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.

Examines how and why people shift their sense of identity in divided societies and in post-conflict contexts Offers a socially-contextualized comparative and empirical analysis of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland Challenges other research and assumptions about the impermeability of boundaries and the polarising effects of violent conflict Presents a typology of identity change which shows the obstacles specific to each type of change Discusses policy implications

Autorentext

Jennifer Todd is Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin; Member of the Royal Irish Academy; Research Director, Institute for British Irish Studies, UCD; Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow, European University Institute, Florence (2016); Fellow of Geary Institute UCD, (2016-); and Fellow, Political Studies Association of Ireland (2017-9).

Inhalt

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.