The Troubles in Ballybogoin: Memory and Identity in Northern Ireland

Notes

Notes = Introduction 1. The names of all the people in this ethnography, other than my own, are pseudonyms. The name of the town and those of its surrounding villages are pseudonyms as well. Much of the ‹eldwork completed for this book was done in moments of extreme violence and danger. I promised those consulted for this book anonymity. As discussed in the preface, I am aware that more knowledge could be gleaned by contextualizing these events precisely in terms of statistical information and location, but such precision would be irresponsible in the Northern Ireland context. I have tried to protect the privacy of all the individuals represented in this book. I hope readers will honor their wishes to remain anonymous . 2. Throughout this book, “the British security forces” refers to the British army, the Northern Ireland police—the Royal Ulster Constabulary—and the Ulster Defense Regiment, a locally raised and mainly part-time unit of the British army that was created in 1970. 3. Scheper-Hughes includes this quote from one of her consultants in the second , paperback edition to her award-winning book. This inclusion, unusual in its time, was a very brave move, one that has helped subsequent ‹eld-workers of Ireland to re›ect on their practices. 4. Although I use de Certeau’s de‹nitions of space and place here, I do not adhere to this notion of the differences between these terms in the remainder of the book. Conforming to anthropological understandings of place, I use place to represent the appropriation of physical space by social actors, particularly the attribution of meaning to physical space. De Certeau’s depiction, however, provides an apt meaning for discussing the relationship I am trying to grasp here, so I use his categories to understand this situation. 5. In Ballybogoin, Irish nationalists and Irish republicans were distinguished from one another. Both groups aspire to a united Ireland, a nation-state that 215 would join the six of the nine counties of the Province of Ulster that make up Northern Ireland to the twenty-six counties of the Republic of Ireland, three of which are Ulster counties—Donegal, Monaghan, and Cavan. In Ballybogoin, the term “Irish nationalist” refers to people who desire this political entity but do not believe violence is a legitimate means to achieve it. Locally, Irish republicans are those people who think violence is justi‹ed, and those people form the support community of the IRA. On the distinction between Irish nationalists and republicans in Northern Ireland as a whole, see Ruane and Todd (1996, 71–72). 6. The metaphor of the house, a divided house, was often used by Ballybogoin ’s Catholics to describe their locality. “The two sides of the house,” “our side of the house,” and “the other side of the house” were invoked constantly to mark where people stood on a variety of issues. See Larsen (1982a). 7. Throughout this book I distinguish loyalist from unionist. Each term represents a different strand of unionist political culture. Ulster loyalists, although fervently unionist and desirous of the continued union with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, place their allegiances to Ulster (the six counties of Ulster that make up Northern Ireland) ‹rst and to the United Kingdom second. Ulster unionists identify themselves as British ‹rst and associate themselves with Ulster second. See Todd (1987) and Bruce (1994, 1–2). 8. The story of O’Neill is well known. Sources on his career in Ireland are plentiful. For useful summaries, see Bardon (1992, 87–118) and Foster (1988, 3–44). 9. For a historical consideration of the con›ict up until 1996, see Coogan (1996). Coogan discusses the cease-‹re and its 1996 interruption in the epilogue to this book (406–38). 10. Border areas often have a marked effect on social, cultural, and political life. For anthropological discussions of these borderland issues that give cause for re›ection on Northern Ireland border issues, see Wilson and Donnan (1998) and Donnan and Wilson (1999). 11. Telling has been recorded extensively in ethnographic work in the city of Belfast, especially in those neighborhoods beset by political violence. See Aretxaga (1997, 35–36); Burton (1978, 47–67); and Feldman (1991, 56–59). Telling receives little attention in ethnographic work outside these urban areas. There is little mention of it as an organizing force in rural areas. 12. On matter out of place and its use in the classi‹cation of groups, see Douglas (1966) and...