Symbolic Complexity and Political Division: The Changing Role of Religion in Northern Ireland

Religious distinctions, ethnic oppositions and national differences intersect in Northern Ireland. This essay explores how this symbolic complexity has fed political conflict. It is argued that the institutional structure of Northern Ireland encouraged the generalization of religiously informed values across the fields of ethnicity and politics, which in turn fed back to tighten and constrain available religious repertoires. The recent process of institutional reform has interrupted this process. Although this is only one factor that contributes to the reproduction of conflict, it allows us to make sense of otherwise paradoxical features of everyday division in Northern Ireland, and to explain the seemingly inchoate processes of change in the post-1998 period.