Languages of Conflict and the Northern Ireland Troubles

Bourke, Richard

doi:10.1086/660886

Cited by 21 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In his article “Languages of conflict and the Northern Ireland Troubles,” Richard Bourke examines interpretative models describing modern conflicts identifying two fundamental types: “theories of primitive regression” and “theories of cultural solidarity.” Typically, the former depicts modern conflicts in terms of “tribalism,” “atavism” and “mysticism,” while the latter describes “clashing civilizations,” “cultural collisions” and “ethnic conflicts.” Bourke complains that the languages associated with these models were developed to explain past conflicts and are later applied “whenever circumstances seem to fit.” “The application of these categories is usually schematic or even inapposite,” Bourke says, “so that they lack any efficacy as forms of causal explanation” (Bourke, 2011: 544–545).…”

Section: Reconceptualising Republican Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bourke's contention that “concrete evidence is rarely produced to support such abstract schemes of analysis, which frequently predetermine the interpretation of the relevant data” is a central concern in what follows. Bourke also warns against, “loaded vocabularies inflected rhetorically to serve an ideological agenda” (Bourke, 2011: 546). This problem is identified where insidious or absurd analogies are drawn with other far more violent conflicts, and a politically charged vocabulary is imposed on the study of violence in twentieth century Ireland.…”

Section: Reconceptualising Republican Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

“All the nightmare images of ethnic conflict in the twentieth century are here”: Erroneous statistical proofs and the search for ethnic violence in revolutionary Ireland, 1917–1923

Regan

2021

Nations and Nationalism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the 1990s, Canadian historian Peter Hart claimed tens of thousands of native southern Irish Protestants experienced something akin to “ethnic cleansing” at the hands of the IRA in the early 1920s. Hart's research revised the “Irish nationalist revolution” (ca. 1917–1923) as an essentially ethnic conflict, and this article re‐examines his evidence and methodology. Exaggerating the number of forced migrations, Hart's analysis rests on erroneous statistical proofs which he supported with a gross evidence selection bias. To better understand Hart's revision, his work is compared with Michael A. Bellesiles' Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (2000), which also exhibited similar but also very different statistical errors. A central argument in this article is that erroneous statistical proofs are best understood as social constructs, where they articulate the prejudices of their host academies. Greater awareness of this problem is needed if it is to be avoided in the future.

show abstract

Section: Reconceptualising Republican Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Reconceptualising Republican Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

“All the nightmare images of ethnic conflict in the twentieth century are here”: Erroneous statistical proofs and the search for ethnic violence in revolutionary Ireland, 1917–1923

Regan

2021

Nations and Nationalism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…There is no agreement about what these differences are, their relative importance, or their relationship to one another. Some put the emphasis on religion (Brewer & Higgins, 1998;Elliott, 2009;Fulton, 1991;Ganiel, 2008;Hickey, 1984;Mitchell, 2006), others on ethnicity or nationality (McGarry & O'Leary, 1995;Wright, 1987Wright, , 1996, still others on coloniality (Clayton, 1996;MacDonald, 1986;O'Leary, 2019), on the ethno-religious (Bruce, 1994) or on the colonial-religious (Akenson, 1992), and some just on the political (Bourke, 2011;McGrattan, 2010;Prince, 2018). I stress the importance of each strand, though for reasons that will become clear, give particular attention to the religious one.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long conflict and how it ends: Protestants and Catholics in Europe and Ireland

Ruane

2021

Irish Political Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Ireland's Catholic-Protestant conflict rests on multiple, overlapping differences: religious, ethnic, colonial, political. To better understand it, and in particular its religious aspect, I trace Europe's long Catholic-Protestant conflict, how it began, reproduced itself over time, and finally came to an end in the twentieth century. I then use this to generate insights into Ireland's long conflict, how it began, how it developed, why it ended in the Republic, why it has continued in Northern Ireland, and how the latter conflict might end.

show abstract

“…96 O'Brien saw republican narratives, carried by poetry, plays, ballads, and histories, combining with Catholicism to form a lethal atavistic nationalist-religious force. 97 The "intertwining" of politics and religion exerted, he claimed, a metaphysical influence on Irish consciousness, which found expression in the fascistic IRA. O'Brien adapted an analogy taken from Albert Camus's La Peste to demonstrate the persistence of these hatreds: "The bacillus of the plague can be dormant for years in furniture and linen," O'Brien warned, adding it may again "awaken its rats and send them to die in a happy city."…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The “O'Brien Ethic” as an Interpretative Problem

Regan¹

2013

J. Br. Stud.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The necessity of adopting or redefining illiberal measures—such as torture, internment, or targeted-killings of terrorists—to protect states places burdens on the meaning of liberalism around the world. After 1969, liberal intellectual responses to the so-called Troubles in Northern Ireland identified two conflicted groups of Irish liberals. Then academic and politician Conor Cruise O'Brien attempted to reduce responses to the crisis to the choice between supporting the state and condoning terrorism. “Consenting liberals” compromised professional practices in the law, journalism, broadcasting, and academia to support the state's counterinsurgency. Alternatively, “dissenting liberals” defended their “neutrality” alongside the freedom to criticize the counterinsurgency. Justifying infringements on individual freedoms, O'Brien and others said the democratic state was imperiled. But, anomalously, freedoms were sacrificed in defense of the Irish state, which in security terms did little to defend itself. Nevertheless, the counterinsurgency became an organizing principle in intellectual life, and over forty years colored self-perceptions of Irish society, past and present.

show abstract

Languages of Conflict and the Northern Ireland Troubles

Cited by 21 publications

References 16 publications

“All the nightmare images of ethnic conflict in the twentieth century are here”: Erroneous statistical proofs and the search for ethnic violence in revolutionary Ireland, 1917–1923

“All the nightmare images of ethnic conflict in the twentieth century are here”: Erroneous statistical proofs and the search for ethnic violence in revolutionary Ireland, 1917–1923

Long conflict and how it ends: Protestants and Catholics in Europe and Ireland

The “O'Brien Ethic” as an Interpretative Problem

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About