Robert D. Lowe

Religious and Ethnonational Identification and Political Violence

Religious and national identification are often elided when describing the Troubles in Northern Ireland: Catholicism with Irishness and Protestantism with Britishness. However, these categories do not coincide completely, and a third national identity label ‘Northern Irish’ has recently been seen to emerge, with some respondents from both major religious groupings claiming this identity. A survey study of residents in Northern Ireland (n = 359) examined religious and national identification using a scale of collective self-esteem. This measure could be described as evaluating the relative strength or thickness of the identities across the various expected (British Protestant; Catholic Irish), unexpected (Protestant Irish; Catholic British) and emerging (Protestant and Catholic Northern Irish) national and religious combinations. Alongside these measures, respondents were sampled in wards that had historically high levels of political violence and in wards matched for socio-economic status and urbanization but with historically low levels of violence. The findings suggest that the relationship between national and religious identification in Northern Ireland is influenced by the sampling based on geographical experience of violence and that unexpected identity combinations and weaker patterns of identification are evident among participants in those areas with the least experience of violence.

Shared national identification in Northern Ireland: An application of psychological models of group inclusion post conflict

The common ingroup identity model (CIIM) holds that viewing former outgroup members as part of a larger shared ingroup can allow social categorisation to be harnessed for social cohesion. The ingroup projection model (IPM) suggests that even where shared identification occurs, social divisions can be transposed into superordinate groups. Here we explore the potentially inclusive national identity in a region (Northern Ireland) which has historically seen a high polarisation of identities. Using three data sets (N = 2000; N = 359; N = 1179), we examine the extent to which a superordinate inclusive national identity, Northern Irish, is related to conciliatory attitudes. We find a common ingroup identity is linked to more positive social attitudes but not to more positive political attitudes. We conclude by considering the complexities of applying psychological models in the real world where structural and historical social divisions and vexing oppositional political questions can be transposed into new social and political orders.

Bystander Reaction to Women Fighting Developing a Theory of Intervention

This article explores accounts of bystanders to female-on-female public violence. Group interviews with participants in the night-time economy are carried out. Whereas men tend to respond to the discussion topic of female-on-female violence with laughter, this laughter reveals ambivalence and discomfort as much as amusement. Men seem to negotiate the tension between the expectation that they should intervene in emergencies and a catalogue of costs that attend intervention. Female bystanders appear to have a different set of concerns. They talk about feelings of shame at the interpersonal and the group level. Women cite the public spectacle, and the opportunity for men to demean or sexualize women, as reasons for intervention. The article concludes with some recommendations about the importance of exploring female violence in its own terms, beginning with a series of identified moral and social dilemmas incurred within possible third-party intervention.

‘Unexpected’ and ‘Inclusive’ Social Identities in Intractable Conflict: The Case of Northern Ireland

In situations of intractable political conflict (e.g., in Israel–Palestine or the Basque region) social identification is of pivotal importance (e.g., Bar-Tal, 2007; Coleman, 2003; Kelman, 1999). The identities that underlie such conflicts are typically presented as oppositional (e.g., Arab and Jew or Basque and Spanish) and negatively interdependent (Kelman, 1999). However, even in situations of violent inter-group conflict and highly pervasive social divisions, other identities and categories coexist and the literature can be criticized for overemphasizing unitary social categorizations. This chapter focuses on the conflict in Northern Ireland, and explores the complexity of social identity in a situation where standard accounts represent society as consisting of a strictly bipartite oppositional structure. The conflict, euphemistically known as ‘The Troubles’, has often been characterized by division along religious grounds, a simplified representation of the conflict as involving two opposing communities distinguished by a neat division along closely elided national and religious categories: to be Catholic is to consider oneself of Irish nationality and to be Protestant is to consider oneself British (Livingstone &Haslam, 2008). The conflict is therefore ostensibly about competing British and Irish national claims over the north of the island of Ireland. The studies described in this chapter use people’s own self-described social identities to challenge the received representation of the conflict as a dualistic division of two competing national–religious combinations.

Identity and Psychological Health

The last 10 years has seen a burgeoning of interest in the role of social identity as a driver of health. In this chapter, we consider three important ways that social identity can be considered an important driver of health and well-being in situations of political violence. Drawing on contemporary psychological research as well as the social identity approach to understanding peace and conflict, we first consider how groups shape our exposure to political violence. Second, the relationship between group memberships and identities is considered, underlining how identities are important mediators of the relationship between group risk and individual outcome. Contemporary research evidence demonstrating the role of identities in shaping health resources is then considered with particular reference to literature on the psychological impact of war and violence. This analysis emphasises the dual role of identities: shaping as they do both psychological resilience and support for intergroup hostilities.

Psychological Barriers to a Peaceful Resolution: Longitudinal Evidence from the Middle East and Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT Does individual-level exposure to political violence prompt conciliatory attitudes? Does the answer vary by phase of conflict? The study uses longitudinal primary datasets to test the hypothesis that conflict-related experiences impact conciliation. Data were collected from Israeli Jews, Palestinians, and Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Across both contexts, and among both parties to each conflict, psychological distress and threat perceptions had a polarizing effect on conciliatory preferences. The study highlights that experiences of political violence are potentially a crucial source of psychological distress, and consequently, a continuing barrier to peace. This has implications in peacemaking, implying that alongside removing the real threat of violence, peacemakers must also work toward the social and political inclusion of those most affected by previous violence.