Материал: Rethinking ethnicity, 2nd Edition by Richard Jenkins
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2001; Todd 2005; Todd et al. 2006). Brubaker et al., for example, drawing on my distinction between nominal and virtual aspects of identification (see Chapter 4), contrast the nominal and the experiential modalities of ‘being Hungarian’ or ‘being Romanian’ in Cluj, and the complex interplay of everyday contingencies, collective categorical content – ‘cultural stuff’ – and individual decision-making (2006: 207–38). Individuals can be described in the same way, by themselves and by others, yet do their ‘identity’, and experience their ‘being’, in very different ways
In this chapter I want to look at some of the ‘cultural stuff’ of ethnicity in Northern Ireland. In particular, I am going to discuss the contribution made by the cultural content of ethnicity – specifically religion – to the nature of relations at and across the boundary between the groups involved. The nominal content of ethnicity in Northern Ireland is indeed religious; the opposition between Catholic and Protestant is its root classification. As argued in the previous chapter, the historical and everyday virtualities of this, its consequences, can be traced in the economic field and, although this was not explored in detail, with respect to violence. But how does religion contribute to the situation apart from being a convenient marker of ethnic difference?
That the Northern Irish ‘troubles’ are about religion remains an important facet of the image of the situation that is held by the British public and many external observers. This image allows violence to be explained away as an irrational anachronism, and the Northern Irish people to be dismissed as ‘backwoodsmen’ or ‘ignorant peasants’ who have yet to discover the modern era, let alone the twentyfirst century. It has, probably inadvertently, been reinforced by analyses with titles such as Holy War in Belfast (Boyd 1969) and ‘Religious War in Northern Ireland’ (Easthope 1976). A strong version of the thesis that the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland are, indeed, a conflict of religion has been defended vigorously by John Fulton (1991); more moderate versions have been put forward by John Hickey (1984), Maurice Irvine (1991) and Claire Mitchell (2006). The centrality of Protestant theology to the Northern Irish conflict figures prominently in the work of Steve Bruce (1986, 1994) and Brewer and Higgins (1998, 1999; Higgins and Brewer 2003). In this chapter I will explore in what senses, if indeed any, it is correct to understand the Northern Ireland problem as a religious conflict.
Varieties of religious conflict
Before looking at the local detail of Northern Ireland, it may be useful to consider some general characteristics of situations of religious conflict, and how they relate to ethnicity. I am not, for example, concerned with the existence of doctrinal, ceremonial or cosmological differences between religions or sects. In the sense in which the word is used here, it is not religions as ideological systems that are in conflict, but their members. The very existence of different religions, sects, or communities of worship presupposes that there will be differences of opinion – which may be fundamental and total – between them, as bodies of belief, with respect to their corporate world-views, religious and moral doctrines and ritual practices. They can, therefore, legitimately be said to be always ‘in conflict’ – in a weak sense – with respect to these issues.
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The existence of conflicts of this kind doesn’t necessarily lead to actual conflictual struggles – whether violent or non-violent – between individuals or groups who identify themselves as devotees of the doctrines concerned. It is with religious conflict in this latter, strong sense of the word that I am here concerned. What is it about a situation of conflict and struggle that distinguishes it as religious? We may begin by saying that such a situation is religious if a significant number of the parties to the conflict define it as being primarily about religion or religion-related matters. It is possible to tentatively identify five ideal-typical conflict situations that may be characterized as conflicts of religion in this strong sense.
The first may be described as a missionary conflict: members of one religious group seek to expand outside their own territory and proselytize non-members. This may involve force in the proselytizing or in the local response to it. Examples can be found ready to hand in both Christian and Islamic history. Some of the ethnocide reported from Amazonia in recent years appears, on the face of things, to fall into this category. However, it is also true to say, as this example illustrates, that in many such situations missionary zeal goes easily hand in hand with baser economic motives; it isn’t easy to disentangle one from the other. In other words, missionary religion may also be an ideology of identification, no less useful for the legitimation and justification of dirty work, where appropriate, than, for example, racism or nationalism.
In the second place, there is the holy war: a dispute over territory or possessions that are regarded by at least one of the parties to the conflict as sacred or otherwise symbolically significant. Examples of this are once again all too easy to find: one only has to point to the long-standing disputes over the Holy Places of Palestine between Christians, Muslims and (more recently) Jews. In practice, of course, as in the case of jihad – a word with which the modern world has recently had to become reacquainted – the distinction between missionary conflict and holy war may be more difficult to discern than is apparent from these bald definitions.
Third, a situation in which two or more religious groups occupy the same territorial and social space, and the dominant group penalizes the religious practices of the subordinated group(s), may be described as religious persecution. Familiar examples of this kind of conflict are the Inquisition of medieval Europe or, if one accepts the characterization of Soviet state socialism as a secular religion (Lane 1981), the persecution of religious minorities in the former Soviet Union. Similarly, one can point to many colonial situations in which a missionary conflict became, with the consolidation of conquest, religious persecution. Conflicts of this kind frequently also involve other, broader, cultural issues, such as the right to use an indigenous language.
Fourth, religious competition, is characterized by two or more religious groupings – although most usually two – coexisting within the same space and struggling for dominance. Since there is a tendency for one or other of the parties to achieve that aim, such situations are often short-lived, in historical terms. An imperfect example of this kind of situation, because it was also bound up with secular politics, may be found in the Catholic–Protestant conflicts in the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Goudsblom 1967: 17–19). The resolution of a situation of religious competition may often result in religious persecution in the period that follows.
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Finally, there is a particular kind of situation of conflict that is about religious politics; that is to say, struggles for power and influence within religious institutions or groups. Religious organizations are probably no more and no less vulnerable to conflicts of this kind than their secular counterparts. Schisms within modern Sikhism between the Akali Dal and the Nihang Buddha Dal factions – a conflict which was successfully manipulated to its own advantage in the Punjab in the 1980s by the Indian Congress Party – is an example of religious politics, as is the conflict between Shia and Sunni Muslims in the contemporary Middle East. These examples highlight the possibilities that exist for religious politics to become implicated in secular politics, and vice versa.
How to distinguish between one type of situation and another in the real, as opposed to the ideal-typical, world is not so straightforward. More than one of these types of conflict can be present at the same point in space and time, as in the example of the early modern Netherlands, where it is possible to discern elements of a missionary conflict alongside religious competition. Similarly, a situation of one type may change rapidly into a situation more closely resembling another. In addition, as has already been mentioned, issues other than the religious may be implicated in religious conflicts. These distinctions and definitions are, therefore, nothing more than a potentially useful set of categories against which to set the description and analysis of particular situations.
An obvious question at this point is how does religion interact with other sources of identification – such as class consciousness, economic interest, party solidarity, or nationalism – which can make important contributions to the genesis and continuation of conflict? This question was at the foreground of attempts to understand the ethnic conflicts that spilled blood all over the former Yugoslavia during the early 1990s. More generally, does it make sense to delineate a domain of the ‘religious’ that is distinct from these other factors? These questions are more easily asked than answered. However, it may prove possible to shed some light on the issues by returning to ethnicity, which can be either a source of conflict, or the cultural or ideological idiom in which conflict is pursued. Ethnicity is also, of course, a source of social solidarity. Difference and similarity, again.
With respect to group identity, ethnicity is about the differences and similarities that are recognized as significant by their members. But which differences provide local models of ethnic identification with their content? Among others, the following are obvious possibilities: language, territorial occupation, religion, and a shared history (particularly, perhaps, a history of conflict with other ethnic groups). The important point to note in this context is that religion may be – I might even want to put this more strongly: is likely to be – an important dimension of ethnic identity. This, of necessity almost, poses the further question: when are religious conflicts actually ethnic conflicts, and vice versa?
Framed thus, the question permits no straightforward or clear-cut answer. However, some headway may be made by returning to the earlier definition of religious conflict: in this sense, a conflict is ‘religious’ if it is defined as such by a significant proportion of the parties to it. Without wishing to evoke disputes about false knowledge or ideology that have long since passed their sell-by date, the further question can, of course, be asked: what if the participants in a conflict only think it’s about religious issues? What if it’s really about ethnicity (or nationalism,
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or class struggle, or whatever)? Short of declaring, by epistemological fiat, that our analytical models of social reality are intrinsically more trustworthy than their folk models – in effect that the social scientist, like mother, knows best – there is no easy resolution of this difficulty. On the one hand, socially competent actors are reasonably knowledgeable about the meaning and consequences of their own practices and the practices of others. On the other, however, in a situation in which the actors disagree about what’s going on, the social scientist is arguably in a position to make at least some more sense of the situation than the immediate participants (Bauman 1990: 12–15; Jenkins 2002a: 27–31). All one can do is to examine the specificities of each case and attempt to judge accordingly.
Religious differences and conflict in Northern Ireland
Since the late 1960s, Northern Ireland has been the arena for a bitter and violently contested three-cornered conflict, involving the two major segments of its population and the British state. Despite the current, post-1998 ‘peace process’ and a welcome dramatic decline in violence it is too early to be confident that the conflict is over. These ‘troubles’ are the latest in a history of such conflicts in the island of Ireland taken as a whole; their genesis and subsequent development must be understood in the context of that history, some of which has been outlined in the previous chapter. In what sense, therefore, can the present ‘troubles’ be thought of as a religious conflict?
If for no other reason, the Northern Irish conflict has a religious aspect because the two local protagonist groups identify themselves nominally as Catholics and Protestants. These are not, however, the only labels with which each community categorizes the other, or identifies themselves. Depending on the context, ‘British’, ‘Ulsterman’, ‘unionist’, ‘loyalist’ or ‘Orangeman’, for example, may equate with Protestant, and ‘Irish’, ‘fenian’, ‘taig’, ‘republican’ or ‘nationalist’, with Catholic (O’Donnell 1977: 139–45). These bear witness that, in Northern Ireland, group identity is complex rather than simple, multiplex rather than single-stranded. In this case, it would appear to draw upon political, religious and ethnic-cultural themes as the source of its significance.
Nor is religion just a label. It is important to acknowledge that, taken solely at face value, Catholic and Protestant are, for many Northern Irish people, considerably more than nominal identifications. In an increasingly secular – although not actually disenchanted – north-western Europe, Northern Ireland (with the rest of Ireland) stands out in terms of belief and practical devotion. Survey evidence is clear that, with respect to both camps:
People in Northern Ireland are not only far more likely than people in Britain to belong to a religious organisation, they are also more likely to attend church … In the ordinary senses of the word, the people of Northern Ireland are considerably more ‘religious’ than those of Britain. The churches in Northern Ireland are more conservative or orthodox in their theology than their British counterparts. (Bruce and Alderdice 1993: 6, 19)
Being a Protestant or being a Catholic makes an important everyday, and at least an every-seventh-day, difference to the Northern Irish. Religion has its own intrinsic
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virtualities; it is not just nominal, it is much more than a label (although this isn’t true for everyone: the survey evidence that Bruce and Alderdice summarize suggests that about a third of the population attend church ‘rarely’). With respect to the meanings that frame identification and everyday life in Northern Ireland, while there is no doubt that the secular impulse is stronger today than ever, it would be unwise to neglect the significance of religious beliefs and observances (Mitchell 2006: 22–8). Although the labels Catholic and Protestant in Northern Ireland are indexical of many other differences, they also refer to authentic religiosity.
Apart from the names by which the opposing groups are identified, and identify themselves, in what other senses can religious differences per se be said to be part of the Northern Irish conflict? In the first place, doctrinal and theological differences between Catholicism and Protestantism are intimately bound up with the gulf that separates the two traditions with respect to the necessity and nature of mediation between God and humankind. In Northern Ireland this finds particularly frequent expression, for example, in Protestant anti-papist fulminations and accusations of idolatry and authoritarianism. These, however, are conflicts in the weak sense of the word, and are not of major interest in this context: the same doctrinal differences exist between the two religious communities elsewhere without civil strife occurring. With respect to religious differences of this kind, dissent between the various Protestant denominations and sects is also important. An extreme – and, in the local context, highly visible – example of this kind of disagreement is the hostility expressed by groups such as the Reverend Ian Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church towards the Ecumenical Movement and its local Protestant supporters. Once again, however, virulent Protestant denominationalism of this sort is not peculiar to Northern Ireland, nor is it – even in Northern Ireland – inevitably productive of violent conflict.
So what about the contribution of religion to conflict – in the strong sense – in Northern Ireland? One of the most apparent, and perhaps the most widely commented-on, religious dimensions of the situation lies in the field of education. Regardless of modest growth since the 1980s in the number of integrated schools, there are effectively two major education systems in Northern Ireland, as there have been since the 1920s: one Protestant (controlled schools) and one Catholic (maintained schools), each insulated in all major respects from the other (Akenson, 1973; Gallagher 2003: 61–3). The clergy are highly influential in both systems; indirectly in the Protestant, directly in the Catholic. Apart from the interactional segregation that this situation reinforces, there remain, despite a common curriculum since the late 1980s, differences between the two systems with respect to the teaching of Irish history, sport, religious education (obviously) and maths and science (Gallagher 2003: 65; Osborne 2004: 78–80).
However, it is no easy matter to assess the contribution made to the conflict in Northern Ireland by religiously segregated education. Although on the level of common sense one might expect it to have had some effect, Murray has argued that segregated education simply reflects the prejudice and social segregation of Northern Irish society in general and that the specific influence of education on the local situation has been ‘grossly exaggerated’ (Murray 1983: 149). Be that as it may – and Murray’s argument is persuasive – there can be little doubt that segregated schooling serves to reproduce, even if it does not create, the boundaries between the two ethnic groups. This is particularly important with respect to infant and