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.

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

Reviews

'[...] 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

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Book Information
ISBN 9781526163660
Author Dominic Bryan
Format Paperback
Page Count 248
Imprint Manchester University Press
Publisher Manchester University Press
Weight(grams) 358g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 13mm