appreciation of

established diversity into active cultivation of generosity to contemporary movements

of pluralization. The cultivation of generosity is not a simple matter of applying an

existing moral code fairly and consistently. This would suggest, for example, that the

championing of „parity of esteem‟ (as advocated under the terms of the GFA) or equal

treatment for Nationalism/Republicanism and Unionism/Loyalism may be a necessary

but not a sufficient redress. The cultivation of critical responsiveness to otherness

requires more ambition, notably a revisiting of the terms of self-recognition. In a

telling phrase, Connolly suggests that the key may be to turn disturbance of what

„you‟ are into critical responsiveness to what you are not. For where the politics of

enactment and critical responsiveness intersect, irreducible differences acquire

softened edges and refined relational possibilities.

One source of this ethical command to embrace a form of critical

responsiveness to otherness can be found in the work of the philosopher, Emmanuel

Lévinas, for whom ethics, subjectivity and otherness can only be contemplated

together. For Lévinas, responsibility, subjectivity and ethics are each implicated in the

other. Responsibility is the essential, primary and fundamental structure of

subjectivity. In other words, the work of Lévinas amounts to a manifesto against

totalising claims on identity – claims skilfully deployed by the elite protagonists in

Northern Ireland – in favour of an ethical responsiveness in which relationships

between individuals can transcend the natural rapport of possession, power and

belongingness, in search of the good.



24

Lévinas regarded a strategically oriented politics – “the art of foreseeing war

and of winning it by every means”, which is “enjoined as the very essence of reason”

– as “opposed to morality”(Lévinas 1969:21). Critchley (2007:92) stands with

Lévinas when he asserts that political action does not flow from cunning reason, a

materialist or idealist philosophy of history or socio-economic determinism…

…but rather from what I describe as a „metapolitical‟ moment of ethical

experience of the kind described here. Politics is an ethical practice that arises

in a situation of injustice which exerts a demand for responsibility.

The ethical regard summoned in Lévinas‟ writings is one that resists encompassing or

enclosing the Other as part of the same, that resists recognizing the Other solely

within the already spoken codes of a universalizing vision of humankind. He calls for

an infinite respect for an alterity that always evades complete comprehension, and

renders possible a concern with the violence of representation. Consider, for example,

the significance for the Anglo-Irish peace process of Mitchel McLaughlin‟s pivotal

document, Towards a Lasting Peace in Ireland (1992), wherein the senior Sinn Fein

thinker and tactician acknowledged for the first time that the „Irish minority‟

(Unionists) would have to be consulted about any new constitutional arrangements.

The shift in attitude was prompted by a shift in self-recognition within the wider

Republican-Nationalist community as a result of an internal dialogue between the

leaderships of the Social Democratic and Labour Party and Sinn Fein). Until the early

1990s, Sinn Fein had denied the agency of Unionists, insisting that the only obstacle

to a united Ireland was the British Government; Unionists were credited with what

amounted to a form of „false consciousness‟ regarding their ability to articulate their

interests. For Lévinas, alterity cannot be subsumed into the same, into a totalizing

conceptual system that comprehends self and Other. For relations with Others to be

ethical they must therefore be non-totalizing. Shapiro writes:



25

Rejecting ontologies that homogenize humanity, so that self-recognition is

sufficient to constitute the significance of Others, Lévinas locates the ethical

regard as a recognition of Others as enigmatically and irreducibly other, as

prior to any ontological aim of locating oneself at home in the world. (Shapiro

1997:179)

This is a radical orientation that, if adopted by elements of civil society, would

establish a critical voice that escapes the closure of competing ontological claims

emanating from the Irish nationalist/republican and British unionist/loyalist elites. For

relations with the Other need not arise within a totality nor does it establish a totality,

integrating the self and the other within an agreed space. Such ontologies, for Lévinas,

are egoistically aimed at domesticating alterity to a frame of understanding that can

allow for the violent appropriation of the space of the Other, according to Lévinas

(1969). For Cixous and Clement (1986:70) the truly „Other‟ escapes theorization,

while cast in History the „other‟ settles down, falls into the dialectical circle to be

hierarchically organized in a relationship dictated by the self/same that rules, names,

defines, and assigns „its‟ other (Cixous and Clement 1986:70). To be regarded

ethically, the Other must be regarded as a stranger who “disturbs the being at home

with oneself”, disturbing the dream that we can ever be ourselves alone.

Lévinas‟ achievement in refiguring our understanding of responsibility,

subjectivity and ethics is a provocation to the politics of tolerance and „good

relations‟, which are derived from the settled structures of subjectivity within

Northern Ireland‟s communities, and derived from the deployment of powerful

legitimizing geopolitical narratives of the territories of Britain, Ireland and further

afield. Calculations of responsibility, for the Irish Nationalist, British Unionist and

London politician, are derived after the fact , from the deployment of identity claims

and their associated histories and spatialities, including histories of imposition,

injustice, exclusion and a struggle for equality.



26

Critchley‟s anarchism has two dimensions: ethical and political. The ethical

dimension is derived from Lévinas and his critique of the „archaic‟ character of

subjectivity in modern philosophy. Against the sovereign, self-positing subject, which

has dominated modern philosophy since Descartes, Lévinas argues that ethical

subjectivity is affected by the other in a way that places in question the self‟s

purported sovereignty and autonomous majesty. In this sense the ethical relation to the

other is anarchical, which, for Lévinas, is not devoid of political significance.

Critchley‟s conception of anarchism, grounded in contemporary activist practice, is

organized around „responsibility‟ rather than freedom: an infinite responsibility that

arises in relation to a situation of injustice. This is an anarchism of infinite

responsibility rather than unlimited freedom; though the goal of responsible action

might be the cultivation of the other‟s freedom. For Critchley, „the people‟ are a

manifestation of dissensus. At the core of politics is the anarchic practice of

democratic dissensus articulated around an ethical demand that arises in a situation of

injustice.

In an era marked by the State‟s attempt to saturate the entirety of social life,

Critchley seeks to present a form of politics – inspired by the practices of civil society

– disruptive of the ontological domain, a politics pursued at a distance but within the

State, an interstitial distance or internal distance that must be opened up from the

inside. This is politics as a construction of new political subjectivities, new political

aggregations in specific localities, a new dissensual habitus rooted in common sense

and the consent of those who dissent:

Politics is praxis in a situation that articulates an interstitial distance from the

system and which allows for the emergence of new political subjectivities.

(Critchley 2007: 114)



27

Contrary to the twentieth century‟s preoccupation with „autonomy orthodoxy‟, where

the arché is understood as autarchy, as self-origination or self-legislation, Lévinas‟

ethical subjectivity is the experience of being affected by another in a way that

precedes consciousness and which places in question the individual‟s spontaneity and

sovereignty. This approach to anarchy has meaning that is prior to the political. It is

not a new hegemonic principle of political organisation, but a source of negation of

totality. It is not the affirmation of a new totality or totalities, but a source of continual

questioning from below of any attempt to establish order from above. This ethical

anarchy is the experience of the multiple singularities of the encounter with others that

defines the experience of sociality. Each of these singularities overwhelms and undoes

us in a way that always leaves a response wanting (Critchley 2007:123).

For Critchley, the problem with much traditional thinking about politics is that

it is archaic: it is obsessed with the moment of foundation, origination, declaration, or

institution that is linked to the act of government, of sovereignty, of establishing a

State. These are the stuff of the monotonous rituals saturated by a simultaneous

excess of insecurity and overstatement that characterise the core political traditions in

Northern Ireland, acting out the residues of abandoned imperial and nation-building

ambitions initiated by distant capitals. Rather than collude with the totalising claims

on identity exercised by the chief protagonists of Irish Nationalism/Republicanism

and British Unionism/Loyalism, civil society requires a language and an ethos that

can support an orientation capable of systematically exposing and deconstructing the

interpretive and performative coups de force that secure the “mystical” foundations of

authority in a society where ethnic histories and identity claims have been tactically

deployed. These foundations must not be rendered natural – by mere calls for

tolerance and „parity of esteem‟ – rather they must be disturbed in order to make way



28

for a deeper culture of pluralism and generosity, one of active pluralization

(Connolly:1995). With effective resistance to enclosure in ontological totalitarianism

we can also look forward to a deepening of our resistance to – and understanding of –

the origins of violence in societies such as ours.

Civil society must reclaim some of the autonomy that it has sacrificed in the

course of participating in the „civil society approach‟ to the peace process (Mitchell

2009) if it is to encourage a democracy defined against the State, a politics that can

disrupt and not merely affirm the ontological domain but work against the horizon of

a regional government and institutions that are at risk of reproducing sectarian

closure. A compelling source for the exploration of an ethical sensibility is the work

of the philosopher of the „other‟, Emmanuel Lévinas, a major contributor to “ethics-

as-nonviolent encounter” (Shapiro 1997:174).



29

REFERENCES

Acheson, N., Harvey, B., Kearney, J. & and Williamson, A.P. 2006, Two Paths, One

Purpose: voluntary action in Ireland, north and south, Institute for Public

Administration, Dublin.

Agnew, J. 1998, "Geopolitics: Re-Visioning World Politics", .

Alonso, R. 2003, The IRA and Armed Struggle, Routledge, New York.

BBC News , Police and Bebo in hatred talks [Homepage of BBC News Online],

[Online]. Available: http://www.news.bbc.co.uk [2009, April/22] .

Belloni, R. 2008, "The Role of Civil Society in Northern Ireland", 49th sessions of the

Insternational Studies Association Annual Conference: Bridging Multiple

Dividesallacademic online, .

Brown, W. 2002, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire,

Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Brown, W. , The Governmentality of Tolerance [Homepage of www.why-war.com],

[Online]. Available: www.why-war/commentary/2002/02/brown [2004,

December/12] .

Bulhan, H.A. 1985, Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression, Plenum Press,

New York.

Butler, J. 2004, Precarious Life: The powers of mourning and violence, First edn,

Verso, London.

Campbell, D. 1998, National Deconstruction:violence, identity, and justice in Bosnia,

Minneapolis edn, University of Minnesota Press.

Central Community Relations Council. 1991, Community Relations in Northern

Ireland , Central Community Relations Unit, Belfast.

http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/



http://www.why-war.com/



http://www.why-war/commentary/2002/02/brown







30

Central Community Relations Unit 1991, Community Relations in Northern Ireland ,

Central Community Relations Unit, Belfast.

Chisom, R. & Washington, M. 1997, Undoing racism: A Philosophy of International

Social Change, 2nd edn, The People's Institute, New Orleans, LA.

Cixous, C. & Clement, C. 1986, The Newly Born Woman, Manchester University

Press, Manchester.

Cochrane, F. 2001, "Unsung Heroes? The role of Peace and Conflict Resolution

Organisations in the Northern Ireland Conflict" in Northern Ireland and the Divided

World. the Northern Ireland Conflict and the Good Friday Agreement in Comparative

Perspective, ed. J. McGarry, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 137-156.

Community Relations Service 2001, , Community Relations Service [Homepage of

Community Relations Service], [Online]. Available: www.usdoj.gov/crs/ [2007,

April/4] .

Connolly, W. 1995, The Ethos of Pluralization, University of Minnesota Press,

Minneapolis.

Connolly, W. 1995, The Ethos of Pluralization, First edn, University of Minnesota

Press, Minneapolis.

Conrad, K. 2006, Queering Community: Reimagining the Public Sphere in Northern

Ireland .

Critchley, S. 2007, Infinitely Demanding: ethics of commitment, politics of resistance,

Verso, London.

Critchley, S. 1992, The Ethics of Deconstruction, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.

Critchley, S. & Bernasconi, R. 2003, The Cambridge Compansion to Lévinas

, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

http://www.usdoj.gov/crs/





31

Darby, J. & Knox, C. 2004, 'A Shared future': A consultation paper on improving

relations in Northern Ireland: Executive Summary and Key Themes, John B. Kroc

Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, Indiana.

Democratic Unionist Party 04.12.09, 04.12.09-last update , Sinn Fein failing to deliver

a shared future. Available: www.dup.org.uk [2009, 04.12.09] .

Department for Social Development. 2005, Investing Together: Repart of the Task

Force on Resourcing the Voluntary and Community Sector , DSD, Belfast.

Department for Social Development. 2002, Review of Community Relations Policy,

Department for Social Development, Belfast.

Department for Social Development. 2001, Partners for Change 2006-2008, DSD,

Northern Ireland.

Doran, P. 1990, Blueprint: Three, Yes Publications, Derry.

Fitzduff, M. 1985, Beyond Violence: Conflict Resolution Process in Northern Ireland ,

United Nations University, Derry.

Foucault, M. 1989, "Friendship as a Way of Life" in Foucault Live, ed. S. Lotringer,

Semiotext[e], New York, pp. 209.

Foucault, M. 1978, The History of Sexuality, Penguin, Harmondsworth.

Freire, P. 2000, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Continuum International Publishing

Group, London.

Gallagher, A.M. 1993, "Community Relations" in Social Attitudes in Northern

Ireland , eds. P. Stringer & G. Robinson, Blackstaff Press, Belfast, pp. 33-48.

Graham, B. & Nash, C. 2006, "A shared future: territoriality, pluralism and public

policy in Northern Ireland", Political Geography, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 253-278.

http://www.dup.org.uk/






32

Halpern, M. 1987, "Choosing Between Ways of Life and Death and Between Forms

of Democracy: An Archetypal Analysis.", Alternatives: Journal of Humane

Governance, vol. 5, no. 34, pp. 5-34.

Harbison, J. 2002, Review of Community Relations Policy, OFMDFM, Belfast.

Hayes, M. 1972, Community Relations and the role of the Community Relations

Commission in Northern Ireland , Runnymede Trust, Belfast.

Hillyard, E., McLaughlin, M., Tomlinson, M., Kelly, G. & Patsios, D. 2003, The

Necessities of Life in Northern Ireland , Queens University, Belfast.

Horowitz, D. 2000, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Second edn, University of California

Press, California.

Horowitz, D. 1985, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 2nd edn, University of California

Press, Berkeley.

Huges, J., Donnelly, C., Robinson, G. & Dowds, L. 2003, Community Relations in

Northern Ireland: The Long View, ARK Northern Ireland Social and Political

Archive, Belfast.

Hughes, J. & Donnelly, C. 2002, "Ten years of Social Attitudes to Community

Relations in Northern Ireland" in Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland: The 8th

Report , eds. A. Gray, K. Lloyd, P. Devine, G. Robinson & D. and Heenan, Pluto

Press, London.

Kearney, R. 1984, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers, Manchester

University Press, Manchester.

Kearney, R. 1984, Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers, First edn,

Manchester University Press, Manchester.

Kearney, R. 1984, The Irish Mind: Exploring Intellectual Traditions, Worldhound

Press, Dublin.



33

Knox, C. & Hughes, J. 1994, "Equality and equity: An emerging government policy

in Northern Ireland", New Community, vol. 10, pp. 207-225.

Lemke, T. 2000, "Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique", Rethinking Marxism

Conference at University of Amherst (MA) 21-24 September .

Lévinas, E. 1969, Totality and Infinity - an essay on exteriority, Duquesne University,

Pittsburgh.

Lévinas, E. 1998, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, Duquesne Univeristy

Press, Pennsylvania.

Lévinas, E. 1989, "Ethics As First Philosophy" in The Lévinas Reader , ed. S. Hand,

Blackwell, Oxford.

Lévinas, E. 1989, "Ideology and Idealism" in The Lévinas Reader , ed. S. Hand,

Blackwell, Oxford.

Lijphart, A. 1977, Democracy in Plural Societies: a comparative exploration, Yale

University Press, New Haven.

Longley, E. 2001, "Multi-culturalism and Northern Ireland: Making differences

fruitful" in Multi-culturalism: The View for the Two Irelands, eds. E. Longley & D.

Kiberd, Cork University Press, Cork, pp. 1-44.

Martynowicz, A. & Jarman, N. 2009, New Migration, Equality and Integration,

Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, Belfast.

McBride, C. 2005, "Deliberative Democracy and the Politics of Recognition",

Political Studies, vol. 53, pp. 497-515.

McCartney, C. , The role of civil society [Homepage of Conciliation Resources,

Accord publication series], [Online]. Available: http://www.c-r.org/our-

work/accord/northern-ireland/civil-society.php [2009, 5/22] .

http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/northern-ireland/civil-society.php







34

McCrudden, C. 2001, "Equality" in , ed. J.C. Harvey, Hart, Oxford and Portland, pp.

75-112.

McVeigh, R. 2002, "Between Reconciliation and Pacification: The British State and

Community Relations in the North of Ireland", The Community Development Journal,

vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 47-59.

McVeigh, R. & Rolston, B. 2007, "From Good Friday to Good Relations:

sectarianism, racism and the Northern Ireland State", Race and Class, vol. 48, no. 4,

pp. 1-23.

Mitchell, A. Processing Peace - The Logic and Mechanisms of the Liberalizing

Peace, Forthcoming chapter edn.

Morgan, A. 2000, The Belfast Agreement: a practical legal analysis, Belfast Press,

London.

Morisi, P. 2006, "The Northern Ireland Peace Process and Nationalist Political

Parties: A shift towards consociational democracy", Peace Conflict and Development,

, no. 8.

Morison, J. 2000, "The Government - Voluntary Sector Compacts: Governance,

Governmentality and Civil Society", Journal of Law and Society, vol. 27, no. 2, pp.

98-132.

Morrow, D. 2008, The real work begins, Conference Speech edn, Belfast.

Nash, C. 2005, "Equity, Diversity and Interdependence: Cultural Policy in Northern

Ireland", Antipode, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 272-300.

Neill, W.J.V. 2004, Urban Planning and Cultural Identity, Routledge, London.

Office of the First and Deputy First Minister 2005, A Shared Future - Policy and

Strategic Framework for Good Relations in Northern Ireland , OFMDFM, Belfast.



35

Office of the First and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM). 2005, Evaluation of the

Community Relations Council's Core Funding Programme, OFMDFM, Belfast.

Office of the First and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM). 2003, A Shared Future:

Improving Community Relations in Northern Ireland , Community Relations Unit,

OFMDFM, Northern Ireland.

Office of the First and Deputy First Minister. 2008, Programme for Government

2008-2011, OFMDFM., Belfast.

OFMDFM 2008, Building a Better Future: A Cohesion, Sharing and Integration

policy for a shared and better future, OFMDFM, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

O'Leary, B. & McGarry, J. 1993, The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding

Northern Ireland, Athlone Press, London.

Oliver, Q. 1998, Working for “Yes”: The Story of the May 1998 Referendum in

Northern Ireland . Belfast: The “Yes” Campaign. .

O'Ruairc 2003, On sectarianism [Homepage of The Blanket: Online Journal of Protest

and Dissent], [Online]. Available:

http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu:81/currentissue.html [2005, April/15] .

O'Ruairc, L. , Protest and Dissent [Homepage of The Blanket: Online Journal of

Protest and Dissent], [Online]. Available: http://lark.phoblacht.net/index.html [2003,

April/6] .

ó'Tuathail, G. & Dalby, S. (eds) 1998, critical geopolitics, Routledge, London.

ó'Tuathail, G. & Dalby, S. (eds) 1998, Rethinking Geopolitics, Routledge, London.

Popke, E.J. 2003, "Poststructuralist ethics: subjectivity, responsibility and the space of

community", Progress in Human Geography, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 298-316.

Putnam, D. 2000, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,

Simon and Schuster, New York.

http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu:81/currentissue.html


http://lark.phoblacht.net/index.html






36

Rosado, R.P. 2007, Consciousness-in-Action: Toward an Integral Psychology of

Liberation and Transformation, ilé:Publicatons, Puerto Rico.

Shapiro, M.J. 1997, Violent Cartographies: Mapping Cultures of War, University of

Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Sinn Fein 2009, Rights and Respect: An Executive Programme for Cohesion, Sharing

and Integration, Sinn Fein, Northern Ireland Assembly, Belfast.

Sinn Fein. Undated, Sinn Féin's Response to the Consultation Document 'A Shared

Future' .

Thornbury, A. 2005, Civil Society index Data Overview Report:Northern Ireland ,

Civicus and NICVA, Northern Ireland.

Warren, M. 2001, Democracy and Association, Princeton University Press, Princeton,

N.J.

Williams, A., & Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability,Sustainability and

Society. 2003, Governance and sustainability an investigation of the role of policy

mediators in the European Union policy process, Centre for Business Relationships,

Accountability, Sustainability & Society, Cardiff University, Cardiff.

Wolfenden, J. 1978, The Future of voluntary organisations : report of the Wolfenden

Committee, Croom Helm, London.

Wyschogrod, E. 1998, An ethics of remembering: history, heterology, and the

nameless others, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

1 Also referred to as „The Belfast Agreement‟ and „The Stormont Agreement‟.

2 The „Good Friday Agreement‟ or Belfast Agreement comprises the Multi Party Agreement negotiated

by most of Northern Ireland‟s political parties and a British Irish Agreement signed by the two

governments. The multi-party agreement is essentially a political agreement, while the British Irish



Agreement, annexed to the Multi Party Agreement, is a legal document in the strict sense of the term,

being a treaty, or international agreement, made between two contracting States, and signed by the

United Kingdom government and the Irish government (Morgan 2000:8-9).

3Sectarianism in Northern Ireland is almost always defined as a form of religious bigotry (Graham and

Nash 2006) or the promotion of one's religion or religious background at the expense of the alternative‟

(Tonge, 2005: 192). There is an understanding, of course, that the salience of the religious dimension is

closely tied to political identifications; but these definitions fail to capture the author of sectarianism‟s

underlying antipathy towards dialogue as a way of being. Sectarianism, for the popular educationalist,

Freire (2000, 2005), is to move in a “circle of certainty” and myth-making, with a reduced capacity to

determine an accurate reading of the world and engage in its progressive transformation. Predominantly

emotional and uncritical, the sectarian posture is anti-dialogical, non-communicative and disrespectful

of the choices of others. She or he is more inclined to privilege and seek to impose choices on others.

Significant elements of Irish Nationalism-Republicanism and Ulster Unionist-Loyalism subsequently

correspond to what Halpern (1987) has described as „emanational‟ ways of life. By this, he means that

those who live in the service of emanation contribute little or nothing to the creation or recreation of

their core belief systems but receive their meaning and purpose in life from a largely fixed andoverwhelming source which, they believe, commands things to be as they are.4 The DUP released an amended draft of Building a Better Future: A Cohesion, Sharing and

Integration policy for a shared and better future (dated October 2008) on 16 September 2009. This

working draft had been compiled by the Office of the First and deputy First Minister in collaboration

with stakeholder organisations, including the NI Community Relations Council, and other government

departments. The DUP action followed, within hours, of the release of a version released by Sinn Fein,

with the title, Rights and Respect‟ , which sought to embed the document in the context of Equality, a

central goal for the Party in agreeing to the Good Friday Agreement.

final march 2010

Documents