Anthropology Research Seminar

Sectarianism in Northern Ireland has no defenders. Everyone, from virtually every part of the political spectrum, condemns it and denies being sectarian, whilst alleging that their opponents are. Nevertheless, the sectarian divide structures virtually all political, cultural and social life in the province. Sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland has challenged both liberal (including neoliberal) and Marxist analyses, resulting in Northern Ireland being labelled an anachronistic “place apart”, where upon arrival, visitors should turn their watches back to 1690. A particular problem for Marxian theorists has been the fact that sectarian divisions are most prominently marked, enthusiastically embraced and fiercely defended by working-class groups, which, according to orthodox Marxist theory, are most disadvantaged by them. These groups have often been accused of irrationality or ‘false consciousness’ and not only by Marxists.

This presentation, based on two recent book chapters (Ramsey 2022; forthcoming 2024) first defines sectarianism and considers its relationship to other forms of discrimination, particularly racism. It then turns its focus to working-class loyalism to argue that from an intersectional perspective, sectarian allegiance is a rational response by working-class groups to enforced economic competition within a system dominated by more privileged groups. Working class loyalism and working-class republicanism both function as (opposed and incompatible) means of making claims on the ruling class. Consequently, sectarian politics is not antithetical to class politics: it is itself a form of class politics. The paper considers possible objections to the rationality of sectarianism before drawing on Thomas Piketty’ s concept of “dual elites” and a range of ethnographic evidence to show how, far from being a place apart, Northern Ireland’s “Troubles” have presaged a range of other sectarian conflicts triggered by the global spread of neoliberal capitalism.

Gordon Ramsey is an Ethnomusicologist and Anthropologist currently employed as a Lecturer in Anthropology at Queen’s University, Belfast, where he completed his PhD in 2009 on the loyalist marching band tradition and where has spent his entire career, with the exception of a period as a Visiting Lecturer at the Minzu University of China, Beijing, in 2019. His monograph, Music, Emotion and Identity in Ulster Marching Bands, was published in 2011 by Peter Lang. Since then he has published widely on traditional musics in Northern Ireland and related topics and he is currently affiliated to the Institute of Creative Ethnography at Queen’s. Over the past year, he has carried out exploratory research in the USA into links between fife and drum traditions in Ireland and America, and has recently submitted a funding application to the AHRC to develop a project including both a documentary component, focusing on the comparison of 18th century manuscripts and an applied ethnomusicology component involving performances by traditional musicians from a range of different backgrounds. Gordon is an active community musician who plays the flute in marching bands, Ulster-Scots folk groups and Irish traditional sessions. Gordon’s theoretical interests range from evolutionary theory to feminism and from Marxism to embodiment and this has been reflected in the very broad range of teaching he has undertaken during his time at Queen’s. These broad interests have been applied in his recent research, resulting in two publications focusing on the relationship between social class and sectarian identity in Northern Ireland and beyond, and this is the topic of today’s presentation.