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Against Ethnicity: Democracy, Equality, and the Northern Irish Conflict
Journal of British Studies ( IF 0.764 ) Pub Date : 2018-11-08 , DOI: 10.1017/jbr.2018.117
Simon Prince

The study of the Northern Irish Troubles is dominated by ethnic readings of conflict and violence. Drawing on new scholarship from a range of different disciplines and on fresh archival sources, this article questions these explanations. General theories that tie together ethnicity with conflict and violence are shown to be based on definitions that fail to distinguish ethnic identities from other ones. Their claims cannot be taken as being uniquely or even disproportionately associated with ethnicity. Explanatory models specifically developed for the case of modern Ireland do address that weakness. Yet, this article contends, they rest upon the fallacy that the Catholic and Protestant peoples are transhistorical entities. Political ideas, organizations, and actions cannot be reduced to fixed group identities. This article argues instead that the Troubles centered on a political conflict—one over rival visions of modern democracy. The pursuit of equality, the core value of democracy, led not only to conflicts but also to some of those conflicts becoming violent. Focusing on Belfast in the summer and autumn of 1969, this article sets out how the main political actors asserted competing claims to popular sovereignty and traces how multiple dynamic and intersecting conflicts became arrayed around the central one.

中文翻译:

反对种族:民主、平等和北爱尔兰冲突

对北爱尔兰问题的研究主要是对冲突和暴力的种族解读。本文借鉴了一系列不同学科的新学术成果和新的档案资料,对这些解释提出了质疑。将种族与冲突和暴力联系在一起的一般理论被证明是基于无法将种族身份与其他种族身份区分开来的定义。他们的主张不能被视为与种族独特或什至不成比例地相关。专门为现代爱尔兰案例开发的解释模型确实解决了这一弱点。然而,本文认为,它们建立在天主教和新教民族是跨历史实体的谬误之上。政治思想、组织和行动不能被简化为固定的群体身份。相反,本文认为麻烦集中在一场政治冲突上——一场针对现代民主的对立愿景的冲突。追求平等是民主的核心价值,不仅导致冲突,而且其中一些冲突变得暴力。本文聚焦于 1969 年夏秋两季的贝尔法斯特,阐述了主要政治行为者如何对人民主权提出相互竞争的主张,并追溯了多重动态和交叉冲突如何围绕中心冲突展开。
更新日期:2018-11-08
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