(Estimated Pub Date) the Challenge of Ethnic Conflict to National and International Order in the 1990S: Geographic Perspectives- October 1995

Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
In coming to grips with the behavioral patterns in the
Shankill-Falls frontier, . . . it must be recognized that
the two territories forming the frontier zone do not
nest compatibly within the same state—they are parts
of two apparently incompatible nationalisms, the
Irish on the one hand and the Northem Irish version
of the British on the other. . . . Thus the orientation of
the Protestant Shankill is “Ulster and British” while
the Roman Catholic Clonard is “Celtic Irish" in incli-
nation. This suggests, therefore, that the local frontier
in the vicinity of Cupar Street is not just an expres-
sion of urban ethnic differences, but is a microcosm
of national division. Boal and Livingstone, 1983, p.
154. (See figure 2.) ‘V
Boal and Livingstone draw attention to the signifi-
cance of scale and the possibility of intemational ten-
sions being focused within an urban district.
Depending on which level in the scale hierarchy one
chooses, specific places, such as the Clonard and
South Shankill, can be successively interpreted as:
1) peripheries of West Belfast; 2) peripheries of their
respective national cores—Roman Catholic Ireland
and Protestant Northern Ireland; or 3) a periphery
within a periphery of Great Britain and Northern Ire-
land, what Seamus Heaney (1975, p. 60) has called
the “besieged within the siege.” (See figure 3.)
In their discussion, Boal and Livingstone also bring to
the fore the question of how to interpret place specific
events in such a context. They analyze the influence
that culture, stress, violence, and lack of information
have on the conduct and intensity of group conflict
where key strategic locations are so infused with sym-
bolic meaning that any criminal act can be interpreted
as a “political demonstration of loyalty” to one side or
the other. This is the geographic equivalent of some
prisoners, who, as in the Easter Rising of 1916, refuse
to accept their classification as “common criminals”
but rather as “political prisoners of war” regardless of
the nature and type of offence committed. History has
a way of mythologizing the mundane, and often
squalid, acts of man as martyrdom and heroism.
This concept of a frontier divide could also be applied
elsewhere in Europe, for example, within Brussels and
along the Belgian linguistic divide. It also has mean-
ing for the cultural zone of transition separating Que-
bec from the rest of Canada.
The current cease-fire and complex negotiations to
reintroduce Sinn Fein into the political process as a
constitutional actor are finely balanced—dependent
on a combination of Republican political realism and
Conservatist/Unionist compromise. However, the
British-Irish border, together with the urban enclaves
of Republican support in Belfast and Derry, will be
significant geographic reminders that political ideals
and principles are often rooted in very specific locales
and are given real purchase by varying perceptions of
place.
Minority Nationalism
Ethnic minorities are an important element in the
political landscape of Western Europe. Much of the
power of minority autonomist nationalism in the
region lies in the ability of minority leaders to mobi-
lize people on the basis of their historical occupation
of the land. Territory figures prominently as a context
for sociopolitical processes and as a repository for a
threatened group identity and sustenance, while
nationalism-—despite its potential for destruction-
provides a beguilingly complete sociocultural frame-
work for political and economic action. Herein lies the
significance of resisting harmful outside influences in
both material and cultural-ideological terms and the
concern with developing a comprehensive definition
of the nation and its territory to establish political
legitimacy that can provide the basis for a call for
some form of autonomy (Williams, 1994). A. D.
Smith (1993, p.11) has phrased its allure thus:
nations derive their profound hold over the feelings
and imaginations of the people because they are his-
torically embedded. They are rooted in older and
more long-lasting ethnic ties, myths, and sentiments
from which these modem nations draw much of their
emotional and cultural sustenance and much of what
makes them distinctive, even unique. If nationalism is
the normalization of the unique, then we should not
be baffled by its global power. It satisfies the dual
craving to preserve what is felt to be a collective self
and all its special culture values, while inserting that
self as a political community into the community of
nations by endowing it with the standard attributes of
the nation.
Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268