'I'm not Catholic and I'm not Protestant': Identity, individualisation and challenges for history education in Northern Ireland. Issue 2 (19th October 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Branford, Abigail
• Is Part Of: History education research journal. Volume 18:Issue 2(2021)
• Page Start: 126
• Page End: 147
• Publication Date: 2021-10-19
• Subjects: history education -- conflict -- national identity -- individualisation -- Northern Ireland; History -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; History -- Research -- Periodicals; 907
• DOI: 10.14324/HERJ.18.2.01
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2631-9713

Abstract

Abstract : page_126 other Teaching sensitive histories in post-conflict societies makes particular demands on educators to understand students' identities and their relationships to the past. This paper expands our understanding of post-conflict youth identities and experiences of history education through a small-scale study of students' life stories in Northern Ireland which defied sectarian boundaries in different ways: some were children of interfaith marriages, while others attended integrated schools or were part of cross-community peace-building organisations. Participants saw themselves as forging new identities and 'moving on' from the past, although this process was fraught with ambivalence. I describe these expressions of identity through Ulrich Beck's (1992) model of triple individualisation. For these 'post-sectarian' students, school history was seen largely as a tool towards achieving qualification, far removed from their everyday struggles of self-fashioning.