Measuring neighbourhood segregation using spatial interaction data

Implementing spatial segregation measures in GIS

Contents: Introduction: Senses of place, senses of time and heritage. Creating Senses Of Place From Senses Of Time: Introduction to theme one, G.J. Ashworth and Brian Graham Making places: a story of De Venen, Paulus P.P. Huigen and Louise Meijering Commodification of regional identities: the 'selling' of Waterland, Carola Simon 'That quintessential repository of collective memory': identity, locality and the townland in Northern Ireland, Bryonie Reid Mapping meanings in the cultural landscape, Yvonne Whelan Exploring the Irish mumming tradition with GIS, Amanda McMullan. The Public/Official Creation Of Place Identities: Introduction to theme two, G.J. Ashworth and Brian Graham Irish regimental heritage: representations of identity and war in a climate of change, Kenneth J.S. Miller A place called Nunavut: building on Inuit past, K.I.M. van Dam Conflict commemoration amongst Protestants in Northern Ireland, Catherine Switzer World heritage as a means of marking Mexican identity, Bart van der Aa. Insiders and Outsiders: Introduction to theme three, G.J. Ashworth and Brian Graham Escaping times and places: an artist community in Germany, Bettina van Hoven, Louise Meijering and Paulus P.P. Huigen Literature and the constitution of place identity: three examples from Belfast, Jonathan Stainer Imagining Newfoundlands, G.J. Ashworth Media production of rural identities, Peter Groote and Tialda Haartsen The creation of identities by government designation: a case study of the Korreweg district, Groningen, Netherlands, M.J. Kuipers. Conclusions: The next questions, G.J. Ashworth and Brian Graham Index.

The religious beliefs and practices of Protestants in Northern Ireland have not been well served by scholars. ‘Protestant’ is reduced to a synonym for political unionism, and much attention has been devoted to sectarianism and the fundamentalism of Rev Ian Paisley. Yet religion cannot simply be reduced to political identity and conflict; it is also clear that the overwhelming majority of Protestants, and evangelicals specifically, did not join Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church and remained members of mainstream Protestant denominations. Furthermore, Protestant religion in this period is unhelpfully described in binary terms—‘evangelicals’ versus ‘ecumenists’—a morality tale of reactionary conservatives stifling liberals who articulated an ecumenical or ‘dissenting’ vision. By placing the experience of Northern Ireland Protestants in broader perspectives, this chapter offers an interpretation that prioritizes religious developments, highlights the diversity of evangelicalism, and complicates the ‘evangelicals’ and ‘ecumenists’ binary.

We are facing the following question: In concrete terms, what might be the process that the actors in a society undergo as they make the transition from deep mistrust to trust? That is, once we have ended up in a social trap, how do we get out of it? This has to do with how trust for other actors can be engendered and the legitimacy of public institutions. This is a core issue to be resolved, if societies and groups caught in social traps are not to remain there forever (also known as “steady states”). The problem is that these types of changes are both unusual and difficult to document. Why they are unusual should be apparent by this point. They are difficult to document because ultimately the process is a matter of changes of deep-seated mental or cognitive human beliefs. What might persuade the members of a group that have felt deep mistrust towards another group to start trusting those others? What must come about to make Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, or Muslims, Serbs, and Croats in Bosnia, or Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East, ever change their beliefs about each other? What could make citizens in countries such as Russia and Argentina trust their governments to handle their taxes in a responsible way? It is no easy task to find good empirical evidence in existing historical material to confirm how these changes in beliefs on who can be reasonably trusted occur.

Conflict Commemoration Amongst Protestants in Northern Ireland

Assessing the impact of paramilitary violence on border Protestants in Northern Ireland remains a critically overlooked part of the region’s history. Remembered through a framework of memory that blurs the boundary between victim and perpetrator, existing scholarship often disempowers border Protestants by obscuring their experience under the Provisional IRA’s campaign. This re-examination of the conflict illuminates how the Troubles impacted the Protestant community’s physical, economic, and cultural presence in the border counties. Combining oral history with a broader assessment of the Provisional campaign, this book presents a compelling case study for viewing this violence as a form of ethnic cleansing.

Some of the most powerful bases of intergroup stereotyping are rooted in the social and economic structure of society itself. Whether we are talking about blacks and whites in the U.K. or the U.S., Germans and Turks in the Federal Republic of Germany, or Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, it should be acknowledged at the outset that such groups are often characterized by different living conditions, different occupational positions, and so on (see Hewstone & Brown, 1986a). These structural factors notwithstanding, social psychologists can arguably best analyze stereotypes in terms of their psychological bases and consequences. This chapter deals with how stereotypes can be changed by providing information that disconfirms existing, predominantly negative images of the outgroup.

The mediational role of empathy and intergroup emotions in contact between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland

One of the most influential, contested, and embraced figures in twentieth century psychology, and arguably America’s most widely disseminated psychologist, Carl Ransom Rogers (1902-87) exerted an influence in humanistic thinking and action which extended far beyond the academic and the clinical milieu. Rogers’ psychology of human potential and actualization has gained significant recognition beyond the mainstream of Anglo-American academic psychology, penetrating the domains of education, health care, community action and social agency, child and adult development, communications training, parenting education, and pastoral care, as well as psychotherapy and counseling. Although a former President of the American Psychological Association-by whom he had also been honored with the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1956, and a Professional Achievement Award in 1972-Rogers’ influence managed to reach the lives of “ordinary” individuals and practitioners. Rogers worked not only with patients, students, and psychologists; he was also involved in peace initiatives between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland and between rival ethnic sides in South Africa. During his final ten years of life, Rogers traveled and spoke across Western and Eastern Europe, Japan, China, Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. His cross-cultural conflict resolution led to Rogers being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987-news of which only arrived after his death on February 4, 1987.

Why is it that Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland have been in perpetual conflict for thirty years when they can live and prosper together elsewhere? Why was there a bloody civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina when Croats, Serbs, and Muslims had lived peacefully side-by-side for decades? Why did nobody see and act upon the early warning signs of genocide in Rwanda that eventually killed close to a million people in a matter of weeks? What is it that makes Kashmir potentially worth a nuclear war between India and Pakistan? In recent years hardly a day has gone by when ethnic conflict in some part of the world has not made headline news. The violence involved in these conflicts continues to destabilize entire regions, hamper social and economic development, and cause unimaginable human suffering. And the extensive media coverage of these conflicts all too often raises important questions that it signally fails to answer. This book aims to fill this gap. Drawing on the author’s long experience of studying such conflicts around the world and his involvement in attempts to resolve them, it provides an illuminating and accessible introduction to the origins, dynamics, and management of ethnic conflict. In doing so, it helps explain the fundamental question underlying all these conflicts: why do nationalism and ethnicity still have such terrible power to turn neighbour against neighbour?

The bias in estimating accessibility inequalities using gravity-based metrics

SummaryOne problem in analysing social and demographic change through time by using census data arises from differences in the size and shape of the geographical units that are used to output data between different years. Failure to correct for changing output geographies may lead to unknown and possibly large biases when comparing results through time between different censuses. The paper addresses this issue by using the example of residential segregation in Northern Ireland. It has two main objectives. Firstly, by compiling 2001 Northern Ireland census data on 1991 census output geographies it assesses the sensitivity of indices of residential segregation to these changes in geographical units. Secondly, it suggests a method by which census analysts can assess how sensitive their results are to changing output geographies when they cannot correct for these changes and must work with the data ‘as they are’. A subsidiary aim is to contribute to the evidence base on residential segregation in Northern Ireland. The paper finds that indices of residential segregation are insensitive to changes in output geographies between 1991 and 2001. The reason suggested for this is that the units in each zonal geography are smaller than the spatial scale over which population counts are positively auto-correlated. The use of spatially weighted segregation indices is advanced as a generalizable means of learning about the geographical patterning of population in different censuses. It is argued that these insights combined with knowledge of the size of geographical units used in each census can help researchers elsewhere to judge how sensitive their results might be to changing census output geographies through time.

Conflicting identities is one of the ‘central dynamics of political and cultural conflict’ in Northern Ireland (Bean, 2007, p. 158). McAlister et al.’s (2010, p. 70) exploration of ‘how identity is linked to place’, observes that it ‘serves to create feelings of inclusion or exclusion’, with versions of ‘historical constructions of space … passed down … to children and young people’. Similarly ‘rituals’ and ‘ceremonies’, as a ‘means of perceiving and displaying difference’ (Graham, 2011, p. 88) reinforce the contestation of space and the expression of identities. For children and young people in Northern Ireland, rioting at interface areas is a means of expressing cultural identity, while also indicating the existence of resistance to the structural, socio-economic inequalities they experience (Gordon, 2018). Although typically framed by media constructions and politicians as ‘recreational’, ‘fun’ and thus ‘not politically motivated’, contemporary research findings assert that for young people rioting is considered to have a firm political foundation and is a means of expressing identity and ‘defending space’ (Jarman and O’Halloran, 2001; Leonard, 2010; Meadows, 2010; Gordon, 2018). Drawing on extensive qualitative interview data and content analysis of media coverage, this chapter focuses on the role of the media in creating and maintaining negative representations of children and young people. Within a contextual media analysis, a case study of what was framed in media and political discourse as youth 'orchestration' of, and involvement in, 'sectarian rioting', explores how fear was mobilised to represent children and young people as “dragging” communities “back through the horrors of the past”. In addition to analysing interviews with editors, journalists and politicians in Northern Ireland, this chapter further asserts the importance of exploring theories of belonging through an empirical lens. In doing so, it includes the voices of children, young people and their advocates, exploring how they perceive themselves and their peers, as well as the perceived impact of negative representations on their sense of belonging in a society navigating transition from over thirty years of violent conflict. Children and young people describe the ‘expectations’ placed upon them by adults regarding the future and stability of the ‘new’ Northern Ireland, which they feel they had not been a part of ‘forming’. The chapter adds to the existing body of literature on ‘belonging’ by arguing that the realities of conflict and transition illuminate exclusionary and other issues experienced by young people, which are already present in ‘settled democracies’ (see Alvarez Berastegi, 2017; Gordon, 2018).

This article extends the methodological toolbox of measures of regional concentration of industries and industrial specialization of regions. It first defines disproportionality measures of concentration and specialization and proposes a taxonomy of these measures. This taxonomy is based on three characteristic features of any disproportionality measure. It helps researchers define the measure that fits their research purpose and data best. The article then generalizes this taxonomy to cover disproportionality measures of economic localization that evaluate specialization and concentration simultaneously and spatial disproportionality measures that deal with the checkerboard problem and the modifiable areal unit problem.

Continuous-flow stirred tank reactors (CSTR) are widely employed to elucidate the kinetics and dynamics of chemical reactions. Complete information regarding the spatial heterogeneity of micromixedness over the entire tank is essential for interpreting data and identifying the mixing effects. Therefore, in this work, we quantitatively estimate the segregation indices in a CSTR on the basis of a unique parallel competing reaction scheme proposed by Villermaux and co-workers. Experimental results indicate that the segregation index is a function of stirring rate as well as of the spatial location, from which, the mixing times can be estimated. Unexpectedly, although enhancing the micromixedness over the entire tank, a higher stirring rate cannot ensure a more uniform medium.