Ethno-sectarianism and the reproduction of fear in Belfast

Within Belfast most violent arenas the designing of place-centred communities, which actively resist an ethno-sectarian ‘other’, has been achieved via symbolic practice and the perpetuation and reproduction of religious segregation. This paper explores how political and religious segregation has within Belfast has been accomplished through regulating social contact between communities so as to direct the political ‘logic’ of spatial enclosure. Segregation has thus aided the reproduction of inter-linked spatial devices, which have enacted both violence and conflict. These devices include the reproduction of fear, the sociology of deviance and the articulation of discourses of defence. Without doubt the disquisition which constitutes ethno-sectarianism and fear in Belfast is reproduced through what are essentially ‘lived experiences’.