Exploring the complex dynamics of twenty-first century spatial sociality, this volume provides a much-needed multi-dimensional perspective that undermines the dominant image of Northern Ireland as a conflict-ridden place. Despite touching on memories of “the Troubles” and continuing unionist-nationalist tensions, the volume refuses to consider people in the region as purely political beings, or to understand processes of placemaking solely through ethnic or national contestations and territoriality. Topics such as the significance of friendship, gender, and popular culture in spatial practices are considered, against the backdrop of the growing presence of migrants, refugees and diasporic groups.
Arvustused
Milena Komarova and Maruka Svaeks edited volume is a commendable piece of scholarship on Northern Ireland that manages to be ambitious in scope but never scattershot in execution a magnificent work on the outbound orientation of mobility and sociality and, lamentably, how this sociability brushes up against the walls and the persistent, dichotomous views of two opposing communities that constrain and reify them. JRAI
A very welcome and timely contribution This is a book that manages to be both detailed and insightful in its elaboration of fascinating empirical data whilst also being very strong in its conceptual and methodological contribution. Katy Hayward, Queen's University Belfast
This volume will set a new benchmark for the ethnographic study of life in the north of Ireland today. Focusing on practices and discourses of placemaking, it explores many of the nooks and crannies of everyday life that are perhaps less than visible to the outsider It is a pleasure to read and makes an important contribution to our understanding of the place in question, and its people, but also to the wider anthropology of the contemporary world. Richard P Jenkins, Sheffield University
[ This book] represents a valuable addition to the literature on Northern Ireland due to the manner in which it integrates the new with the established, the perspectives of the majority communities with those of the new minority communities and in the way that it foregrounds women's perspectives. Neil Jarman, Queen's University Belfast
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Spatiality, Movement and Place-Making
Maruka Svaek and Milena Komarova
Chapter
1. Growing up with the Troubles: Reading and Negotiating Space
Angela Stephanie Mazzeti
Chapter
2. Crafting Identities: Prison Artefacts and Place-Making in Pre-
and Post-ceasefire Northern Ireland
Erin Hinson
Chapter
3. Recalling or Suggesting Phantoms: Walking in Belfast
Elizabeth DeYoung
Chapter
4. Women on the Peace Line: Challenging Divisions through the
Space of Friendship
Andrea García González
Chapter
5. You Have No Legitimate Reason to Access: Visibility and
Movement in Contested Urban Space
Milena Komarova
Chapter
6. Lifting the Cross in West Belfast: Enskilling Crucicentric
Vision Through Pedestrian Spatial Practice
Kayla Rush
Chapter
7. Engaging amid Divisions: Social Media as a Space for Political
Intervention and Interactions in Northern Ireland
Augusto H. Gazir M. Soares
Chapter
8. Belfasts Festival of Fools: Sharing Space through Laughter
Nick McCafferty
Chapter
9. Criss-crossing Pathways: The Indian Community Centre as a Focus
of Diasporic and Cross-Community Place-Making
Maruka Svaek
Chapter
10. Sushi or Spuds? Japanese Migrant Women and Practices of
Emplacement in Northern Ireland
Naoko Maehara
Chapter
11. Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Belfast: Finding Home through
Space and Time
Malcolm Franklin
Afterword: Cupar Way or Cupar Street Integration and Division around a
Belfast Wall
Dominic Bryan
Index
Milena Komarova is a Research Officer at the Centre for Cross Border Studies, Armagh and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen's University Belfast. Her research spans the fields of conflict transformation, urban sociology and border studies, exploring the intersections between place, identities and bordering practices within and without ethno-nationally divided cities.
