Contentious Rituals: Parading the Nation in Northern Ireland by Jonathan S. Blake (review)

Each year in Northern Ireland, Protestants loyal to the United Kingdom conduct around 2,500 colorful and musical parades (nearly 60 percent of all parades), averaging about seven parades every day in an area a little larger than Connecticut and with a population similar to West Virginia's. Most people attend or participate on holidays, such as the Twelfth of July, when fraternal organizations commemorate historic events and express their identification with the Protestant faith and their citizenship in the United Kingdom. These organizations are accompanied by neighborhood uniformed bands, who also hold their own parades and competitions throughout the parading season. The bands feature snare drums and at least one prominent bass drum accompanying flutes, fifes, accordions, brass instruments, or bagpipes.

Given the island's long history of conflict over nationality, religion, and sovereignty, any declaration of political identity risks alienating neighbors holding different allegiances. Performance and context matter. When loud Protestant parades pass through primarily Catholic neighborhoods, they can offend or intimidate residents. Most parades take place without acrimony, but a small yet significant number prove contentious, receive substantial media coverage, and can influence politics and the ongoing peace process. Consequently, many observers understand parades as orchestrated attempts to influence politics. But is that the case? Why do Protestants participate in parades?

In Contentious Rituals: Parading the Nation in Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press), Jonathan S. Blake employs 81 semi-structured interviews, original survey data from a sample of 228 male residents in nine Protestant neighborhoods in Belfast, and observational fieldwork conducted over the course of 8 months in 2012–2014 to examine the perspectives and motives of Protestants who participate in parades. He also compares interview and survey responses from those in primarily Protestant neighborhoods who participate in parades with those who do not participate.

Blake's respondents report that internal incentives, such as collective identity expression, a felt connection with tradition, and the social pleasures of parading, not material benefits (rationalism), ideological commitments (idealism), or proximity to parading through one's networks (structuralism) compel participation in parades. (However, social pressure appears to play a significant role in regressions of the survey data, while interviewees report little or no social pressure to parade.) That interviewees also often consider parades an opportunity to "send a message" through parading that "we are still here" (after centuries of conflict) reveals an oppositional stance that Blake finds is nevertheless overshadowed by paraders' claims that parading is cultural, not political. The author faithfully honors, records, and presents his subjects' responses before moving to reconcile their claims with the politicized and contentious outcomes of parading. In an important critical turn, he argues that paraders' framing of their activities as culture and tradition constitutes a form of anti-politics that privileges parading in public discourse and helps exempt it from critique. Consequently, parades can be viewed as oppositional from a perspective outside the Protestant milieu, even as paraders are often not fully cognizant and deemphasize the contentious dimensions of their practice.

Why people participate in collective action has always been one of social scientists' fundamental questions, and Blake's wide use of social scientific literature makes Contentious Rituals a valuable resource. The author's appropriation of multiple literatures from political science, sociology, cultural anthropology, and social theory, by which he carefully establishes the theoretical framework that informs his research design and conclusions, is worth the reader's time. His extensive reference to literature on the history and politics of Ireland and Northern Ireland is equally impressive.

Parades in Northern Ireland make a fascinating object of study because they occupy a rich intersection of politics, social movements, ritual, performance, religion, ethnicity, and conflict. They do not fit any one ideal type neatly, and Blake's study reflects this richness. He draws heavily on social movement literature, especially early in the book, to survey reasons for participation in collective action, but some readers may...