Politicized Traditions: The Reproduction of Spatial Contestation through the Memory of Conflict

Neighborhoods across the globe are becoming increasingly ‘divers,' yet their urban encounters reproduced through negotiating differences, exhibits models of social inequality and spatial imbalances. The paper will investigate young people’s relationship with contested traditions of the built environment in the context of Northern Ireland (NI), which has an extended history of profound ethnic conflict known as the Troubles. It will explore how the youngsters’ everyday practices are constantly colored by heavily ‘mythologised’ memories of conflict driven by political subjectivities of segregation. The argument is that their daily engagement forces them to employ tactics to challenge or resist these logistical realities by adopting alternative means of interaction within the public realm. Building on Mark Juvan’s ‘spaces of intertextuality, I will explain how young people in NI are widely exposed to ‘objects of conflict’ that contextualize memory of disturbing incidents. The paper questions whether the growing cultural and ethnic diversification of societies in NI could lead to transformative social relations of integration and belonging beyond groups defined by their ethnic identity.