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In Imagined Communities Anderson ([2006]. (Revised ed.). London: Verso) discusses the novel as a cultural form which contains 'a sociological landscape of a fixity that fuses the world inside the novel with the world outside'. This article utilises Anderson's ideas to examine the work of the Northern Irish novelist Eoin McNamee. The author's imagined Northern Ireland engages with the territory's recent history and reading his work can aid understanding of the sociological concept of the 'imagined community'. McNamee presents Northern Ireland as a divided society containing opposed communities, and his novels contain a sustained political argument against British governance in the territory. McNamee constructs a narrative around real-life events and attempts to influence the ways in which they are understood. Both Resurrection Man and The Ultras are of sociological value because they have the potential to aid understanding of Anderson's best-known theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There remains a certain ambiguity or lack of articulation as to the contemporary and long-term expectations and aspirations of Northern Irish nationalists. On account of such a gap in the literature, I conducted a small-scale research study in early 2016 to access the voices of ordinary people within the nationalist community by means of a Mixed Methods approach. The goal was not to prioritise these voices over those of unionists but to find out what possible changes have occurred in terms of nationalist perspectives, aspirations, and sense of identity almost two decades since the signing of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement [1998. Agreement between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of Ireland. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/136652/agreement.pdf]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research analyses ‘Northern Irish’ identity narratives post-agreement, and examines the configuration of frame agendas in terms of individual narrative components. A content analysis utilised news published through 1997-2014 within Northern Ireland daily newspapers - the Belfast Telegraph, the Irish News and the News Letter. A process of manifest coding produced an emergent coding scheme displaying the relative stability of media frames surrounding the Northern Irish identity as broadly partisan; however, there is also a subtle narrative shift of Northern Irish identity across the time periods; and findings of a dominant framing paradigm of political and social conceptions of identification post-agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article claims that while the concept of ethno-nationalism may be taken as shorthand for describing what appear to be the dominant features of certain political conflicts, it possesses little explanatory value -- instead obscuring and confusing more than it reveals. Using the Northern Ireland case as an illustrative example, it is argued that the reluctance to problematise or contextualise ethnic claims means that ethnic conflict theorists may effectively contribute to the reproduction of dominant narratives. The article explicitly rejects the notion that a single framework should replace the ethno-national model. Instead, it highlights the importance of focusing issues of timing and historical sequencing, source criticism and empirical evidence, as well as the significance of marginal narratives and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that national identity is closely bound up with religion, which in turn is closely bound up with ideas of truth. Different religions will form and transmit different ideas of truth, both moral and cognitive, and transmit them and socialise their members in to holding them. From this a socially exclusive group is formed, which becomes one basis for a nation. This nation becomes morally and cognitively exclusive of non-religious members since they will hold different truths and so cannot be trusted, they cannot be 'loyal and true'. Ireland and Northern Ireland provide a classic example of this, where Catholic and Protestant were the mediums for transmitting Romantic or Enlightenment versions of the truth and so provided a basis for opposed ideas of nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservative adherence to the sovereignty of the Crown-in-Parliament resulted in the merging of English with British consciousness. During the 1990s, England's political nationalism expressed itself as a defence of Britishness. This defence of Britishness prevented a political English nationalism cohering at a time when political nationalisms had matured in Scotland and Wales. This merging of England and Britain was particularly evident in conservative thinking, given the conservative adherence to the concept of Crown-in-Parliament sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most liberal-minded people would view job discrimination on non-meritocratic grounds as wrong. Thus ‘liberal’ states usually outlaw it and try to promote schemes of mutual understanding and tolerance between different ethnic or religious groups. In Northern Ireland, there is a feeling that discrimination in itself is a major factor fomenting intercommunal strife and religious conflict. Equally, it has become part of modern liberal rhetoric to extol the values of differences, of being multicultural and proclaiming the virtues of tolerance and understanding alongside the banning of discrimination. Thus, in Northern Ireland, combating job discrimination is seen as an important part of trying to heal the sectarian conflict within the Province. However, it is the argument of this article that such policies are flawed for they miss a vital cause of discrimination in the first place. Modern nationalism, particularly ethnic, is about discrimination and the triumph of one ethnic group over the ‘other’, and not about tolerance and equality, except at the rhetorical level. Consequently, until this factor is addressed, policies to combat job discrimination will fail since they miss the fundamentally sectarian nature of ethnic nationalism, which is often about jobs for the ethnic group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores aspects of the history of Derry City Football Club in the period 1968-1985, and the effect that the Northern Irish troubles had on the soccer club. The whole question of identity within Northern Ireland has always been contested between those pursuing an Irish nationalist agenda, and those wishing to remain within the Union. This article locates Derry City within this struggle, and demonstrates how far reaching the effects of the contest between identities have been, even on something so 'normal' as a soccer club. Soccer clubs, it is argued, are an important location for the creation and sustaining of identities that are reflective of wider issues within society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]