https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8405-576X
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ABSTRACT
The ‘local turn’ and ‘visual turn’ are increasingly crucial in peacebuilding processes in post-conflict societies. This research combines these concepts, offering a deeper understanding of communities experiencing ongoing peace processes and the environments where these processes take place. It uses the ‘local-visual turn’ with a photo-elicitation methodology to understand the relationship between the material world, social realities, and local peacebuilding processes. Specifically, in Northern Ireland, a post-conflict state experiencing ongoing tensions exacerbated by Brexit. Photo-elicitation interviews were carried out across local communities in Northern Ireland. The findings point to four key themes: local understandings of peace processes in Northern Ireland at the onset of Brexit; youth, peace, and the future of Northern Ireland; religion, churches and the peace processes; and paramilitarism and the peace processes. The results demonstrate that peace processes can be more comprehensively understood by rooting research methodologies in local experiences and physical landscapes.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 MacGinty and Richmond, The Local Turn in Peace Building: a critical agenda for peace’; Millar. ‘Decentring the intervention experts: Ethnographic peace research and policy engagement’; Hutchison and Bleiker, ‘Visuality of Peace and Conflict’; Bleiker, ‘Mapping Visual Global Politics.’
2 Ljungkvist and Jarstad. ‘Revisiting the local turn in peacebuilding – through the emerging urban approach,’ 2209.
3 Ibid., 2209; MacGinty and Richmond, The Local Turn in Peace Building: a critical agenda for peace,’ 763.
4 Hutchison and Bleiker, ‘Visuality of Peace and Conflict;’ 175–189.
5 Ibid., 175–189.
6 Bignante, ‘The use of photo-elicitation in field research,’ 2.
7 MacGinty and Firchow, ‘Top-down and bottom-up narratives of peace and conflict,’ 309.
8 Millar. ‘Decentring the intervention experts: Ethnographic peace research and policy engagement,’ 261.
9 MacGinty and Richmond, The Local Turn in Peace Building: a critical agenda for peace,’ 763.
10 Ibid., 772.
11 Ibid., 772.
12 MacGinty and Firchow. ‘Top-down and bottom-up narratives of peace and conflict’; MacGinty and Richmond, ‘The Local Turn in Peace Building: a critical agenda for peace,’ 772; Millar. ‘Decentring the intervention experts: Ethnographic peace research and policy engagement,’ 261.
13 Ware and Ware. ‘Everyday peace: rethinking typologies of social practice and local agency.”’ 2.
14 Ware and Ware, ‘Everyday peace: rethinking typologies of social practice and local agency.”’ 2.
15 Ibid., 2; MacGinty and Firchow. ‘Top-down and bottom-up narratives of peace and conflict’, 309.
16 Ibid., 309.
17 Hutchison and Bleiker, ‘Visuality of Peace and Conflict,’ 179; Bleiker, ‘Mapping Visual Global Politics,’ ebook.
18 Ibid., 179.
19 Ibid., 177.
20 Ibid., 177.
21 McEvoy-Levy. ‘Youth Spaces in Haunted Places: Placemaking for Peacebuilding in Theory and Practice,’ 1.
22 Ross. ‘Cultural Contestation as a Tool for Examining Ethnic Conflict,’ 8.
23 Ibid., 8.
24 McEvoy-Levy. ‘Youth Spaces in Haunted Places: Placemaking for Peacebuilding in Theory and Practice,’ 1.
25 Brand, ‘Urban Artifacts and Social Practices in a Contested City,’ 37–38.
26 McEvoy-Levy. ‘Youth Spaces in Haunted Places: Placemaking for Peacebuilding in Theory and Practice,’ 1.
27 Brand, ‘Urban Artifacts and Social Practices in a Contested City,’ 37.
28 McEvoy-Levy. ‘Youth Spaces in Haunted Places: Placemaking for Peacebuilding in Theory and Practice,’ 1; Donofrio. ‘Ground Zero and Place-Making Authority: The Conservative Metaphors in 9/11 Families’ ‘Take Back the Memorial” Rhetoric,’ 152; Saar and Palang, ‘The Dimensions of Place Meanings,’ 7.
29 Saar and Palang ‘The Dimensions of Place Meanings,’ 2.
30 Tepper., Not Here, Not Now, Not That!: Protest over Art and Culture in America.
31 Saar and Palang, ‘The Dimensions of Place Meanings,’ 7.
32 Ibid., 7.
33 McEvoy-Levy. ‘Youth Spaces in Haunted Places: Placemaking for Peacebuilding in Theory and Practice,’ 2.
34 Ross. Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict.
35 Todd, ‘Northern Ireland: Timing and Sequencing of Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Peacebuilding,’ 3.
36 Carroll. ‘New IRA and Saoradh face backlash over Lyra McKee murder.’ The Guardian.
37 McClements, ‘Not in Our Name. RIP Lyra’ – new graffiti in Derry signals change.’ The Irish Times.
38 Tepper., Not Here, Not Now, Not That!: Protest over Art and Culture in America.
39 Todd. ‘Symbolic Complexity and Political Division: The Changing Role of Religion in Northern Ireland,’ 85.
40 Noonan, ‘You have to be violent to be heard’: Northern Ireland’s teens take to the streets’, Financial Times.
41 Brewer et al., The Sociology of Everyday Life Peacebuilding, 1.
42 Michael Hirst, ‘NI riots: What is behind the violence in Northern Ireland?’, BBC News.
43 BBC News. 2021. Newtownabbey: Bus hijacked and set on fire by gang.
44 Archick. Northern Ireland: The Peace Process, Ongoing Challenges and the U.S. Interests, 10.
45 ogatchnik. ‘Northern Ireland violence spurred by Brexit “a clear and present danger,” say experts.’
46 Brand, ‘Urban Artifacts and Social Practices in a Contested City,’ 37.
47 Saar and Palang ‘The Dimensions of Place Meanings,’ 15.
48 Ross, ‘Cultural Contestation as a Tool for Examining Ethnic Conflict,’ 8; Poposki and Todorova. ‘Public Memory in Post-Conflict Skopje: Civic Art as Resistance to Narratives of Ethnicity and Deintegration,’ 98.
49 Henry, Lloyd, and Ritchie. ‘People. Power and Planning in Public Places: the Making of Covenant Day,’ 110–113.
50 Psycho-cultural dramas as defined by Howard Ross (2001, 159) are ‘conflicts between groups over competing, and apparently irresolvable, claims that engage the central elements of each group’s historical experience and identity and invoke suspicions and fears of the opponent.’; Ross, ‘Cultural Contestation as a Tool for Examining Ethnic Conflict,’ 14.
51 Ross, ‘Cultural Contestation as a Tool for Examining Ethnic Conflict,’ 14.
52 Browne and Bradley, ‘Promoting Northern Ireland’s peacebuilding experience in Palestine–Israel: normalising the status quo’, 2.
53 Madden, ‘Poll: 59% in Northern Ireland fear summer of violence over Brexit Irish Sea border’, Belfast Telegraph.
54 Carrol, ‘Brexit: loyalist paramilitary groups renounce Good Friday agreement’, The Guardian.
55 Marrick, ‘Unionist leader warns of violence returning to Northern Ireland because of Brexit ‘betrayal’, 26 March 2021, The Independent.
56 Blazakis and Clarke, ‘Brexit Could Spark a Return to Violence in Northern Ireland,’ Foreign Policy.
57 Xanthe et al, ‘Visual Methodologies in Qualitative Research: Autophotography and Photo Elicitation Applied to Mental Health Research,’ 2.
58 Leonard and McKnight, ‘Look and Tell: Using Photo-Elicitation Methods with Teenagers’, 629.
59 Ibid., 632.
60 Ibid., 640.
61 Bignante, ‘The use of photo-elicitation in field research,’: 2; Douglas Harper, ‘Talking about pictures: a case for photo elicitation’, 13.
62 Auken, Van, and Stewart. ‘Visualising community: using participant-driven photo-elicitation for research and application.’, 375.
63 Bignante, ‘The use of photo-elicitation in field research,’ 2.
64 Harper, ‘Talking about pictures: a case for photo elicitation’, 13.
65 Derejko, et al, ‘A Picture Is Worth … ? Photo Elicitation Interviewing With Formerly Homeless Adults’, 1436.
66 Bignante, ‘The use of photo-elicitation in field research,’ 2.
67 Derejko, et al, ‘A Picture Is Worth … ? Photo Elicitation Interviewing With Formerly Homeless Adults’, 1436. 1436; Harper, ‘Talking about pictures: a case for photo elicitation’, 13.
68 Bignante, ‘The use of photo-elicitation in field research’, 2.
69 Harper, ‘Talking about pictures: a case for photo elicitation’, 20–21.
70 Leonard and McKnight, ‘Look and Tell: Using Photo-Elicitation Methods with Teenagers’630.
71 Torre and Murphy, ‘A Different Lens: Using Photo-Elicitation Interviews’, 6.
72 Harper, ‘Talking about pictures: a case for photo elicitation’, 21.
73 Derejko et al, ‘A Picture Is Worth … ? Photo Elicitation Interviewing With Formerly Homeless Adults’, 1435.
74 Archick. Northern Ireland: The Peace Process, Ongoing Challenges and the U.S. Interests, 22.
75 Archick. Northern Ireland: The Peace Process, Ongoing Challenges and the U.S. Interests, 11.
76 Ibid., 22.
77 Archick. Northern Ireland: The Peace Process, Ongoing Challenges and the U.S. Interests, 27.
78 Good Friday Agreement, 6.
79 Crozier-De Rosa and Mackie, Remembering Women’s Activism.
80 Interview, former IRA member and former political prisoner and community worker with a republican affiliated organisation. 18 May 2016.
81 Power, ‘Introduction: Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland’, 1–17.
82 Interview, cross community organisation worker in North Belfast. 23 August 2016.
83 Interview, cross community organisation worker in North Belfast. 23 August 2016.
84 Haydon, McAlister and Scraton, ‘Violence in the Lives of Children and Youth in “Post-Conflict” Northern Ireland’,16.
85 Interview, Protestant religious leader during the Troubles and former chaplain in the Orange Order. 4 October 2016.
86 Schwartz, Youth and Post-conflict Reconstruction: Agents of Change, 2.
87 Ellison, ‘The Role of Youth in Post Accord Transformation in Northern Ireland.’
88 Murphy, Policing for Peace in Northern Ireland: Change, Conflict and Community Confidence.
89 McEvoy-Levy, ‘Youth, Violence and Conflict Transformation.’, 89–90.
90 Interview, cross community organisation worker in North Belfast. 23 August 2016.
91 Martz, ‘Introduction to Trauma Rehabilitation After War and Conflict.
92 Fitzgerald, et al. The Transgenerational Impact of ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland.
93 Interview, cross community organisation worker in North Belfast. 23 August 2016.
94 McEvoy-Levy, ‘Youth, Violence and Conflict Transformation.’ Peace Review.
95 Interview, cross community organisation worker in North Belfast. 23 August 2016.
96 Archick. Northern Ireland: The Peace Process, Ongoing Challenges and the U.S. Interests, 21–22; Todd. ‘Symbolic Complexity and Political Division: The Changing Role of Religion in Northern Ireland,’ 85.
97 Ibid., 87; Ibid.,21–22.
98 Interview, art curator and founder of a local non-affiliated arts community organisation. May 18.
99 Gladys and Brady, ‘The churches, reconciliation and addressing the legacy of intercommunal violence in Northern Ireland,’ 94; Power, ‘Building Communities in a Post-conflict Society: Churches and Peace-Building Initiatives in Northern Ireland since 1998,’ 55.
100 Interview, Presbyterian Church board member. 4 October 2016.
101 Interview, former IRA member and former political prisoner and community worker with a republican affiliated organisation. 18 May 2016.
102 Interview, former UDA member and former political prisoner. 7 October 2016.
103 Interview, art curator and founder of a local non-affiliated arts community organisation. 18 May 2016.
104 Some of the primary paramilitary groups include: ‘the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF); the Red Hand Commando (RHC); the Ulster Defense Association (UDA, which also conducted attacks under the name of the Ulster Freedom Fighters, or UFF); the South East Antrim (SEA) group of the UDA; Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF); the Irish Republican Army (IRA, also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, or PIRA); and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA)’ (Archick, 2022, 17).
105 Archick. Northern Ireland: The Peace Process, Ongoing Challenges and the U.S. Interests, 17.
106 Ibid., 17.
107 Archick. Northern Ireland: The Peace Process, Ongoing Challenges and the U.S. Interests, 17.
108 The UYM is the youth division of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), a loyalist paramilitary group.
109 Images of the soldiers often represent the 36th Ulster Division that fought during the First World War, and it is not uncommon to see them used in Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) murals (Rolston, Trying to Reach the Future through the Past’: Murals and Memories in Northern Ireland,’ 301).
110 Archick. Northern Ireland: The Peace Process, Ongoing Challenges and the U.S. Interests, 17.
111 Interview, Protestant religious leader during the Troubles and former chaplain in the Orange Order. 4 October 2016.
112 Interview, Alliance Party politician in East Belfast. 24 August 2016.
113 Interview, former UDA member and former political prisoner. 7 October 2016.
114 Interview, Protestant religious leader during the Troubles and former chaplain in the Orange Order. 4 October 2016.
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Serena Clark
Serena Clark works as a postdoctoral researcher at Maynooth University and a consultant for the International Organization for Migration. She holds a doctorate in international peace studies and conflict resolution from Trinity College Dublin, where she was a Rotary International Global Peace Scholar. She has published on immigration policy, peacebuilding during crises, sustainable development and social justice issues around gender, psychological well being, and education. Her research interests include interdisciplinary research, policy, migration, peacebuilding and political extremism.