The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland: Power, Conflict and Emancipation

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Cambridge University Press, Nov 13, 1996 - History - 365 pages
This book offers a uniquely comprehensive account of the conflict in Northern Ireland, providing a rigorous analysis of its dynamics and present structure and proposing a new approach to its resolution. It deals with historical process, communal relations, ideology, politics, economics and culture and with the wider British, Irish and international contexts. It reveals at once the enormous complexity of the conflict and shows how it is generated by a particular system of relationships which can be precisely and clearly described. The book proposes an emancipatory approach to the resolution of the conflict, conceived as the dismantling of this system of relationships. Although radical, this approach is already implicit in the converging understandings of the British and Irish governments of the causes of conflict. The authors argue that only much more determined pursuit of an emancipatory approach will allow an agreed political settlement to emerge.

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Contents

List of figures
x
List of tables
xi
Preface
xiii
Introduction
1
Historical formations
16
The reconstruction of communal division
49
Ideology and conflict
84
The dynamics of conflict politics
116
The British context of the Northern Ireland conflict
204
The Republic of Ireland and the conflict in Northern Ireland
232
The international context
266
An emancipatory approach to the conflict
290
Epilogue
317
Appendix
325
Bibliography
326
Index of names
351

The dynamics of conflict the economy
150
The dynamics of conflict culture
178

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