An Archaeology of the Troubles


Book Description

Long Kesh / Maze prison was infamous as the major holding centre for paramilitary prisoners during the course of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Some of the major events of the recent conflict centred on, emanated from, and were transformed by it, including the burning of the internment camp in 1974, the protests and hunger strikes of 1980-1981, the mass escape of PIRA prisoners in 1983, and the role of prisoners in facilitating and sustaining the peace process of the 1990s. Now, over a decade after the signing of the Belfast Agreement (1998), Long Kesh / Maze remains one of the most contentious remnants of the conflict and has become central to debates about what we do with such sites, what they mean, and how they relate to contemporary rememberings of the difficult recent past. The only independent archaeological investigation of Long Kesh / Maze prior to its partial demolition, this volume reveals the seminal role of material culture in understanding the prison. It moves from traditional uses of solely documentary and oral evidence to exploring the full range of material remains of the prison as they have been abandoned in situ or been dispersed and re-contextualized into wider society. Using a multitude of sources, McAtackney creatively provides a unique interpretation of the Northern Irish Troubles and the continuing destabilizing role of material remnants of the conflict in the peace process.




An Archaeology of the Troubles


Book Description

This volume reveals the seminal role of material culture in understanding the Long Kesh / Maze prison during the course of the Troubles in Northern Ireland continuing into the peace process. Using a multitude of sources, it provides an interpretation of the Troubles and the continuing destabilizing role of material remnants of the conflict.




Northern Ireland


Book Description

Since the plantation of Ulster in the 17th century, Northern Irish people have been engaged in conflict - Catholic against Protestant, Republican against Unionist. This text explores the pivotal moments in this history.




Belfast punk and the Troubles: An oral history


Book Description

Belfast punk and the Troubles is an oral history of the punk scene in Belfast from the mid-1970s to the mid-80s. The book explores what it was like to be a punk in a city shaped by the violence of the Troubles, and how this differed from being a punk elsewhere. It also asks what it means to have been a punk – how punk unravels as a thread throughout the lives of the people interviewed, and what that unravelling means in the context of post-peace-process Northern Ireland. In doing so, it suggests a critical understanding of sectarianism, subjectivity and memory politics in the North, and argues for the importance of placing punk within the segregated structures of everyday life described by the interviewees. Adopting an innovative oral history approach drawing on the work of Luisa Passerini and Alessandro Portelli, the book analyses a small number of oral history interviews with participants in granular detail. Outlining the historical context and the cultural memory of punk, the central chapters each delve into one or two interviews to draw out the affective, imaginative and political ways in which punks and former punks evoke their memories of taking part in the scene. Through this method, it analyses the punk scene as a structure of feeling shaped through the experience of growing up in wartime Belfast. Belfast punk and the Troubles is an intervention in Northern Irish historiography stressing the importance of history from below, and will be compelling reading for historians of Ireland and of punk, as well as those interested in innovative approaches to oral history.




An Archaeology of Structural Violence


Book Description

Using evidence of historical changes in landscape, community life, and material culture from a coal mining company town in the Anthracite Coal Region of Northeast Pennsylvania, Michael Roller introduces an archaeological approach to the structural violence on workers, citizens, and consumers that developed across the twentieth century. The study begins with an analysis of a moment of explicit violence at the end of the nineteenth century, an event known as the Lattimer Massacre, in which as many as nineteen immigrant miners were shot by a posse of local businessmen. From this touchstone, material history and theoretical contexts across the twentieth century are documented in a manner both locally specific and broadly generalizable.




Troubled Geographies


Book Description

“Tap[s] the power of new geospatial technologies . . . explore[s] the intersection of geography, religion, politics, and identity in Irish history.”—International Social Science Review Ireland’s landscape is marked by fault lines of religious, ethnic, and political identity that have shaped its troubled history. Troubled Geographies maps this history by detailing the patterns of change in Ireland from 16th century attempts to “plant” areas of Ireland with loyal English Protestants to defend against threats posed by indigenous Catholics, through the violence of the latter part of the 20th century and the rise of the “Celtic Tiger.” The book is concerned with how a geography laid down in the 16th and 17th centuries led to an amalgam based on religious belief, ethnic/national identity, and political conviction that continues to shape the geographies of modern Ireland. Troubled Geographies shows how changes in religious affiliation, identity, and territoriality have impacted Irish society during this period. It explores the response of society in general and religion in particular to major cultural shocks such as the Famine and to long term processes such as urbanization. “Makes a strong case for a greater consideration of spatial information in historical analysis―a message that is obviously appealing for geographers.”—Journal of Interdisciplinary History “A book like this is useful as a reminder of the struggles and the sacrifices of generations of unrest and conflict, albeit that, on a global scale, the Irish troubles are just one of a myriad of disputes, each with their own history and localized geography.”—Journal of Historical Geography




A History of Force Feeding


Book Description

This book is Open Access under a CC BY license. It is the first monograph-length study of the force-feeding of hunger strikers in English, Irish and Northern Irish prisons. It examines ethical debates that arose throughout the twentieth century when governments authorised the force-feeding of imprisoned suffragettes, Irish republicans and convict prisoners. It also explores the fraught role of prison doctors called upon to perform the procedure. Since the Home Office first authorised force-feeding in 1909, a number of questions have been raised about the procedure. Is force-feeding safe? Can it kill? Are doctors who feed prisoners against their will abandoning the medical ethical norms of their profession? And do state bodies use prison doctors to help tackle political dissidence at times of political crisis?




A Tragedy of Errors


Book Description

The decommissioning of the Provisional IRA in 2005 suggests that Northern Ireland may finally be ready to turn from the deadly paramilitary clashes of the twentieth century to the thorny problems of a normalized political process. As both former head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service and Victim’s Commissioner, Sir Kenneth Bloomfield is in a unique position to evaluate the wisdom and long-term effects of the past fifty years of Northern Irish politics and policy. Bloomfield probes a number of crucial questions about the United Kingdom’s management of Irish affairs. Three decades of fighting have had grave consequences for Northern Ireland—what were the costs? Was violence inevitable? Bloomfield delineates the unwise decisions and abrogated responsibilities that led to the civil crisis of the Troubles while emphasizing the United Kingdom’s overriding duty to ensure peace. Peppered with incisive—and critical—portraits of the major political players, including Tony Blair and John Hume, A Tragedy of Errors gives us an unflinching insider’s view of Northern Irish politics and helps us understand the divisions that still dominate the region.




Contemporary Archaeology and the City


Book Description

This book argues archaeology is uniquely placed to contribute a variety of perspectives on the current life-cycles of cities including processes of decay, revitalization, and transformation. It foregrounds the materialities of post-industrial, post-modern and other urban transformations through a diverse, international collection of case studies.




The Routledge Handbook of the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace is the first multi-authored volume to specifically address the many facets of the 30-year Northern Ireland conflict, colloquially known as the Troubles, and its subsequent peace process. This volume is rooted in opening space to address controversial subjects, answer key questions, and move beyond reductive analysis that reproduces a simplistic two community theses. The temporal span of individual chapters can reach back to the formation of the state of Northern Ireland, with many starting in the late 1960s, to include a range of individuals, collectives, organisations, understandings, and events, at least up to the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement in 1998. This volume has forefronted creative approaches in understanding conflict and allows for analysis and reflection on conflict and peace to continue through to the present day. With an extensive introduction, preface, and 45 individual chapters, this volume represents an ambitious, expansive, interdisciplinary engagement with the North of Ireland through society, conflict, and peace from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, theoretical frameworks, and methodological approaches. While allowing for rich historical explorations of high-level politics rooted in state documents and archives, this volume also allows for the intermingling of different sources that highlight the role of personal papers, memory, space, materials, and experience in understanding the complexities of both Northern Ireland as a people, place, and political entity.