Suchergebnisse

This article reviews some recent trends in research on everyday identity change. It argues that this field of research makes an important contribution to the explanation of political change and social transformation. It is particularly relevant to research on participation, social movements and contentious politics: like the latter, it emphasizes relationality, temporality and context, not simply variables and generalization; like the latter, it focusses on agency, choice and social practice as well as structure, power and constraint. Its focus on moving out from exclusivist, closed and oppositional forms of group identity is of particular interest. The article outlines some of the challenges and achievements of this field of research and highlights four areas where significant work exists and where it may usefully be developed further. In particular it focusses on: boundary work, and the informal nudging of boundaries towards greater permeability; identity-work, and the challenge of comparison; (once)-dominated and (once-)dominant groups, and their distinctive forms of identity change; and the interrelation of everyday, institutional and political processes. It argues for the need to incorporate analysis of everyday change in multi-levelled explanations of socio-political outcomes.

Central to reaching peace and settlement in Northern Ireland was a sequence of British–Irish intergovernmental discussions and negotiations, dating from the beginning of the 1980s. British and Irish state cooperation and intervention has remained central to the stability of the settlement reached in 1998. The motives of state actors, however, have been unclear, and the role of the state in the political process has been the subject of some scholarly controversy. This paper looks at the types of evidence that can help to resolve such questions. It focuses on the value of elite interviews, arguing that they can constitute an important and irreplaceable body of evidence when used critically, but it also highlights the risks of excessive reliance on this type of source. It goes on to describe a major research project in University College Dublin whose aim was to record the experiences and interpretations of the actors who engaged in British–Irish negotiations over the last four decades. It discusses the resulting elite interviews and witness seminars and the methodological and ethical difficulties encountered. It describes how these were overcome, and outlines the conditions of confidentiality imposed.