From Conflict To Reconciliation - A Study Of The Relationship Between Northern Ireland And

As a legacy of British colonialism, Northern Ireland issue that result from the conflict between the two ethnic groups, Protestants and Catholics, had troubled the British government for many years. The conflict not only caused many victims, the riots during the troubles almost ceased the economic development and business activity. Different with other ethnic conflict cases, Northern Ireland issue basically is a pluralistic, multi-level problem, and it is doped with identity conflict and a variety of inequality -- involving political, social, economic and other aspects. The roots of it came from the polarized political and cultural identities that result from its special historical background. The historical events contribute to the formation of anti-Protestant/Catholic identity and the British/Irish identity. And such conflicting and polarized identities among Ulster results in the special way of daily life:intolerance and prejudice to the other community make them separate, and separation make them had more prejudice. And such way of life enhanced the polarized identities and more easily to discriminate the other community.Over the past twenty years, especially after the signing of the Belfast peace agreement, Northern Ireland society get out of this vicious spiral through take a series of efforts. Ethnic conflicts emerge as one of the main features in the first decade after the Cold War. Although most of ethnic conflicts seem to be settled in the second decade, there remain many issues to be further explored and analyzed. How can a society with serious ethnic antagonism and division, achieve social reconciliation? I think it has important theoretical and practical significance of this study.This paper starts from the historical background, to search for the historical roots of Northern Ireland issue. Then it discuss the three faces of ethnic antagonism:first, the cultural dimension which is about whether religion is basic dynamic or not; second, the political dimension which is about what elements consist of polarized political identity and how they contribute to the way of political interaction; third, the eco-social dimension which is about how separate the eco-social interaction between the two groups. Finally, this paper tries to find a compromise strategy for social reconciliation, through the analysis of Northern Ireland reconciliation process.