Exploring the complex dynamics of twenty-first century spatial sociality, this volume provides a much-needed multi-dimensional perspective that undermines the dominant image of Northern Ireland as a conflict-ridden place. Despite touching on memories of "the Troubles" and continuing unionist-nationalist tensions, the volume refuses to consider people in the region as purely political beings, or to understand processes of placemaking solely through ethnic or national contestations and territoriality. Topics such as the significance of friendship, gender, and popular culture in spatial practices are considered, against the backdrop of the growing presence of migrants, refugees and diasporic groups.
Exploring the complex dynamics of twenty-first century spatial sociality, physical movement and placemaking in Northern Ireland, this volume provides a much-needed multi-dimensional perspective that undermines the dominant image of the region as a conflict-ridden place. The contributions here draw on and further develop theories of space, place, movement, identity and sociality.
"Milena Komarova and Maruska Svasek's edited volume is a commendable piece of scholarship on Northern Ireland that manages to be ambitious in scope but never scattershot in execution? a magnificent work on the outbound orientation of mobility and sociality and, lamentably, how this sociability brushes up against the walls and the persistent, dichotomous views of two opposing communities that constrain and reify them." ? JRAI
"A very welcome and timely contribution? This is a book that manages to be both detailed and insightful in its elaboration of fascinating empirical data whilst also being very strong in its conceptual and methodological contribution." ? Katy Hayward, Queen's University Belfast
"This volume will set a new benchmark for the ethnographic study of life in the north of Ireland today. Focusing on practices and discourses of placemaking, it explores many of the nooks and crannies of everyday life that are perhaps less than visible to the outsider? It is a pleasure to read and makes an important contribution to our understanding of the place in question, and its people, but also to the wider anthropology of the contemporary world." ? Richard P Jenkins, Sheffield University
"[This book] represents a valuable addition to the literature on Northern Ireland due to the manner in which it integrates the new with the established, the perspectives of the majority communities with those of the new minority communities and in the way that it foregrounds women's perspectives." ? Neil Jarman, Queen's University Belfast
