The Troubles in Ballybogoin: Memory and Identity in Northern Ireland

An exploration of how social memory serves to hinder communication and foster disorder in Northern Ireland. "The Troubles" (Irish: Na Trioblóidí) were a period of conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years from the late 1960s to the late 1990s. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is sometimes described as an "irregular war" or "low-level war". Much has been written about this age-old rift between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, but there existed no ethnography to map the two sides. This book accomplishes this by taking, literally, a street-level view. It offers a glimpse at how social memory enters the workaday world to hinder communication and foster disorder. It is also a critique of the dichotomies made between past and present, Protestant and Catholic, urban and rura, polarities that served not the people but the state and its agents, the most powerful cultural-political force.