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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Hard to miss, easy to blame?
T2 - peacelines, interfaces and political deaths in Belfast during the Troubles
AU - Cunningham, Niall
AU - Gregory, Ian
N1 - (c) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY license.
PY - 2014/5
Y1 - 2014/5
N2 - As Northern Ireland moves further from the period of conflict known as the ‘Troubles’, attention has increasingly focussed on the social and material vestiges of that conflict; Northern Ireland is still a deeply-divided society in terms of residential segregation between Catholic nationalists and Protestantunionists, and urban areas are still, indeed increasingly, characterised by large defensive walls, known as ‘peacelines’, which demark many of the dividing lines between the two communities. In recent years a body of literature has emerged which has highlighted the spatial association between patterns of conflictfatality and proximity to peacelines. This paper assesses that relationship, arguing that previous analyses have failed to fully take account of the ethnic complexity of inner-city Belfast in their calculations. When this is considered, patterns of fatality were more intense within the cores or ‘sanctuaries’ of highlysegregated Catholic and Protestant communities rather than at the fracture zones or ‘interfaces’ between them where peacelines have always been constructed. Using census data at a high spatial resolution, this paper also provides the first attempt to provide a definition of the ‘interface’ in clear geographic terms, a spatial concept that has hitherto appeared amorphous in academic studies and media coverage of Belfast during and since the Troubles. In doing so it embodies both the material and demographic aspects ofsocial division in Northern Ireland, and suggests an urgent need to reappraise the true role of these forms of social boundary in influencing patterns of violent conflict.
AB - As Northern Ireland moves further from the period of conflict known as the ‘Troubles’, attention has increasingly focussed on the social and material vestiges of that conflict; Northern Ireland is still a deeply-divided society in terms of residential segregation between Catholic nationalists and Protestantunionists, and urban areas are still, indeed increasingly, characterised by large defensive walls, known as ‘peacelines’, which demark many of the dividing lines between the two communities. In recent years a body of literature has emerged which has highlighted the spatial association between patterns of conflictfatality and proximity to peacelines. This paper assesses that relationship, arguing that previous analyses have failed to fully take account of the ethnic complexity of inner-city Belfast in their calculations. When this is considered, patterns of fatality were more intense within the cores or ‘sanctuaries’ of highlysegregated Catholic and Protestant communities rather than at the fracture zones or ‘interfaces’ between them where peacelines have always been constructed. Using census data at a high spatial resolution, this paper also provides the first attempt to provide a definition of the ‘interface’ in clear geographic terms, a spatial concept that has hitherto appeared amorphous in academic studies and media coverage of Belfast during and since the Troubles. In doing so it embodies both the material and demographic aspects ofsocial division in Northern Ireland, and suggests an urgent need to reappraise the true role of these forms of social boundary in influencing patterns of violent conflict.
KW - Belfast
KW - Troubles
KW - Walls
KW - GIS
KW - Segregation
KW - Violence
U2 - 10.1016/j.polgeo.2014.02.004
DO - 10.1016/j.polgeo.2014.02.004
M3 - Journal article
VL - 40
SP - 64
EP - 78
JO - Political Geography
JF - Political Geography
SN - 0962-6298
ER -