Transforming Collective Memories in Community Groups: Peace Building In Northern Ireland

• In Event: 3407 - Peace and Conflict: Peacebuilding in Local Contexts

Abstract

This paper examines the role of community mechanisms in shaping memory, specifically cultural trauma, and identity in post-conflict settings. It extends research that endeavors to open the black box between interventions by formal institutions (like peace treaties, trials, or truth commissions) and cultural outcomes to the realm of community groups and practices. This study focuses on one specific cross-community initiative, the 2012 Transitional Justice Grassroots Toolkit, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Document analysis and interviews reveal a set of traits that facilitate cultural transformation through group interactions. These traits include the context of a peace agreement and prior, complementary peace making initiatives, as well as cohort effects and benefits of specific pedagogical tools. Our interest is in the development and transformation of social ties within post-conflict community settings and in the cultural consequences of such transformations. This paper shows how community processes can change collective memories and cultural trauma of the conflict, as well as identities, away from their polarized forms, and it explores implications for future peace.

Authors

• Michael Soto, University of Minnesota

• Joachim J. Savelsberg, University of Minnesota