Coexistence work in Northern Ireland, continued

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Religion and politics tend to be synonymous in Northern Ireland, with Catholics generally voting for nationalist parties, who want a united Ireland, and Protestants voting for unionist parties, who want to retain the province’s link with Britain.

Such segregation means that it is quite possible for a substantial number of people, particularly those within working-class urban areas or in rural areas, to study, live, work and socialise for most of their lives, within their own community, and never develop any sustained relationships with someone from another community.

Although people do not look very different in Northern Ireland, social researcher Ed Cairns has identified 32 ways in which children, by the age of 12, can identify the community origin of people they meet.

Coexistence approaches
It has often been difficult to achieve agreement among either theorists or practitioners on a suitable strategic framework for resolving the conflict.

One of the main first disagreements has been between those who see the problems of Northern Ireland as structural and those who see it primarily as psycho-cultural.

Structural theories suggest there are incompatible claims upon power and that inequality is inherent in the existing structure.

Those addressing the conflict in Northern Ireland from a structural perspective have concentrated on working for justice and human rights, on equity issues, and on political and constitutional negotiation and bargaining.

By contrast, psycho-cultural theorists of conflict place a greater emphasis on identifying the fears and misconceptions between communities, on the lack of available trust for political negotiations. and on the need to develop, in the first place, relationships between the conflicting parties that are conducive to negotiation, compromise, and co-operation.

They also occasionally frame their theories within a context that looks at issues such as aggression, motivation, and unconscious psychoanalytic forces - an approach exemplified by Prof. Vamik Volkan in his article in this magazine.

Increasingly, the evidence from Northern Ireland is that such approaches are not incompatible, and indeed they are now deemed by many to be complementary. What this means in practice is that in order to have constructive discussions about issues of equality and agreed political structures, relationship building has to be part of the process in developing such discussions.

The multiple levels
In a conflict, it is too easy to assume that the main people to work with should be those who apparently are key to any peace process - politicians, or in armed conflict, military or paramilitary leaders. It is an obvious temptation for these people to be targeted by anyone looking for a speedy end to a conflict, and of course such prioritization may indeed be useful. It will, however, often prove to be insufficient. 

Leaders can and do proclaim their adherence to agendas that are representative of their communities and will usually argue that this duty limits their capacity to be flexible and to deliver compromises. Hence there is a need to develop a comprehensive process of conflict resolution to address the multiple needs of communities in conflict.

In Northern Ireland, the need for such a comprehensive involvement has developed gradually and there has been some considerable success in engaging all levels of society in conflict management. 

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