Irish Republican Counterpublic: Armed Struggle and the Construction of a Radical Nationalist Community in Northern Ireland, 1969-1998 - Paperback

by Dieter Reinisch (Editor), Anne Kane (Editor)

This volume examines the critical factors and processes by which the Provisional Irish Republican movement campaign from 1969 to 1998 transformed a once acquiescent nationalist population in Northern Ireland into a counterpublic of resistance demanding national self-determination and social justice. Considering the establishment of Irish Republican community institutions, prison protests, Republican Feminism, and Provisional IRA media and communications, this volume explores the emergence of Republicanism as a mass social movement in the nationalist Catholic ghettos and rural regions of Northern Ireland in the 1970s - a development that helped to sustain the armed struggle of the Provisional Irish Republican Army for three decades. An examination of the emergence and transformative power of the counterpublic discourse and action of the Irish Republican movement, this volume provides a framework for conceptualizing counterpublics in social movement studies. As such it will appeal to scholars of sociology, history, and politics with interests in social movements and mobilization.

Author Biography

Dieter Reinisch is a Government of Ireland Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Researcher in the School of Political Science and Sociology, National University of Ireland in Galway, and an Adjunct Professor in International Relations at Webster University, Vienna. He is the author of Learning Behind Bars: How IRA Prisoners shaped the Peace Process in Ireland (2022) and Performing Memory: Corporeality, Visuality, and Mobility after 1968, co-edited with Luisa Passerini (2023).

Anne Kane retired as Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Houston Downtown, and is a Faculty Fellow at the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology. Her book, Constructing Irish Nationalist Identity: Ritual and Discourse during the Land War, 1879-1882, was published in 2011.