Beyond the Fife and Drum: Northern Protestant Working Class Cultures

Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Paul Burgess
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Working Class ◽  
World Order ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Dimensional Image ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Meaning Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
Symbolic Systems

The author contends that throughout the duration of the present conflict in NorthernIreland, the world has been repeatedly given a one-dimensional image of this culture depicting it as mainly a product of ethnicity and also a reflection of class sentiment and lived experience.As drummer and songwriter of Ruefrex, a musical band internationally renowned for its songs about the Troubles conflict in Northern Ireland, Burgess discusses the need to express Protestant cultural traditions and identity through words and music. Citing Weber’s argument that individuals need to understand the world and their environment and that this understanding is influenced by perceptions of world order and attitudes and interpretations of symbolic systems or structures, the author argues that losing the importance of symbolic structures in relation to actual events will result in failure to understand why communities embrace meaning systems that are centrally informed by symbol and ritual. In his mind, rather than seeking to promote an understanding of Protestant or Catholic reality, it is important to speculate how the practice of difference might be used in developing any kind of reality of co-operation and co-ordination

‘Not our cup of tea’: Irish and British feminist encounters in London during the Troubles

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Rossiter
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Police Force ◽  
Women Prisoners ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Liberation Movement ◽  
Local Police ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
Experiences Of Women

Little writing exists on the experiences of women central to the numerous organizations that sprang up throughout the thirty years of the Irish Troubles. This chapter concentrates on three feminist groups, all London-based: the Women on Ireland Collective (1973-4), the Women and Ireland Group (1976-80) and the London Armagh Group (1980-mid-1990s) representing a small, but vibrant section of anti-imperialist women active on Irish issues in Britain. The focus of the three groups was the plight of working-class women living primarily in Republican areas of Northern Ireland in their daily struggles with the British Army and local police force. In time, the focus widened to include Republican women prisoners incarcerated in Armagh Jail and in various prisons in Britain. Most group members were activists in the British Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM), especially its socialist strand, and perceived that movement as their main constituency. However, they encountereda widespread dismissal in all strands of the British WLM of Irish issues as ‘too complex’, the nature of the Troubles being too much ‘a man’s war’, and as such, ‘not our cup of tea’. This chapter examines the groups’ activities in this context, and argues that their experience highlighted the limits of feminist solidarity.

scholarly journals Desecularization of the World Community as Tension Source in the International Relations and World Politics

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 30-45
Author(s):  
I. V. SLEDZEVSKIY
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Order ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Religious Fundamentalism ◽  
Western World ◽  
Religious Revival ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
World Community ◽  
The World

Article is devoted to a role of world religions in the modern international relations and world politics. The phenomenon of world religious revival, his connection with globalization processes, formation of the multi-polar, polycivilization world is investigated. A research objective is the analysis of tendencies of a desecularization of the world community, the reasons and possible consequences of this process in global measurement. Article includes Introduction, three analytical sections and the Conclusion. In Introduction the phenomenon of world religious revival and approaches to his studying is presented. It is asked about a desecularization of the world community as a possible subject of the new direction of the international political researches – the international religious studies. The thesis about crisis of secular bases of modern political system of the world is proved in the first section. Revision of bases of a world order and standards of belonging to the world community from positions of the reviving religious fundamentalism, the cultural and political and social and economic bases of this process are considered. In the second section the role in a desecularization of the world community of political Islam (Islamism) is analyzed. It is noted that the greatest danger of politicization of Islam consists in emergence of difficult surmountable civilization break in the world community between the Western world (still confident in universality of the values) and the world of Islam. In the third section the possibilities of prevention of disintegration of the existing system of the international relations and collision of the cultural worlds are considered. The main attention is paid to processes of a global political institutionalization of such dialogue and its justification in the concept of global ethics – purposeful coordination and gradual connection of the basic moral and ethical values concluded in great religious and cultural traditions of the world. In the final section of article the conclusion is drawn that process of an institutionalization of civilization dialogue (civilization communication) it isn’t finished yet and didn’t become irreversible.

Historical Context

The Devils ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 17-30
Author(s):  
Darren Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
The World ◽  
Race War

This chapter discusses the historical context of Ken Russell's The Devils (1973), as the timing of the first appearance of the film is of great importance in a way which spreads out way beyond the confines of the cinema screen. Despite its firm seventeenth-century setting—and its ongoing relevance—The Devils is very much a film for 1971, and its ideas about spirituality said much about the time in which the film was released. Uncomfortable parallels could also be made with the Troubles in Northern Ireland; this conflict, for which both politics and religion provided much of the fuel, had been underway for some time when The Devils was released. And with the world only starting to recover from the Manson murders, which were deemed to have been committed in order to ignite a race war, the film also served up a scarcely needed reminder of the case's chief bogeyman in the form of Father Barré. Audiences in 1971 certainly had plenty to think about, and The Devils did not provide an easy evening of escapism. The film had much to say to the audience of its time, and the vexatious nature of its message endures to the present day.

Elegies for Ireland

2020 ◽  
pp. 291-307
Author(s):  
Donncha O’Rourke
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Classical Reception ◽  
The World ◽  
Michael Longley

This chapter investigates the reception of Roman elegy in the work of W. B. Yeats and Michael Longley, a continuum that brings to light both the constant presence and changing shape of classical reception in the century since the 1916 Rising. Ezra Pound’s anti-imperialist reading of Propertius mediates this reception for the Irish poets, but whereas Yeats takes a similarly partisan and anti-imperial line, albeit blended with his personal affairs, Longley’s approach is more ecumenical, albeit interwoven with the Troubles of his native Northern Ireland. As a genre born in civil war, but which views the world through an erotic lens, elegy is found to give Longley the lyrical form for his anti-war appropriation of epic. His versions of Tibullus and Sulpicia also expose cycles of brutality and the imbrication of public and domestic violence. Longley thus offers a more pacific model of the elegiac woman than Yeats’s revolutionary muse.

The United Kingdom—the age of austerity

2019 ◽  
pp. 112-118
Author(s):  
Mark Britnell
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
World Order ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Quality Of Healthcare ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The People ◽  
The World

In the United Kingdom, the NHS is considered the proudest achievement of modern society and continues to enjoy satisfaction ratings higher than the Royal Family. The NHS and the quality of healthcare is inextricably linked to the British national consciousness and character. Yet the United Kingdom is going through tectonic challenges and changes as we face Brexit and find our new place in the world order. Naturally, this affects the NHS and the people who work for it. While we have four similar yet distinct health systems across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the rest of this chapter concentrates solely on the English NHS. In this very current chapter, Mark Britnell illustrates the problems that the British healthcare system faces as a result of Brexit. He also looks at the NHS in relation to national identity, economic growth, and quality of care.

Ghost-Haunted Land

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Declan Long
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
End Point ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Key Points ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Operations

Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 — the formal end-point of the thirty-year modern ‘Troubles’ — contemporary visual artists have offered diverse responses to post-conflict circumstances in Northern Ireland. In Ghost-Haunted Land — the first book-length examination of post-Troubles contemporary art — Declan Long highlights artists who have reflected on the ongoing anxieties of aftermath. Conscious of the simultaneous optimism and uneasiness of the peace era, each of these artists has produced powerful, distinctive work that reflects on legacies of the Troubles years and represents the strangeness of Northern Ireland’s changing landscapes: places marked by traces of enduring division, haunted by lingering spectres of the unresolved past.This wide-ranging study of post-Troubles art addresses developments in video, photography, painting, sculpture, performance and more, offering detailed analyses of key works by artists based in Ireland and beyond — including 2014 Turner Prize winner Duncan Campbell and internationally acclaimed filmmaker and photographer Willie Doherty. The art addressed in Ghost-Haunted Land is acutely attentive to specific regional circumstances in Northern Ireland; but it has also developed in dialogue with international art during this period. ‘Post-Troubles’ contemporary art is thus discussed in the context of both local transformations and global operations — and many of the key points of reference in the book come from broader debates about the predicament of contemporary art today: about its current place and purpose in the world, and about the politics and aesthetics of its dominant forms.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document