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Ethnicity, Narrative, Power

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Ethnic Dignity and the Ulster-Scots Movement in Northern Ireland

Part of the book series: Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series ((CAL))

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Abstract

Ethnicity is a narrative. The Irish are Celts who migrated to the island in the fifth century BC. The Hutus were farmers while the Tutsis were herders. ‘As Slavs, [the Polish] are and can only be masters of the Word!’ (Klaczko 1957; quoted in Van Heuckelom 2010). There may be debate over whether these stories are accurate, ‘authentic’ or applicable. There may be multiple competing narratives of the self, including the individual, local, organisational-institutional, religious, class-based, ethnic, national, racial, human and sentient. However, notions of collective identity are grounded in the stories told about what it means to be within (or without) the group identity in question.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See https://www.un.org/en/member-states/

  2. 2.

    For a productive critique of Eriksonian identity theory, see Finlay (2008, 2010, chap. 3).

  3. 3.

    To use Brubaker’s (1996, pp. 23–54) terminology.

  4. 4.

    This graph has been included due to the pertinence of the Protestant identity shift in Northern Ireland to the core case study of the book.

  5. 5.

    A rephrasing of Skocpol’s (1979, p. 17) famous use of Wendell Phillips’ quote, ‘Revolutions are not made; they come’.

  6. 6.

    See Rogers Smith (2003) Stories of Peoplehood: pages 32–35, 54–55 and 65.

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    Peter Gardner

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Gardner, P. (2020). Ethnicity, Narrative, Power. In: Ethnic Dignity and the Ulster-Scots Movement in Northern Ireland. Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34859-5_2

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