Civic Identity and Public Space - by Dominic Bryan & Sean J Connolly (Hardcover)

About the Book

Today policy makers and politicians struggle to devise a strategy for the management of public space in a divided city, while endeavoring to promote a new sense of civic identity that will transcend long-standing sectarian and political divisions.

Book Synopsis

Civic identity and public space, focussing on Belfast, and bringing together the work of a historian and two social scientists, offers a new perspective on the sometimes lethal conflicts over parades, flags and other issues that continue to disrupt political life in Northern Ireland. It examines the emergence during the nineteenth century of the concept of public space and the development of new strategies for its regulation, the establishment, the new conditions created by the emergence in 1920 of a Northern Ireland state, of a near monopoly of public space enjoyed by Protestants and unionists, and the break down of that monopoly in more recent decades. Today policy makers and politicians struggle to devise a strategy for the management of public space in a divided city, while endeavouring to promote a new sense of civic identity that will transcend long-standing sectarian and political divisions.

From the Back Cover

Disputes over parades, flags and similar issues have for several decades played a central part in the ongoing conflict of nationalist and unionist. Civic identity and public space, focussing on Belfast, and bringing together the work of a historian and two social scientists, offers a new perspective on these sometimes lethal conflicts. While both sides like to present their case in terms of non-negotiable, historically grounded rights, a survey of the way in which public space has been thought about and regulated over the past two centuries shows that little of what is claimed can be taken for granted. Far from being a timeless absolute, our modern idea of the public is the product of very specific changes during the nineteenth century in the character of urban living, and its regulation has been from the start a matter of contention and debate. During the twentieth century the establishment of a new Northern Ireland state, with Belfast as its capital, saw unionism and Protestantism achieve a near complete monopoly of public space. In more recent decades, this monopoly has broken down, partly as a result of political violence, but also through the influence of new ideas of human rights and of a more positive vision of political and cultural diversity. Today policy makers and politicians struggle to devise a strategy for the management of public space in a divided city, while endeavouring to promote a new sense of civic identity that will transcend long-standing sectarian and political divisions.

Review Quotes

'[...] this is an important and welcome book that effectively illuminates a continued way forward to a shared future by recalling a complex and all-but-forgotten past. Inconvenient to both sides of the city's sectarian divide, that past reveals present-day political self-definitions to be the product of selective historical memory.'
Victorian Studies

About the Author

Dominic Bryan is Professor in Anthropology at Queen's University, Belfast

S.J. Connolly is Emeritus Professor of Irish History at Queen's University, Belfast

John Nagle is Professor of Sociology at Queen's University, Belfast