Gendering the Post-Conflict City: Memory, Memorialisation and Commemoration in Belfast

Author(s): Laura McAtackney

Year: 2016

Summary

Belfast has become synonymous with the study of insidious, civil conflict; especially how ethnic, political and religious divisions are materialized and reproduced in the contemporary city. The impact of focusing on segregation and sectarianism has dominated our understandings of the fractured city leaving the issue of gender sidelined. This paper aims to examine the contemporary city through the lens of competing placemaking strategies: the official implanting of contemporary art and the unofficial creation of Troubles memorials. It argues that whilst they reveal different conceptions of the various pasts of Belfast, and how they materialize in the present, one needs to explicitly analyze how gender is incorporated (or absented) in this context. Through using the often-ignored vector of gender this paper reveals how different attempts to construct meaning in the post-conflict city often bypass, forget or obfuscate the historical and contemporary roles and experiences of women in the city. 

Cite this Record

Gendering the Post-Conflict City: Memory, Memorialisation and Commemoration in Belfast. Laura McAtackney. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. 2016 ( tDAR id: 434495)

Keywords

General
conflict Gender Memory

Geographic Keywords
United Kingdom Western Europe

Temporal Keywords
Contemporary

Spatial Coverage

min long: -8.158; min lat: 49.955 ; max long: 1.749; max lat: 60.722 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 378